I’m not much for Kickstarter, as of the time of this writing I’ve only ever backed 4 campaigns.  It is not that I am against the platform or anything, I think it has done wonders for helping small companies fund their dream projects.  The bigger problem is that the timelines are so long, I have a hard time waiting for my product.  As much as I wish I wasn’t, I’ve succumbed to the world’s culture of wanting everything now. 

Back to Kickstarter, of the 4 campaigns I’ve backed so far, 2 have been completed and 2 have reached their goals and are in production.  The first was for Cascadia (find my review here) by Flatout Games and since, I’ve backed Verdant by the same team.  Second was Canvas by R2i Games and most recently, I jumped on their newest campaign for Globetrotting.  This is the part of Kickstarter I adore; a feeling of community.  When a player finds a product that they really love, it is a feeling of pure joy when they have the chance to help bring another creation, by the same designers, to life.

I only chanced upon the Canvas board game when I saw a post by the R2i team on Reddit.  They were offering free copies of their set-collecting, dice-chucking game Crypt (find that review here) and it caught my eye.  After reading the post and looking more into the duo that makes up the Road 2 Infamy team, I immediately backed Canvas. 

So, was backing this campaign (from designers I had basically never heard of, pushing a game that could boil down to just a gimmick) a good decision?  Read on to see if this game is the Mona Lisa of board games or if it’s as boring as watching paint dry.

In my years of board gaming, one of the things that gets on my nerves is the boxes that companies use to pack their games in.  How in the world do these people make the decision on box sizes and insert configuration?  There are offenders such as Splendor, packing a few decks of cards and some poker chips into a too-large box that is just wasteful.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have a company like Garphil Games that can pack a ton of components for their game Viscounts of the West Kingdom, into a relatively small, perfectly square package.

Thankfully Canvas is of the latter variety. Not only does it use every ounce of its space efficiently, but it was also designed in quite a unique way.  You’ll quickly see from the front cover that a title, or any of the normal information, is absent.  This choice allows the cover of the box to imitate a beautifully painted picture, but the designers didn’t stop there.  They made the box thinner than most, and instead of it having a top and bottom as usual, the insert slides into the outer carton from the top.  To top it off, the back side has a cut-out for you to actually hang the box on the wall like you would any normal picture of painting.  While you will not find this hanging up on my walls, it is a great example of how R2i Games is willing to think outside the box for their creations.

The rulebook has a wonderful linen finish to it that seems to be a really nice flourish that a lot of designers are using nowadays.  The rulebook is not long by any means, only 6 pages and then some information on the back cover but it does its job of getting all the required information out to the player.  There are plenty of pictures, text, and arrows to help the player and with this game not being very weighty, players will pick it up in no time.

My one complaint about the rulebook are the scenarios on the back cover.  I appreciate the thought process here, adding in both scenarios and achievements but I feel the scenarios fall flat.  There are three categories of three scenarios each.  One category is for the “simplified” theme, where you only play with three (or even two) scoring cards.  In my opinion, there could have just been one of these, possibly for a “family” variant to let younger kids play.  I just don’t see myself ever playing these.  Then in the second category (called “standard”) there is a scenario for your first time playing.  This seems redundant to have three simplified scenarios and then a 4^th one that, while it’s 4 scoring cards, is simple on purpose.  In my Cascadia review, I lauded how much I loved their achievement and scenario system and in comparison, the Canvas scenarios and achievements feel like the one part of this game that was just tacked on.

Contradictory to my feelings about the scenarios, the components for Canvas are crafted delightfully down to the smallest detail.  The stars of the show here are the Art Cards.  These are the main game component; sections of paintings that are printed on clear plastic so that the player can layer these cards into a single painting.  Each of these also has a ribbon at the bottom where the Element Icons and Color Swatches are printed, and what players will be using as the basis for how they need to construct their paintings.  The artwork making up the Art Cards is consistent in style so that once three cards are put together for a painting, nothing looks oddly out of place.

The game comes with a felt play mat that keeps all the different pieces organized on the table.  It ends up getting rolled up to fit in the box and while I don’t love the fact that the edges curl once it is spread out on the table, once all the components are on the mat, it’s barely noticeable.  You also get plastic sleeves to use to house your finished paintings, background cards to use with your paintings, a deck of scoring cards with the varying scoring conditions, and a pile of different colored ribbons.  Since I have the Kickstarter version, my ribbons are wooden, but I believe the normal retail game comes with cardboard ones.  I do want to call out that regardless of what material you have, each colored ribbon has a unique shape to it.  Again, this is a cool detail that shows me that the designers put a lot of thought and love into their creation.

Much like Cascadia or Isle of Skye, there are different scoring options from game to game.  In Canvas, these are represented by the Scoring Card deck.  During setup, the player will randomly select 4 of these cards that describe to them how best to construct each painting to obtain the most ribbons.  Speaking of ribbons, the player just needs to dump these into their separate piles and then put all of the Art Tokens in their own pile.  Give each player three of the plastic sleeves and let them draw (or pick) three background cards.  Once sleeved, you just have to shuffle up the Art Cards, place them back into their box and then lay out the starting market of five Art Cards and it’s time to paint!

The gameplay in this game could be described as simple to learn but not at all easy to master.  The gist of the gameplay is that a player selects one card from the market, where the left-most card is free and each card costs one extra Art Token as the player moves to the right.  Once selected and removed from the market, all the cards slide down to the left and a new card is taken from the box.  The only other caveat is that you can’t ever have more than 5 Art Cards so if you get that many, you have to slot three of them into a sleeve to create a painting.  Creating a painting takes a turn so the player will not pick up an Art Card during that action.  Once all players have created three paintings, the game is over, and each player judges their paintings against the Scoring Cards to see who wins “best-in-show!”

As you can see, the rules and gameplay itself is straightforward but it is much harder to meet the scoring criteria than one might expect.  A lot of this difficulty comes down to luck of the draw and some players might find this luck factor off-putting, which is understandable, as there are quite a few places where luck is going to affect things.  First, the drawing of the scoring cards themselves is totally random so there are games where the cards don’t have the greatest of synergies.  You can still decide to focus on some and ignore others, but this will greatly reduce your options and might take some fun out of it.  The second place is the drawing of the Art Cards.  I’ve had games where I really needed a certain emblem and I saw almost zero of that emblem even show up in the market.  While this can sometimes be aggravating, it doesn’t deter me too much as this is a quick and light-weight game and I don’t mind the randomness of it.

There are two solo variants in the rulebook and neither play too differently from the normal game.  I put together a video detailing the setup and playthrough of the two solo modes so if you are wondering about that, watch the video here.

Canvas could have easily been a gimmick with the clear Art Cards but fortunately, it didn’t fall into this trap and contains enough depth for a fun time.  If you aren’t a fan of light-weight games, or games that hinge on the luck of the draw, then you might consider skipping Canvas.  But if those elements don’t bother you, Canvas is sure to be a stroke of genius when it hits your table.

Ratings are based on 5 main criteria: rulebook, setup, components, art & graphic design, and gameplay.  The first 4 criteria are rated 1 to 5 and the gameplay is rated 1 to 10.  These scores culminate in an “overall satisfaction” score that is rated from 1 to 10.  If the reviewed game has both a solo and multiplayer mode, I have assigned scores separately to give context to which mode we enjoy more.