Are you ready to leave your mundane job behind and manage a successful art studio? Well then, now is your time to prove it! Put yourself in the role of a 19th century artist and marvel at the works you can create! The only thing left to answer is, will your masterpieces be enough to best your opponents? Let’s find out in Atelier: The Painter’s Studio!

What Is It?

A dice rolling and dice action game (dice placement without actual placement maybe?) where players must manage their assistants in order to gather paints, complete works of art, and collect patron cards to score additional points at the end of the game. Players have to choose when to take actions wisely and push their luck just a little as they hope to roll the actions they need the most.

Who Is It For?

Obviously, lovers of great games and great art alike! Haha! (I’m only kind of kidding). If you appreciate 19th century art, you’ll appreciate the aesthetic appeal as well as the theme of this one. You definitely have to be okay with some luck since the major mechanics involve dice rolls, but since there are ways to mitigate that luck (like painting abilities or gathering inspiration tokens with any number), I’d also say you have to be a little bit meticulous because there are some important decisions to be made each turn, so don’t take it lightly. The game notes 14+ for ages on the box, and that’s probably accurate. I think younger audiences might not understand the deeper decisions to be made beyond roll the dice and take that number’s action, so more seasoned gamers/slightly older players would have a much better time here.

Quality of Components

The quality of this game is really nice all around. My absolute favorite things are the painter meeples. I thought those were a great touch instead of just generic ones. The paints are nice wooden bits in really nice colors, and the inspiration, 1st player, and masterpiece tokens, as well as the player boards (which are also paint palettes!) are all sturdy cardboard.

I like the large sized cards for the paintings to give room to really showcase the art, and all the requirements and abilities written on them are very clear; same goes for the patron cards (though those are normal sized).

Another great unique/thematic touch is the rulebook, which is made to look like a museum pamphlet, love that! Everything is also very clearly written and explained which I’m a big fan of since I don’t love reading rules.

PROS

  • Pretty easy to learn and play
  • Meaningful decisions throughout the game really help mitigate that luck of the dice roll, if you’re not a big fan of that; but everything works so well together that whether or not you like dice, you can still enjoy this one
  • Excellent quality components
  • Aesthetically appealing
  • Detail oriented; painting info on all the painting cards which is great because it’s a learning tool too!
  • Plays fairly quickly, especially once you’ve played a few times

CONS

  • Certain painting abilities seem much more powerful than others (like getting 2 free paints when rolling a 6) especially if they come out early; it can almost feel like if you’ve gotten certain ones, you’ve already won the game because of how much more you can do. But that could also be circumstantial for my plays, so I’d really have to play a ton more to see if that trend continues.
  • Randomness of the scoring (patron) cards. Since you only start with 1 chances are you’re going to try and get more, but you only draw 1 off the top, so you could end up with something worth nothing, especially if you get one later in the game.

Difficulty

While it seems very easy in concept, I’d probably put this a little bit above the dead middle, so a 3.5/5. Like I’ve mentioned, you have a lot of decisions on what actions to actually take versus what to try and reroll and get something better next time, as well as what paintings to aim for to get the best abilities. So I can see this being tricky for a lot of people, and maybe even causing some AP, which is why I put it a bit higher for difficulty.

Final Thoughts

I’m not going to lie, the box cover doesn’t grab me, so it’s not a game I would have been immediately drawn to, but it was something that sounded, from the description, very interesting and worth a play, and boy was that right on the money! (or on the paint? No…that probably doesn’t work. Anyway…)

The components are really awesome and really help to bring you into the theme, which is cool to begin with. The game also has a really nice balance of luck and choice which provides for a very different game each time you play. I would highly recommend this game to anyone interested in art, medium-weight games, dice rolling, or all of the above!

Happy Gaming!~

Additional Information:
Designer – N/A
Artist – Many (See BGG Page)
Publisher – AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group)
BGG
BGA

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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