The cooperative card game Belratti originally came onto the market in 2018 through Mogel-Verlag. The game has won multiple awards, made it to the Game of the Year 2019 recommendation list and was nominated for the Golden Geek Award as Best Party Game of 2018. Now, five years later, published Kosmos In collaboration with the Mogel publishing house, the game is again in a modernized form. We had the Spanish edition by Belratti with the old illustrations and Kosmos kindly sent us the modernized version of the game so that we could start a comparison between the two versions. You can find out whether we also liked the new version in the following review.
For decades, the art forger Belratti has used his extraordinary talent to paint pictures in the style of others. He manages to adopt the artistic signature of every painter and has fooled the art world several times. Belratti sees his opportunity as the Museum of Modern Art expands to include two new rooms. Painter Eule wants to create new pictures for the rooms. The opportunity for Belratti to sneak in his masterful forgeries. Whether he succeeds is entirely up to us.
Gameplay
In Belratti, 3 – 7 players take turns taking on the role of the painter Owl or the museum director Dr. Cat. While the painter tries to persuade the museum director to accept his pictures into the museum, the museum director tries to recognize Belratti's forgeries so that they do not end up in the museum. Depending on the number of players, 1 - 3 people take on the role of painter and 2 - 4 people take on the role of museum director. In addition, all players receive hand cards that represent the works of art.
Each game round takes place over four phases. First, the museum management requests the pictures. Here two pictures from the draw pile are revealed. These are the themes that the museum would like to assign to the two rooms this round. The players who play the museum director then decide how many pictures (3 – 7) are required from the painters. The painters then select their pictures, which they place face down in the middle of the table. They can discuss the number of cards that you could lay out yourself and whether they are good, mediocre or bad. Colors, shapes, etc. are not allowed to be discussed. In addition, when selecting the images, they have to secretly decide which image they want to assign to which topic. If the number of pictures requested by the museum director has been delivered, 4 more pictures from the draw pile are placed face down next to the pictures delivered. These are the Belratti forgeries.
After all the cards on display have been shuffled and laid out face up, the museum management equips their museum. She has to assign the painter's pictures thematically. After all the pictures have been assigned, the painters evaluate which picture was correctly or incorrectly assigned and which pictures are Belratti's fakes. As soon as there are 6 or more Belratti forgeries hanging in the museum, the game ends. If you score 15 or more points, you have beaten Belratti.
Various jokers can be used throughout the game to make the game easier for the round. After the joker has been used, it is turned over to the numbers side. This indicates how many pictures must be guessed perfectly to reactivate the joker. For example, if the museum management announces 3 pictures and exactly three pictures are correctly guessed and assigned, the joker with the number side 3 can be turned over again.
THE difference between the two versions
In addition to the standard variant, the new version also offers the “Masterpieces” game variant. This is a quick variant that is played in a maximum of 5 rounds. The game is won as soon as only painter cards have been added to the museum in three rounds and lost as soon as Belratti was able to smuggle in at least one fake in three rounds. For this variant, the 3 jokers are laid out face down and 5 brush tiles with the numbers 5 – 3 are laid out. “Masterpieces” is played almost exactly like the standard version, with the difference that the painters initially choose a brush tile. This represents the number of pictures the painters want to paint. As usual, 7 Belratti forgeries are added, but these are drawn randomly from the painters' hand cards. The museum director then selects the correct cards, although this time the themes do not play a role. She just has to manage not to choose a fake Belratti. If a round is lost, any joker is unlocked once.
Information about Belratti
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| Number of players: 3 – 7 Age: from 8 years Playing time: 25 minutes Difficulty: Family game Long-term motivation: medium Classification: Cooperative deduction game Author: Michael Loth |
Conclusion
With the modernized version of Kosmos we get an excellent cooperative party game in a beautiful guise. Depending on how well you and your team are making progress, a game can last a good 20 – 60 minutes. But we never got bored. The new game variant makes the game significantly shorter and creates a nice challenge. However, we would rather use the standard version of the game, as it simply runs a little more smoothly and you don't feel too restricted in the choice of the number of cards. However, another variant is not undesirable. In our rounds, the desire for a semi-cooperative or 1-vs-many variant arose, in which one player takes on the role of Belratti and tries to lure the opposing players into a trap.
The drawings in the new version appear crisper and look significantly better than the predecessor. It's a shame that the picture frames from the old version didn't make it onto the front of the cards. This made the old version seem a little more thematic. All in all, we are completely satisfied with the new version of the game and are happy that Kosmos now makes it easy to access the game.
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KOSMOS 683320 Belratti, Is this art or can this be the way...* |
12,11 EUR |
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