Thursday afternoon into Friday we had a storm pass by here in Ontario, Canada. It dumped some VERY heavy, wet snow on us. Thankfully, less than called for as that would've been awful. Granted, I'm excited to surely have a white Christmas this year. 🤗 After a couple hours of shovelling our studio and home, it was a great opportunity to relax at the table to learn my new, big, deep game: The Gallerist.
A Gallerist is a new, modern position that's being created; "combining the elements of an Art dealer, museum curator, and Artists’ manager" as explained in the rulebook. Meaning, there's plenty of work to do. 😀 As usual (especially with complex games) I like to play two handed at least once, to get a feel for the game. Here's the setup.
It's a table hog, but in a clean kind of way. The player boards (below the main board) are nice and big to house everything you need for your job. I find that although the game takes up space for sure, it just seems very organized compared to other games that take space. 🤔
The complexity of this game comes from the decision making in my opinion. Which is awesome! There are so many things to consider and do; Work the international market, gain contracts, sell artwork, commision new artists, purchase art for your gallery, attract visitors, promote artists, hire assistants.... Phew!
Here's a shot of a piece from a photographer that the orange player purchased for their gallery. Throughout the game, you bring artwork into your gallery, and sell to gain money to help you win the game. As an artists' fame grows, their works of art become more valuable and therefore, you make more from selling their artwork.
Here's a shot early in the game. You can see the blue gallerist is at the Media Centre where he/she can either promote an artist or they can hire assitants. Meanwhile, the orange gallerist is at the Sales Office where you can gain a contract (which provide bonuses and help you sell artwork) or they can sell artwork from that location. There are four locations around the main board, each of which have 2-options of an action to take.
This shot comes later in the game to show how as you build your gallery (among other things) you attract visitors in big ways! Pink meeples are V.I.Ps, brown meeples are investors and white meeples are collectors. Each type of visitor has their own benefits when they're in your gallery or lobby. It was really neat to see the popularity of the galleries grow as the game went on.
There's a ton to talk about with this game. I'm excited to dive in more and particularly jump into the solo mode (today hopefully). I didnt' actually get to finish the game, but definitely got a nice understanding and got reasonably deep into it yesterday.
I wanted to point out in this picture above the player aid seen at the bottom of the picture. This is very well done for this game. The side showing walks you through the steps for each action at each location around the main board. Just below that out of the frame, it walks you through the options when taking an "executive action" or "kicked-out action". Very helpful! Flip the player aid over, and you have the iconography that's used in the game so you can quickly reference what an icon means should you forget.
I'm beyond happy to have this game as part of my collection. I love everything about this game; from the theme, to the presentation/components to the complexity. The gentleman I bought the game from told me that this designer was fantastic. Now I know why! And couldn't agree more!