Canvas - First Play!

7th March 2023

Tuesday evening is here again and we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns.

'It's so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.' - Paul Cezanne.

Canvas is a game about creating paintings - well sort of and you actually start with a blank canvas - well sort of!

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What's in a game?

• Cards: Canvas uses 3 types of cards.
  Art cards: These form the bulk of Canvas' cards and are made of transparent plastic.
  Each art card will be mostly empty and transparent but in the central part will feature some 'artsy' element or 2 of artwork, below it will be a label (Or title if you will.).
  Below that are 1 or more of 5 differently coloured stacks of icons along the bottom of the card, each stack will contain 1 or 2 icons.

3 art cards, labelled 'Divine', 'Fading' & 'Escape'.

• Background cards: These cards come inside transparent plastic sleeves which aren't just there for protective purposes and are actually part of the gameplay. These cards each display a neutral background which will form the errr... background for a painting.
  ​Each card also has 5 different splashes of colour that correspond with colours used for the icons on art cards.

Background cards or if you wish, 'blank canvases'.

• Scoring cards: These cards provide scoring opportunities for the game. Each scoring card sort of represent a different artistic quality.
• Game mat: This rectangular mat is made of some cloth, probably canvas, which is cool!
  ​The mat contains 4 differently coloured spaces for 4 scoring cards, below them are 6 spaces for 5 cards and the game's 'tuck box'.

Game mat with 4 scoring cards placed on the 4 differently coloured spaces.

• Tuck box: A card box that is used during the game to hold art cards before putting them out.

A box to hold cards!

• Inspiration tokens: These card tokens are styled after the classic artist's palette.

• Ribbon tokens: These tokens are also made of card, they are shaped like ribbons or rosettes, they come in 5 colours, 4 of which are the same colours that correspond to the colours used for scoring cards on the game mat while the 5th is silver.
  They are also all slightly differently shaped to increase accessibility.

The tokens are all constructed from suitably thick card stock and feel satisfyingly sturdy. The tuck box is made from the same material used for tuck boxes that contain decks of cards and like those boxes, it's fairly flimsy but unless it's mistreated, it should be fine.
​The scoring cards are made of standard card.

For a game about art, as you might expect, there's a lot of art in Canvas. However, it's all 'patchwork' art that comes in small elements which during the course of the game, players will combine to make their sort of own artwork.
Canvas provides lots of these small pieces of art in a variety of styles and sizes. It's hard to say whether it's good or bad because it's not meant to constitute finished art. Regardless of that, it all looks OK to me. Certainly, there's a lot of bright colour going on, which is something I like.

While Canvas uses an average-ish amount of iconography, I found some of it to be rather abstract and counter-intuitive.
The bonus silver ribbons and colous are easily understood, but triangle representing shape and a striped box representing texture?
It's also complicated a little further by whatever the scoring criteria are on the scoring cards which seemed not quite as simple as they could be. Players especially need to be aware of the scoring criteria
It's a bit of a steep curve but ultimately not a gamebreaker though and requires some learning.

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'A very important card,' someone thinks!

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How's it play?
Setup

• Game mat: Put out the game mat.
  Scoring cards: Either use a chosen selection or randomly deal 4 scoring cards into the 4 spaces on the matt.
  Art cards: Shuffle the art cards into a deck and place them into the tuck box, then place the tuck box on to the rightmost space on the game mat. Deal 5 cards from the tuck into the 5 available spaces.
• Players: Give each player the following.
  Background cards: Give each player 3 background cards, these should be in  transparent sleeves.
  Inspiration tokens: Give each player 4 inspiration tokens.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Canvas, each player is creating 3 paintings - which will be created by layering 3 art cards over a background card. Once a painting is created, it will earn ribbon as per the scoring criteria. Then, once the game is over, ribbons will earn VPs.
Canvas uses a traditional turn order with the active player acting, then play progressing to the player on their left.

During their turn, the active player in basic terms has 2 choices.

• ​Draft art card: The active player may draft 1 of the 5 available art cards into their hand with the following restrictions.
  Cost: The active player may take the leftmost art card for free but any card further along must be paid for with inspiration tokens. 1 token must be placed on every card that is 'skipped'.
  Acquire tokens: Conversely, the active player may collect any tokens on a art card which they draft.
  Conveyor belt: Once a art card has been taken from the drafting track, cards are slid to the left to fill the gap and a new card is added to the rightmost space.
  Max hand: A player can never have more than 5 art cards in their hand at any time. If a player has collected 5 arts, they cannot draft anymore and must instead create a painting.
• Create painting: When a player has 5 art cards in hand, they must create a painting, if they have 3 or 4 art cards, they can choose to create a painting.
  ​Exactly 3 art cards are required to create a painting.
  Creating a painting is technically easy; the active player takes 3 of their art cards and layers them on top of each other in any order they see fit and them places them into one of the sleeves with a background card.
  Score artwork: The active player then scores the newly created artwork.
  The artwork will be scored across all 4 scoring cards.
  Only visible scoring icons can be scored, that is, any that were covered by other icons are not scored.
  ​A painting will earn ribbons of the corresponding colour for meeting each scoring card's scoring criteria. It is possible to earn more than 1 ribbon from a scoring card by meeting it's criteria more than once. Additionally, silver ribbon scoring on actual art cards may provide extra ribbons.
• Next Player: Once the active player has either drafted or created, play progress to the player on their left.

Endgame
Once a player has created 3 paintings, their turns are skipped, once all player have created 3 paintings, the game ends and goes to scoring.

Players should now sort their ribbons by colour.
Each scoring card will determine how many victory points (VPs) its set of coloured ribbons will score.
Silver ribbons earn 2 VPs each.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
​Canvas merges its theme with its central mechanic quite well and I have to say it's a a fairly unique mechanic I quite like that also feels fresh. I also like how the game produces some pretty unusual names for the paintings.

Canvas is in implementation, a fairly straightforward game, it utilises familiar drafting and conveyor belt mechanics commonly seen elsewhere. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a good crossover game as I feel the scoring rules are a little obtuse but gamers should have no problems understanding Canvas.

Where the game's depth comes from is in the creation of paintings.
Players can freely choose to layer the art cards they choose to use how they wish but any scoring icons that are not visible are not scored.
This puts players into a quandary, they will need to not just select the art cards for a painting that provide them the best scoring opportunities but also how to layer those art cards to do so!
Furthermore, over multiple plays, the wide choice of scoring cards will force players to approach game slightly differently. Between this and the variety of art cards, there's a lot of replicability to the game.

Thus players must carefully draft whatever cards they might need as well as think about how to use them.
Synergy between cards is key to optimal scoring but I found it was quite hard to get the mix of icons that I wanted and I'm sure that Canvas is one of those games where players will rarely get the 'perfect scoring' they want.
That's a good thing because it means players will have to choose between choices and are pushed to make meaningful decisions, although I must admit that I found it sometimes veered to being close to frustrating instead of challenging.

There's not much more to say really; Canvas is a game that's quick to pick up and relatively quick to play with a easily understandable theme that meshes well with gameplay that feels a little different to anything else.
It's a game definitely worth trying especially if you're looking for a game that has some unique elements.