Reviews #7
Attribution! The Trois Crayons Board Game Launch (21 March 2024)
Galerie Nicolas SchweD, pARIS
The Semaine du Dessin in Paris played host to a flurry of conferences, exhibition openings, auctions, and pop-up shows all centred around the art of drawing. In amongst this hive of drawing-related activity we hosted our very own inaugural in-person event, the launch of the Trois Crayons board game, Attribution!.
It was a jovial affair, well attended by young and old, newcomers to the world of drawing and seasoned experts, who came and went between the hours of 6 and 10 at Nicolas Schwed’s premises on the rue Saint-Honoré. Well stocked with wine, macarons and an emergency order of pizza, gameplay extended well beyond the average estimated length of 30 minutes. Surrounded by a fine selection of drawings, green felt-topped Bridge tables transformed the gallery into a games hall for the evening. A fitting amount of civil disagreement over attributions and media descriptions made for a good-hearted evening of discussion and gameplay and mercifully no diplomatic incidents were caused. Anglo-French relations remain intact, perhaps even improved. A la prochaine!
How to play?
The game is designed so that connoisseurial levels of knowledge are not required for its enjoyment. As with all games, it is perhaps best explained with an in-play demonstration, but for the sake of this newsletter, I shall endeavour to provide a brief flavour of the gameplay here.
In each round an Art Card, with a drawing on the front and a description of its attributes on the reverse, is placed on an Easel. The drawing is then examined by each player who must in turn bid on the number of attributes they believe they can identify. These attributes relate to the drawing’s Type, Style, Medium, Country/Region and Artist. Players take turns starting with the player who has bid the highest amount. The boldest bidder places their bids in the corresponding attribute sections of the board using small Marker Cubes. Bidding big is a high-risk, high-reward strategy. The bidder then turns the Art Card and reads the information on the back without revealing the answers to the other players. If all the bidder’s predictions are correct, the bidder wins the Art Card for their own collection. If any of the predicted attributes were incorrect however, play passes to the next highest bidder and the first bidder’s boldness will cost them as their Marker Cubes will provide clues for the more conservative players. These players will in turn have the same chance to win the card for their own collections.
