Clean out the Louvre!
The Great Art Robbery is a gateway (or Getaway!) game that gives you the thrill of thieving some of the greatest paintings in the world without the risk of ending up behind bars. An enjoyable hour or two of family entertainment with enough about it to keep you coming back for more.
Garden of Earthly Delights or The Scream?
The Great Art Robbery was developed by Robert Brouwer and Arjan van Houwelingen with illustrations by François Guibert for MNKY entertainment and is one of the latest to be distributed by ZATU.
Up to 5 players use their team of 10 robbers to move from city to city to recruit a team of specialists to enable the “daring” heist of some of Europe’s masterpieces. Getaway cars move around an elegant, simplified map of Europe to visit great galleries such as the Louvre, Prado, Uffizi or our own National Gallery, or return to their Hideout in Geneva to regroup. This map works well, putting all the museums in their correct location with no lengthy journeys between them.
Clean out the Louvre!
The Great Art Robbery is a gateway (or Getaway!) game that gives you the thrill of thieving some of the greatest paintings in the world without the risk of ending up behind bars. An enjoyable hour or two of family entertainment with enough about it to keep you coming back for more.
Garden of Earthly Delights or The Scream?
The Great Art Robbery was developed by Robert Brouwer and Arjan van Houwelingen with illustrations by François Guibert for MNKY entertainment and is one of the latest to be distributed by ZATU.
Up to 5 players use their team of 10 robbers to move from city to city to recruit a team of specialists to enable the “daring” heist of some of Europe’s masterpieces. Getaway cars move around an elegant, simplified map of Europe to visit great galleries such as the Louvre, Prado, Uffizi or our own National Gallery, or return to their Hideout in Geneva to regroup. This map works well, putting all the museums in their correct location with no lengthy journeys between them.
Using a deck building system similar to games like Heat and the Quest for El Dorado you can acquire better cards and thin out weaker ones to improve your chances. The game mechanics mesh together well, they are not too complicated and allow players to focus on their strategy to avail themselves of their chosen treasure. With no risk of elimination the caper continues until the time elapses and the thief with the greatest value of stolen art is the winner.
A Picnic in May or taken by The Night Watch?
Each player’s starting deck of cards represents their team of 10 robbers. Whilst each team is different in terms of artwork and names they all have the same abilities depicted by wheels and/or coins for movement and hiring specialists.
16 Art works are randomly dealt out, one higher and one lower value in each of the 8 galleries, showing their value and the specialist skills needed to steal them. The original Robbers in the starting decks will not have these skills so no art can be stolen until Specialists have been recruited.
All the action takes place in the Museum cities. Here you can hire new specialists and if you have the right set of skills you can “steal” either of the paintings in that museum. Note you can not use the specialists you have just hired for this as they are put in your discard pile to be recycled into your hand later.
Steal or No Steal?
You can only stay in a city for 1 action turn even if you have only hired specialists and must move out next time. You can not return until you have visited another museum city or your hideout in Geneva. Here, as well as “chillin’ with your homies”, you can improve your hand management by paying to increase your hand to a maximum of 6 and retain 1 or 2 cards at the end of your turn.
Every time a theft is made all teams in that city gain increased suspicion; the time marker is moved on and if it ends on a police car symbol the team with the most suspicion across Europe gains a useless Interpol card to weaken their deck.
I don’t know much about Art Robbery but I know what I like!
The Great Art Robbery game does what it says, it is a game about robbing Great Art and I can’t really fault it. It’s straightforward to pick up and play whilst still having enough to think about. It can be frustrating to have to move away from the masterpiece you wish to lift because you’ve only just got the right specialist skills but any great heist requires planning.
Note as you hire Specialists there are 3 copies of each Specialist but they do not necessarily have the same skills. This was not made clear in the rules and came as somewhat of a surprise!
A particular strength, for me, is the fact that as long as you play the right amount of coins and/or wheels you can spend them as you like and split them across different parts of your turn.
My only caveat, and it is a missed opportunity rather than a criticism, is a lot of creative work has gone into making each of the Robber Teams distinctly different with great card art, names and a full bio of the team’s ethos but no difference in gameplay! Here, surely, is an ideal opportunity to add asymmetric abilities to each of them. Maybe there is an expansion in the offing?
In the meantime I can’t wait until my own team is ready to try some new tricks.
To de Louvre!
