Designed by: Holly Gramazio
In Art Deck players take turns drawing – there’s also a version where everyone draws at the same time – until a player claims the communal picture for themselves. After several pictures have been claimed the game ends and players agree – in theory! – whose is the best.
You’ll need a sheet of paper and a few pens and pencils – or crayons, paints, and more if you’re feeling extra creative. Each player is dealt a hand of drawing cards which includes one Sign My Name card. On your turn, you draw another card from the deck, choose a card form your hand to play, and then add to the picture by drawing – following the instructions that the cards currently spell out. The cards each have a number of 1, 2 or 3, and every card played goes into its own face-up discard pile and the numbers form a sentence: so card number 1 might say Draw a Face, card number 2 might say As Fast As You Can and card number 3 could be Whilst Talking About Your Secret Fear.
And whichever card you played, you must draw whilst performing the whole sentence. when you’re done, it’s the next player’s turn, and so on and so on until someone elects to play a Sign My Name card: they sign their name on the picture and claim it for themselves. After everyone’s done this, players compare their finished artworks and decide who wins – although winning in Art Deck is very much secondary to play.
What emerges from simple beginnings – a sheet of paper and a single face-up card – becomes more busy and chaotic as more cards are played and the sentence constantly changes, people stand on one leg, hide under the table, draw fast or slow, big or small, copy, multiply, instigate, and so on.
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You might have to wait a while for your turn - depending on the number of players - but there's plenty happening while you do. Sometimes a turn will involve more than one player as well.
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If the objective in a game is important, then Art Deck might frustrate. But if you're ok with the secondary scoring and the visual chaos, there's a whole bunch of cards - and thousands of combinations - to be explored.
2-6
Players
6+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
With a group of people playing Art Deck in the spirit it was meant - a silly, anarchic, playful happening rather than a series of mechanisms to decide a winner - it's a lot of fun. Not one for us to play over and over again, but whenever it comes out in our house it always goes down very well. And if our alleged masterpieces usually end up in the recycling, it's not totally unheard of for one of them to make the gallery (ie Door of the Fridge)