Game Preview/Review: Defenders of ClayArt

By W. Eric Martin
October 14, 2008

Publisher: B2FGames LLC
Distributor: Japon Brand
Designer: Taiju Sawada
Players: (3) 4-5
Ages: 12+
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Release Date: Released / Spiel 08
Links:

Every artist is also a critic – some of them are just more vocal about their criticism than others. In Defenders of ClayArt, which the distributor Japon Brand will present at Spiel 08, you live out that dual role by both creating art (or rather “art") from a chunk of clay, then evaluating that work against the creation of others.

The Artististic Process

The heart of the game is easy to describe: On a turn, one player chooses an adjective and everyone has 60 seconds to embody that adjective in a clay creation and present the work on a colored, laminated display card. Players can then discuss their work by defending their creations, explaining what something is, and questioning the judgment and talent of others; as the rules helpfully note, “Works that suit the theme should be praised, ones that don’t suit the theme should be attacked.” As if gamers need that encouragement…

Each player has four critique cards – Gold, Silver, Bronze and Trash – and once the discussion wraps up, each player places one card face-down by each work. (In a five-player game, you don’t critique your own work; in a three- or four-player game, you do.) Each player also holds an accusation card, and in turn order you can then place that card by any work of art that doesn’t already have one.

Once everyone has voted, you turn over the cards and score the critiques, which is surprisingly involved and tricky – perhaps purposefully as an imitation of life and the conflicting belief systems of critics everywhere. First, for those works with no accusation card, if two or three players have voted the same way, those players each score 2 or 3 points. Those critics not running with the pack lose 1-3 points depending on which card they played. If you judged something as Gold, for example, you’ll lose 3 points as the damage to your credibility is far worse than when you “mistakenly” judge a work as Silver or Bronze. If the votes are split or all in majority, no points are awarded.

A good representation of “immense”?

An accusation card represents your belief that the critics are working behind the scenes to shape a collective response to the artwork rather than presenting their independent opinions. If you accuse a work and three or four of the critiques on it match – whether good, bad or middling – then you have successfully revealed their duplicity and are awarded one point from each of those players. If no more than two of the opinion makers match, then you have unjustly leveled accusations of collusion against them and must pay one point to each player so accused.

The best work of each round – that is, the work that receives the most Gold critiques – receives two points, while the trashiest work loses one point. Points are tracked on a postcard-sized card, and the game ends once a player reaches 15 points or after six rounds.

(Note that in a three-player game, a dummy fourth player presents a lump of clay of each round as his masterpiece and the critique cards for this player are randomly distributed. Another incidence of game art imitating life!)

Shaping Opinions

I’ve played Defenders of ClayArt twice, once with four players and once with five. As with Cluzzle, the most enjoyable part of the game is making the clay artwork – but doing so is impossible with the clay packaged in the game, which resembles a rubber eraser more than anything else. Thinking that the clay might have been frozen on the trip from Japan, I tried to warm it to make it manageable, but the clay crumbled instead of becoming malleable. In the end, I turned to the ten-pack of Playdoh resting in my Cluzzle box, which had suffered the same problem.

Sixty seconds isn’t a lot of time to create fine art as you must first process the theme and decide what to make. Given the time restriction, a number of us artists turned out nearly identical work, which made the subsequent judging both more difficult and easier. When someone does create original and representative work, Gold is on everyone’s mind, but differentiating between the merits of two keys, for example, can be somewhat random.

The Gold winner for “immense” – a sixty-second elephant

The problem is that if everyone knows a Gold work when they see it, then the accusation comes into play to wipe out the points that you might win. You can vote against what you think the pack will do, but that decision might only hurt you in the end because the Gold or Trash critique that you don’t play will have to go on another work, possibly stinging your reputation there. If two players vote to buck the opportunity for an accusation, then you’re almost at the point of voting randomly.

Worrying about the scoring, and which scoring chart to use when, is bothersome, and a game this light shouldn’t be encumbered with something so complicated. Oddly enough, though, the scoring system is most of what you’re buying. The game components could fit in a box from the Kosmos two-player line, but instead the laminated clay-holder cards, the scorecard, six playing markers, the deck of cards, a fabulously produced 60-second timer with a wood base and supports and the unusable clay are packed in a standard-sized box along with two empty boxes to fill the space and keep things from moving around.

While the goofy cover perfectly captures the fun feel of the sculpting and discussion, the scoring works against that lightness, making it tough to be a defender of Defenders of ClayArt.

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Comments:

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Wow...the first Japon Brand game that sounds wholly uninteresting to me… Posted by William Bussick on Oct 14, 2008 at 09:38 PM | #

I havent played it yet, but I am translating the rules into German and I thought the same when read through the rules. I think its most easyly avoided by just use the standard scoring and dont bother with the accusation cards. Or: You dont get your accusation cards back, so you can use them only once. That might actually be the best compromise I guess. Posted by Peer Sylvester on Oct 15, 2008 at 02:00 AM | #

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