Now, before you think I am reviewing actual modern art, let me tell you that I am reviewing the game “Modern Art”. In fact this game is really far from the whole modern art culture. Modern Art instead has you playing as museum galleries that care about one thing: having the nicest collection of art and getting and building a lasting relationship with artists so you can provide a great experience for the people who visit your museum. Just kidding, you only care about money! I think this theming is really funny. The fact that you play as museums that are obvious parodies of real ones, but in this world you need to make the most money to win is very funny. Sure this isn’t the must thematic game, but the little theming it has is quite unique and (perhaps unintentionally) funny. But theming doesn’t matter at all if the game sucks. So does it?

No. No it does not. In fact I would go so far as to say that this is my favourite auction game I have played. And I have played quite a few auction games. So what makes this one so special? Well the first thing is that instead of the winning bidder just paying their money to the bank, they pay it to the auctioneer. That’s right, players take turns being the auctioneer. But it doesn’t end there: the auctioneer can bid on the painting they choose to auction, but in that case they pay their money to the bank.

But to understand how good this really is you need to understand another system in this game, and that system is the auctioning system. I like to imagine Reiner Knizia (the designer of Modern Art) sitting in a room and thinking, “what auction mechanic should I use for this game?” And then he was like, “Screw it, I’ll just use them all.” The game uses a system where depending on the card you choose to auction there are a different auction type. Now remember when I said that you need to understand this system to understand why having players take turns being an auctioneer is so great? That’s because each auction type gives the auctioneer and the other players so many interesting strategic choices.

Let me give you an example. In the open auction, players make a bid in real time until nobody else wants to bid (remember, including the auctioneer). Now this is just an extremely fun social moment, the auctioneer wants to encourage bidding wars to make lots of sweet sweet Moolah off the other players. So the auctioneer has to try to hype up the players into bidding. Now this can be hilarious if you have a super enthusiastic auctioneer because it is really funny to watch them say a bunch of silly things to convince the other players to bid higher. But if you have a more shy auctioneer who prefers thinking about the puzzle of the game, that is also hilarious because players will expect the auctioneer to try to convince them to buying this painting and just get nothing. Now both of those situations are really funny, but there can be an infuriatingly hard puzzle in this game for those who want it.

And that puzzle is made great because of one more system I haven’t told you about: the artists themselves. Modern Art gives you five different artists to play with. I might not be an art connoisseur, but me and the people I play this game with all have opinions on the artists. Also these artists are not fictional characters, they are each real artists with their own style. To be honest some of the paintings are a bit, well… crap. But that’s a good thing! This adds some great humour of people not bidding on the obvious choice just because they don’t like the art.

But these artists don’t just offer some art with varying degrees of success, they offer some delicious puzzley gameplay! You see the whole reason you are buying paintings is to “sell” them. “Selling” is equal to discarding your cards and gaining money for them at the end of a round. A round ends when an artist has five paintings out. Then the top three artists with the most paintings are each given different monetary values depending on their rankings. The other two artists are just left being worth nothing. “Because as you all know when there is more of something in an economy, it goes up in value”. The game ends after four rounds, and in the later rounds if an artist is in the top three artists they get to add all their previous rankings to the monetary value of their paintings. Let me give you an example of how this all comes together to make a great puzzle with some social elements.

The current auctioneer is using a double auction to auction of two paintings from the artist Daniel Melin. In earlier rounds Daniel was ranked first and then third. This makes their paintings worth at least fifty universal currencies each if they get placed this round. Currently there are no other Daniel Melins placed this round. Also a lot of the paintings of Daniel Melin were played in earlier rounds. But this could be worth up to one hundred and forty universal currencies. The auction is a hidden auction so each player hides a bid in their fist and reveals simultaneously. So wouldn’t it be worth to bid at least eighty for this? Well maybe, but there is one little detail that makes this decision much more interesting. The fact that the auctioneer gets your money. So they would make a guaranteed eighty universal currencies, and you would only make a maximum of sixty. But what if the auctioneer isn’t in first place? A detail I should probably mention now is that all your money is kept secret. This mechanic is in place so people don’t know who is in first and just not buy from them. So you decided to bid seventy-five. And then when everyone reveals you break out into laughter as your see the auctioneer has bid seventy six on the painting and denied themselves of your money when they could only make a maximum of sixty four money from these paintings.

Did this example illustrate how this game combines a great puzzle game, and a great social game into one game? I hope by now you see how good the concept of this game is. And I will tell you that in practice it is just as good as it sounds (maybe even better). Overall I would highly recommend modern art. There are a few issues though. The first one is it requires at least three players to play and is really best with four or five. Another issue is that the game can drag on a bit long. Though there never feels like there is a time where you know who won. But it does have to be this long for all the brilliance of the artists system to shine. If you are looking for a great party game, I would actually not recommend this game. Since this game takes an hour, and it takes some more thinking then your average party game. But if you are looking for a game with lots of social elements but still a very fun underlying puzzle, then Modern Art is an extremely good choice.