In Art Society, the 2-4 players are art patrons buying paintings at auction and placing them on their individual display wall (player board). Each round there'll be an auction for one picture more than the number of players. You bid with an eye to the size and shape of the picture as well as into which of the four genres the painting fits (portrait/landscape/still life/city life) and which of four types of frame the picture is in. Starting with the highest bidder, players then choose which painting to take to add to their wall.
As the number of paintings up for auction is one more than the number of players, every player will get a painting every round and there will always be one picture left over. That picture goes to the museum where its prestige value (the number on the back of the picture that broadly corresponds to the picture's size) will be added to the value for that picture's genre. The relative values for each genre at game end determine the multipliers players get for the paintings in each of the four picture types; so, for example, if Landscapes are in the lead position on the museum track at the end of the game they'll qualify for the 5x multiplier so players will all score five points for every landscape on their wall.
Layout on your 'display wall' board is critical for scoring. There are bonuses for having pictures with similar frames adjacent to each other. These help you fill any gaps on your display wall and at the end of the game they score a point for each shield symbol. The pictures themselves score according to picture type. However, you won't ordinarily score any prestige for pictures of the same type that are touching; so, for example, you want to avoid placing two portraits edge on to each other.
Mitch Wallace's design for Art Society brings together some interesting mechanics. Tho' obviously there's an auction each round, you're really only bidding for turn order for when the actual pictures are revealed. It's only towards the end of the game, when players may be unable to fit certain sizes of painting onto their wall, that this can become a 'take that' contest. The decision over where to place your pictures is an optimisation puzzle that will probably also involve a push-your-luck gamble, not least over which paintings end up in the museum and so which types of painting will benefit most from the more generous multipliers.
And since this is a game with an art theme, it's great that Mighty Boards have commissioned such a range of art on all the pictures. Art credits are shared by Veronica Grassi, Max Kosek, Angelica Regni, Sofia Rossi, Doris Shermadhi and Giacomo Vichi.
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