On a whim I picked up Modern Art at the store yesterday. It comes highly recommended; it’s by Reiner Knizia and is considered one of his classics. I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but I did open it…

I’m here to complain about the production quality, which is awful. Mayfair Games, I expected better from you. For my $25, I got:

• A deck of about 70 cards. The cards are glossy and have small illustrations on them (”paintings” by modern artists in five different “styles”, a.k.a. Photoshop filters). With bland design and border colors, the cards look OK if not great. They seem sturdy enough though, and this is the only part of the components I’d give even a B- to.
• A scoreboard for keeping track of art values. Constructed of medium cardboard, and warped. At least it’s color-printed.
• About 50-60 plastic bingo chips–like the very cheapest plastic poker chips, but smaller. They have denominations printed on them.
• Five cardboard screens to hide money totals (thank you, Mr. Knizia and your secret scoring fetish.) These are designed and printed very cheaply on flimsy cardboard and are unattractive.
• A manual: Two duplex black-and-white Xeroxed sheets, folded and stapled in the center to make a booklet. Looking like it was designed on a desktop publishing program back in 1987, this makes me feel like the owner of a bootleg game.

From the publisher of such games as Settlers of Catan, Tigris & Euphrates, and Iron Dragon, I expected much, much better. I don’t object to a simple-but-functional game, which I believe Modern Art will end up being, but for this level of production quality I want to buy it for $6 from Cheapass Games, not $25 from someone else.

Hopefully I’ll be able to play it tomorrow and write about my impressions of the actual game for Thursday. Despite my disappointment in the materials, my hopes for the game are high.