Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 45-90 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

This is a review of the recent 2004 reprint of Modern Art by Mayfair Games, which has been reproduced in a smaller, cheaper package.

The Components

Modern Art comes with:

• 70 cards
• 6 screens
• 1 score board
• lots of chips
• 1 rulebook

Cards: The cards are all medium-weight cards with rounded corners, printed full color. Each card depicts a unique piece of modern artwork by one of five (fake) modern artists. Each artist is easy to recognise by name at the top of the card, color of the card border, and unique style of art. (I’m entirely impressed how the graphic designers came up with five modern art styles and made each card entirely unique.)

Each card also is marked iconically with one of five auction styles (which is unrelated to which artist created the artwork).

Screens: These sturdy cardboard player screens are printed full-color on the front, black and white on the back.

The front of each screen displays the name of a major city (e.g., New York) and also subtly depicts the flag of that country (sufficiently subtly that I didn’t notice until it was pointed out to me, at which point it became obvious; another cool element in this game's design).

The back of each screen has a legend for the five auction icons.

Besides the 5 regular player shields, there's also 1 blank one in case you want to draw up a shield for your own city. I considered making one for Berkeley, but don't know how well cardboard will tie-dye.

Score Board: This score board depicts the market value of the various artists. It has a row for each auction buying season and a column for each artist. It’s printed on thick cardboard and overall fits in with the general theme and aesthetics of the game.

Chips: These are small plastic poker chips in a variety of colors and denominations, including: white (1), yellow (5), green (20), blue (50), and red (100). In a 5-player game I felt like the total chip count was a little short, as we had to be fairly efficient in our exchanges; this may have been excaberated by the weird lack of a $10k coin. Overall, we were able to make do, however.

There are also 12 market value coins: 4 black coins each labeled 10, 20, and 30. These are used with the scoreboard to determine what’s in vogue.

Each chip comes pre-marked with a label for its denomination in a high contrast color (black for the light chips, white for the dark chips). I thought this was overall pretty classy, though i do have some concerns with the labels getting eroded through reuse.

Rulebook: An 8-page rulbook printed in grayscale. It looks like it was intended to be printed in color at a slightly different size, but still looks nice as is. The rules are clear and helped out by some examples. We were about 50-50 in finding things in the rules when we needed reference. There are also some cool quotes describing the various artists in the rules, which just adds to the ambience of the game.

Overall, Modern Art is a great thematic design, with lots of attention to detail. In addition, the pieces, cards, and board are all easy and intuitive to use. While the components themselves are only of medium quality, that's totally in line with the very reasonable price point of the game. Still, I can only give it a "4" out of "5" for Style

The Gameplay

The goal of Modern Art is to earn the most money through the purchase, then sale, of the most popular paintings.

Setup: The game begins with each player receiving $100,000 and 8 to 10 cards, which will form the players' initial stock of paintings to sell.

The Cards. As already mentioned, each card depicts a painting by one of five artists using one of five (unrelated) auction types.

Auctioning, Buying, and Selling. It's also important to note a core difference in two types of cards. A player has some cards in his hand; these are only available to auction to himself or other players. A player also has some cards in front of him, which he's purchased. These are the only ones available to sell at the end of each season. Yeah, it's an arbitrary and weird difference, but it's the core of how the game works.

Order of Play: Each turn a player chooses one of the paintings from his hand and offers it up for auction. As we'll discussed later, most frequently these paintings will be worth $10,000-$30,000 each, and players will be making bids based on this estimated value.

A few general rules for auctions: any player can bid on a painting (subject to restrictions for certain auction types), including the auctioneer; if another player wins a painting, they pay the auctioneer; and if the auctioneer wins the painting, he pays the bank. if no one bids on a painting than the auctioneer gets it for nothing (or for the requested price in the case of a fixed price auction).

As already mentioned, there are five different auction types:

Open Action. Everyone shouts out bids, with the auctioneer keeping things moving, until no one wishes to up the last bid, at which point the auction ends.

(This is probably the "fairest" type of auction and has some possibility of overpricing the painting if people get too excited.)

Once Around Auction. Going clockwise starting to the left of the auctioneer, each player may make precisely one bid, increasing the previous bid for the painting, or else pass. The auctioneer gets the last bid.

(This auction tends to favor the person to the right of the auctioneer and the auctioneer himself.)

Sealed Auction. Each player makes a secret bid by hiding the chips in his hand, then revealing them simultaneously with the other players. Highest bid wins.

(This auctions tends to most dramatically overprice a painting.)

Fixed Price Auction. The auctioneer names a price, then, going clockwise from the auctioneer, each player gets precisely one option to purchase the painting at that price. If no one else does, the auctioneer must.

(The opposite of the once around auction, this one tends to favor the person to the left of the auctioneer.)

Double Auction. The auctioneer gets to put out a second painting by the same artist, then both paintings are auctioned according to the auction type of the second painting (which must not be a double). There are also special rules for other players getting to add that second painting (and conduct the auction) if the original auctioneer can not or will not.

(And finally, these double auctions tend to be very influential in the game because they dramatically affect which artists are most popular each season.)

Ending a Season: A season ends when the fifth painting from the same artist is put up for auction. That painting is not actually sold (nor is the fourth painting if it was offered at the same time as part of a double auction).

At this point the value of all the artists is determined. Whomever has the most paintings out that season is worth $30,000, second $20,000, and third $10,000 (with ties being broken based on a specific order denoted on the scoring board). But, there's one catch: if an artist also had value in consecutive previous seasons, their current value is the sum of all those consecutive seasons. (As show in the nearby illo, the two rightmost artists, Karl Gitter and Krypto, were quite valuable in the last round: $80,000 and $60,000 respectively.)

Now each player must sell all paintings they've bought that round, even if they're worthless (as two artists always are).

Players get to keep the cards in their hand, and in fact get 3-6 new ones to supplement those at the end of the first and second seasons.

Ending the Game: The game ends after four seasons of play (or earlier if everyone runs out of cards). Paintings are sold off for the fourth season, then the player with the most money wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Modern Art is part of Reiner Knizia's classic trilogy of auction game which also includes Medici and High Society! Like the other games in this early trilogy, Modern Art is entirely centered around the auction mechanic, and the assessing of valuations that surrounds it.

More recently Reiner Knizia has designed a number of additional auction games, not technically part of his original trilogy. These later games include: Ra, Taj Mahal, Traumfabrik, Merchants of Amsterdam, and most recently Amun-Re.

Modern Art also makes very good use of a core game mechanic that you don't see in a lot of games: the prisoner's dilemma. The central idea of the dilemma is that if all players take a certain tactic, they'll all benefit from it, but by breaking away from the mob an individual can make a personal profit. This is exactly what happens when you're bidding to win a painting from another player. As a group, you don't want to bid more than half the value of a painting, because to do so gives the auctioneer more money than the bidder will earn, but when an individual person does so, he still betters his position versus everyone else in the group but the auctioneer; it's a constant struggle.

The Game Design

Modern Art is definitely a definitive auction game. Here's a few comments on its good points:

Selling & Season End Both Introduce Layers of Strategy: First, the game really works because there are several things that you have to think about outside of the auction proper. One is when the season is going to end, and how that might affect the value of various artists. Another is how offering certain cards will affect that dynamic and also how various auction methods might affect who wins a painting and how much they pay. These are constant issues when you make any decision.

Auctions Work Well: Beyond that, the auctions work well. First, Knizia was very clever in including several types of auctions. It really helps break up the game and keep it fresh. Second, Knizia made sure that each player had different hidden information (through the cards in hand) and that beyond that the strategy was complex enough that people would end up valuing items differently. This differentiation in valuation is what is required to really make an auction work.

Here's the downsides of the game:

Game Can Degenerate: This is one of those games that can really degenerate either due to solid groupthink or even just due to very bad plays by individual players. This fragility is the only serious issue with the game.

Some Randomness: The distribution of the cards can cause some randomness that might be undesirable for a game that's this strategic. I'm unconvinced this is a real issue, but some players thought that, in particular, the distribution of the double auctions could affect victory.

Overall, I don't think that games solely centered on auctions get much better than this. Modern Art has top-notch mechanics for choosing items to auction, conducting auctions, and valuating items. On the other hand, I think that more recent games like Amun-Re and Power Grid show that deeper games can be created by using auctions as a part of the whole. I originally gave Modern Art a "4" out of "5" for Substance, but it's grown on me through additional play. There's some unique replayability due to the enforced player interactions, and that earns it a full "5".

Conclusion

Modern Art is one of the best pure auction games out there, and well worth adding to your collection if you like auction games in the least. This edition is also highly affordable, and it's nice that Mayfair put out such a classic in such an accessible version.