Prepare your palette and ready your paintbrushes for Final Touch, a card-based game of forged masterpieces and artistic sabotage. Two to four aspiring artists race to be the first to earn $25 by putting the final touch of paint on a forged painting. While you and your opponents may not be the next Picasso, you are all eager to make your mark on the art world, even as clever forgers. Watch your back though, because it’s about to get messy!

Set Up Your Easel

Final Touch is played over a series of turns in which each artist chooses whether they will Improve the painting (represented by a face up Masterpiece card) or Smear it. Each Masterpiece card depicts a painting with colored symbols, representing the touches of paint needed to complete the Masterpiece. These symbols correspond to the Touch of Color cards dealt to each player at the beginning of the game. 

To Improve a painting, you’ll play Touch of Color cards from your hand that match the corresponding colors shown on the Masterpiece card. To Smear a painting, you’ll choose a single Touch of Color card to place next to the active Masterpiece card that does not correspond to one of the colors that could be used to Improve the painting. If your current palette only contains colors that would Smear the painting, then you have no choice but to ruin this blossoming masterpiece!

Each artist continues taking turns adding touches of artistic flair or damaging sabotage to the Masterpiece until all of the Touches of Color shown on the Masterpiece card have been added, or the painting has been Smeared three times. At that point, the player who put the Final Touch on the active Masterpiece flips it over to reveal the final work and collects the amount of money shown  on the upper righthand corner of the card. The artist who plays the third and final cardneeded to Smear a painting ruins the Masterpiece and concedes it to his opponents. The player(s) who did not play the final Smear card do not flip the Masterpiece card over, but instead earn the amount of money showed on the card’s face in the top right corner. Since Smearing a painting still earns money for your competitors, and you’ll need some teamwork in order to successfullycomplete the Masterpieces, you and your fellow artists will need to be clever as you race to be the first to collect $25. 

A Messy Endeavor

Final Touch is fast-paced and can be played in thirty minutes, and the easy-to-learn rules will have you and your friends unleashing your inner artist in no time. Take turns trading paint splotches, and see who among you has what it takes to become the most successful art forger! Final Touch can be played head to head with two or three players, or as a team game in a group of four. No matter how many other artists you collaborate with, you’ll need to make strategic choices about when to contribute your artistic talents, and when fling to paint aimlessly at the canvas to sabotage the competition.