Canvas: The Game

Canvas is a beautiful game about making beautiful paintings.

In Canvas, you are a painter competing to win an art contest. What makes it unique is the use of sleeves and transparent cards to create a unique painting. Players start with 3 sleeved background cards and over the course of the game will gain art cards from a central display. Often they will need to pay for the cards they want by placing inspiration tokens on the cards they skip. The end card is always free.

On your turn, you will either take an art card and any inspiration on it or make a painting. You can have a maximum of 5 art cards in hand, so if you hit that max you must make a painting. To make a painting you take exactly three of your art cards and arrange them in the order you want. The art cards are transparent apart from some sort of painted element (part of a landscape or an object), a title, and some icons on the bottom. Once arranged you slip them into one of the sleeved background cards creating your art, title and all!

You are aiming to have icons showing in a way that scores you the most points. However, some may be covered up unless you place them on top. But then you might be covering other icons you want! You will then score your painting against the 5 scoring objectives. Each one awards a ribbon for each time you achieve that goal. So if a goal requires two triangles and you have four, you would take two ribbons as you have achieved it twice. At the end, the ribbons score points according to the table at the bottom of their goal card. It’s a simple game that perfectly meshes theme and gameplay, in a way not often seen, With its clever use of transparent cards and sleeves it is a winner for showing off the hobby while having a ruddy good time!

Player count: 1-5
Time: 30-45 minutes
Age: 14+