Belratti

• Designer: Michael Loth
• Publisher: Kosmos
• Players: 3-7
• Age: 8+
• Time: 25 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4e8Q155  

You are buying artwork for your museum, always trying to meet the current trends and finding genuine art from your associates. But the famous Belratti is trying to cheat his own fake paintings into your collection.

In Belratti, players are split into two roles — buyers and painters — and are playing against the game. The game presents two cards as topics for which the buyers need to buy paintings. They ask for a certain number of cards, and the painters have to collectively meet this target number.

The painters select cards from their hands they think will fit the most to one of the topics. Then additional cards are added as Belratti’s fakes. All cards are shuffled upside down, then flipped up. The buyers then have to select all the cards from the painters, not the fake cards by Belratti.

The roles change after each round. If too many fakes are bought, the players lose. (The name of the game is obviously derived from the name of the German art forger W. Beltracchi)

To set up the game, lay out the five joker tokens on the table and place the Belratti card near them.  The painting card deck is shuffled, and players are dealt a hand of cards (based on player count).  Character cards are then distributed – some players will be Owl (the painter trying to get their works in the museum) while others will be Dr Cat (the museum director trying to choose real art and avoid forgeries).  

The five joker tiles are placed on the table as well.  Each of these has a one-time action which can be used to influence how the round is played.

Each round is played in four phases

Phase 1 – Museum Directors Request Paintings – The museum directors flip up the top two paintings from the draw pile to serve as the Theme cards for the round.  Each is an independent topic.  The Directors now decide on a number between 3 and 7 paintings to request from the painters.

Phase 2 – Painters select Artworks – The painters now look through their hands and try to find paintings in their hands that match the themes.  They are allowed to talk about general suitability of their paintings but no specifics.  By the end of this round, the requested number of paintings must be played by the group – each painting placed facedown by their owner on the table.  Players should remember which paintings they played and which themes they intended each to match.  Once the appointed number have been placed facedown, then four random cards from the deck (representing Belratti’s forgeries) are shuffled in with the painter’s cards.

Phase 3 – Museum Directors choose paintings for the museum – The entire bunch of shuffled paintings are now revealed and the museum directors need to assign paintings to the correct themes.  The museum directors are allowed to openly discuss, but the artists are not allowed to participate at all.

Phase 4 – Painters evaluate – The round is now scored.  One point for each painting assigned to the correct theme; these cards are moved to the Scoring pile.  No points for a painting assigned to the wrong theme; these cards are discarded.  Belratti scores one point for each forgery assigned to a theme; these cards are placed on the Belratti card.

Check to see if the game ends; this happens if Belratti has 6 or more cards on it.

Otherwise, set up a new round.  All the role cards are shifted one slot clockwise and the process is repeated.  If you managed to score a perfect round, you are able to retrieve a used joker (the number of paintings required to retrieve a joker is seen on its exhausted side).

When the game ends, you can evaluate your success – if the team has 15+ points, they have won!

There is a variant included in this new version called Masterpieces.  IN this version, you use the 5 paint brush tokens with numbers 3 to 7 on them.  In this version, the painters decide themselves on the number of paintings to place between them. Each token can only be used once, so the team will have to use a different number each round.

Once the artists play their cards, the museum directors now draw 4 face down paintings from the remaining hand cards of the painters to represent the Belratti forgeries – they must draw one card from each painter in turn.

Now score the round.  If all the artist’s paintings are chosen, the team wins the round.  If any of the Belratti paintings are chosen, Belratti wins the round.  As a consolation, you do get to activate the Joker associated with the number of paintings in this round.  Continue until either the Team or Belratti has won three rounds.

My thoughts on the game

Well, Belratti is one of the last great Spiel finds for me.  Though I’m normally a huge fan of the Spiel geeklist done by WEM on Boardgamegeek – the advent of all this information is that it is quite rare for a game to sneak up on me at Spiel.  I remember hearing through a few friends that I had to go to the Galeria and check out this art forgery game.  The game turned out to be one of the hits of the show – IIRC, it actually topped the Fairplay list that year!

Belratti is a fascinating game to play, especially amongst friends.  The game gives players a chance to make some interesting decisions on how to relate the different painting cards to the theme cards.  It sometimes helps to play with good friends as there are often fascinating connections to be made using inside jokes, etc.  

Each player has a fairly decent sized hand, and this works out well because there will definitely be times where none of your cards work with either theme – and you might be able to let your other painter teammates play cards while you wait for themes that work better with your hand.

The joker tiles give the team a chance to shift the game in their favor; and sometimes you just need to draw new theme cards or change the number of paintings requested. 

The amazing part of the game is that despite how well you try to choose your paintings – Belratti still manages to sneak some great forgeries in.  This always causes much hilarity and laughing as the best laid plans are often thwarted by dang Belratti.  While this leads to lots of laughs, this is also the Achilles heel of the game for some – that success or failure can be completely determined by random chance.

The new masterpieces variant takes care of that issue as all the cards in play each round now come from the player’s hands themselves.  This has been a neat improvement to the game, and one that puts a lot more pressure on both the artists to choose the right number to show and on the art directors to make the right connections between the paintings and the themes.

I think there is a place for both versions of the game – in a big party setting, just play the original and laugh it up.  For a more serious game, play the Masterpieces variant.   Whichever you choose, I think you’ll love this game of art and forgeries.

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4e8Q155  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Steph H
• I like it.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…