Avant Carde turns classic Uno into literal art (and a better game)
With a very impressive folding box!
A new card game looks to put an artistic modern spin on family classic Uno.
Avant Carde takes the basic rules of Uno - in which players must play a card matching either the number or colour of the last card played - and builds on them with an element of deckbuilding similar to Dominion and a variable selection of card powers.
Rather than playing their cards to a shared pile in the middle of the table, players instead look to form individual ‘exhibitions’ from their cards - which feature fetching cubist artwork by illustrator Ishita Banerjee - in front of them. To add cards to the exhibition, each needs to match the colour or number of the last card played.
Each card played to an exhibition earns the player a dollar (gallery art is cheaper than it seems, apparently) during that round, which can be used to buy additional cards from a central gallery before being added to the player’s deck.
Like Uno’s turn skips, wild cards and whatnot, played cards can also have powers that help the player to lay down more of the cards from their hand. In Avant Carde, the power assigned to each card’s number depends on a changeable set of patrons that varies from game to game, changing up the available abilities. Powers range from allowing them to draw additional cards and modifying cards’ numbers or colours to earning extra money and trashing unwanted cards.
Scoring more than $6 in a round - by successfully playing six or more cards - earns the player an award, with the most awards at the end of the game (triggered when all the awards are claimed) taking the win.
Avant Carde is the latest game from Resonym, the studio behind inventive board game Mechanica and spooky guessing game Ghost Writer.
The game is currently live on Kickstarter, where you can pick up a copy for $20 - including its clever folding card box, which allows players’ decks, the gallery and patrons to be unfolded instantly ready to play - ahead of its release next March.