Review – Pop Art

Sometimes, you see a list of new games and rather than a title catching your eye, you simply gloss over a title amidst a sea of others. Pop Art? You mean a game without any dragons or wizards or 16th century European nobles and traders? Fortunately, I decided to look at the list twice over. Pop Art is from the designers of Canvas, and is another attempt to use their “color-changing translucent cards” system. Is this iteration better, or just a new setting? Let’s look!

Sometimes you can tell a lot by just reading the rules of a game. Pop Art is an incredibly straightforward mish-mash of Canvas, Castle Combo and Sushi Go!. The translucent cards combine with “normal” cards to create scoring opportunities in a 3×3 grid, but Castle Combo’s economy has been shaved out of the game and replaced with a pick-and-pass draft, just like Sushi Go! took the resource management out of 7 Wonders. One big advantage of this system is that gamers will almost instantly know how to play this one. Does that make it better, though? In a word, yes.

I quite enjoy Castle Combo, but my least favorite part is managing the economy, knowing I’ll likely end up stuck having to play a card upside down for no points. While you can still “bust” with a bad pick in Pop Art, focusing entirely on the scoring opportunities streamlines the fun. It’s also amplified by the way you can “craft” your scoring opportunities by combining the cards. The concepts and icons are dead simple and clear, but you’ll still wrestle with the decisions for just a moment as the game puts its full 20 minute playtime to good use. The focus on scoring without economy also makes the draft fast and allows up to eight (or even nine with a mini-expansion) players with almost no downtime. Truly impressive! 

I should also comment on the theme. The theme of Pop Art works extremely well, but it did keep me away from the game at first glance. However, I’m not sure a game’s theme should always be something I already like. I wasn’t interested in cold war politics until I played and loved Twilight Struggle. Similarly, while I had no interest in pop art, now I find myself reading about Andy Warhol. My only concern is that other gamers need to see it the same way and give this one a chance!

I do have a few minor complaints about the game. The very minor one is that I hate the stupid box-cube. All my games are bookshelf style on my cube organizer and this one just sits awkwardly on top of everything else. The bigger issue is that I think the game suffers a bit with two players, because the hands hardly change as you pass them, and only 3 cards of each type isn’t very many. I think bigger hands would lead to some AP, though. I’d love an expansion where each player is given 1 “wild” of each card type that has no scoring opportunities, but just guarantees you the color or symbol you want. It probably wouldn’t score players any more than just giving up on one opportunity or another, but it feels more satisfying to feel like you had a failsafe and didn’t “bust.” This probably isn’t even worth the space I spent typing here, though. It’s a 20 minute game – just play again!

And play again we will. I’ve already played Pop Art ten times in the week I’ve had it, and look forward to playing it many more times, with gamers and family at all levels. This is truly a near-perfect design. Not in the sense of “I always want to play it,” but in the sense that it is pretty much the pinnacle of what it set out to be. I enjoy the theme and advanced concepts in Castle Combo enough that I’ll go back to it, but I don’t see myself ever playing Canvas or Sushi Go! again now that Pop Art exists. The smoothness, accessibility and wide player count of Pop Art make it one of the best games I’ve played this year.