Colors of Paris – Super Meeple – Review

Joseph Summa

November 22, 2019

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Colors of Paris is a remarkably novel twist on classic worker placement mechanisms.

Joseph Summa

MeepleGamers

 8/10

Publisher: Super Meeple

Designer: Nicolas De Oliveira

Artist: Fabrice Weiss

Game Type: Worker Placement

Game Type: Engine Building

Initial Year of Release: 2019

Age Range: 10+

Expected Playtime: 45-60

Number of Players: 2-4

Theme and What is it?

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Players take the role of a painter studying in the studio Le Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, Paris. You need to distinguish yourself from your fellows. You will fulfill orders “in the style of” the greats!
Colors of Paris is a worker placement game with a unique spinning main board and a clever mechanism where one worker stays pre-placed for the next round.

If you use one of the modular expansions included in the game you can come with a natural gift towards a specific famous painter. These gifts will provide in game bonuses. We recommend playing with this module from the very start.

Gameplay Mechanics

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Colors of Paris is a very easy game to learn and get started. Players take turns placing workers on the spaces on the outside ring of the board or one of the 4 spaces in the inner circle of the board. Then, once all workers are placed, players take turn knocking their workers over and executing the action planned. Some actions are just collecting paint or mixing secondary colors. Others are spending paints to permanently increase their efficiency of collecting paint pigments, mixing colors, or how many colors they can paint on a canvas in a single attempt.

The balance of increasing action efficiency and just using those actions to get the main goal accomplished is the beauty of the game. Well, that and the actual paintings I suppose.

Initial Impressions

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Colors of Paris is a remarkably novel twist on classic worker placement mechanisms. Leaving a worker out for the next round makes for really interesting planning knowing the board is going to shift what that location shows. And the ability of someone to put a worker on a spot that lets them spin the board an extra time or leave it alone allows for some serious screwing with each other. This is a really interesting feature.

Game Build Quality

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 10/10

Colors of Paris features plastic cubes of 8 colors and some brush brandishing meeples in each player color. It has a wonderful spinning central board. And it has a deck of possible painting projects with color requirements to make and a famous painting on the other side. Not a single weak piece in the lot. The player boards are even recessed in a nice octagonal pattern for antiknock play.

Artistic Direction

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The painting cards feature all sorts of famous paintings. This makes them as pretty as you would expect. The artists are good reproductions of how they are depicted in history. The entire game is themed around art. It couldn’t exist without good artwork and aesthetic appeal. It exists. It has a great look other players commented on several times.

Fun Factor

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The most exciting part of worker placement games for me is always the competition between making my own engine run more efficiently and just using the engine to reach the end game condition as fast as possible. Colors of Paris does a great job of making this the crux of the decision making. You don’t want to have 4 paintings started since you can only finish 2. But sometimes a better painting you can do faster with your current resources and engine is worth the extra worker to get a new option.

Age Range & Weight

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10+ is a perfectly reasonable age range. Any lower might have trouble keeping attentive long enough to play. It teaches primary and secondary colors well with a triple ven diagram design. Colors of Paris is quite easy to learn and didn’t take much effort to get to the table and start our enjoyment of the play. I always enjoy when a game teach is only 5 minutes long so even the most scatterbrained players can stay engaged long enough to not be confused once the play starts.

Conclusions

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 8/10

Colors of Paris is a light weight and easy to learn game full of color and artwork. It has some really clever twists on classic worker placement rules and is well worth having learned. It doesn’t pack the strategic punch of a heavy worker placement game but offers choices that matter. Getting an extra worker unlocked is really useful. But if the game is trending towards finished, taking points instead is a better option. This makes player decisions important throughout the entire game and the winner is usually based on skilled choices.

Also, spinning the wheel one extra time or not at all has a habit of making other players groan audibly. This makes me very happy.