Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
When a player reveals a card, they must look at the top of the deck to see what they are placing and then read the revealed instruction to know how.
Their arms have little indents in them just to make balancing beams and bricks that little bit harder. So if you’re in the mood for a build-em-up knock-it-down type of dexterity game, or just looking to play something while the snags are cooking on the BBQ. On the top of the draw pile is either a picture of a builder’s hat with coloured gloves or a picture of coloured girders. A mix of straightforward rules and gameplay simple enough for younger gamers to join in mean that most balance games go down well here, with some of our gaming friends and relatives being slightly less hardcore than others.Whether you like dexterity games or not, Men at Work is a lot of fun, even after players have been eliminated, as that structure is going to come crashing down at some point, it’s just a question of who will do it! If they cause an accident during clean up, they will also give up a safety certificate and miss their go. Well, not so much – you’re going to be asked to do some things that are not quite standard building procedure. It arrives courtesy of Pretzel Games, creators of the lovely Junk Art and Flick ‘Em Up, the latter of which isn’t a stacking game but still requires tactility and dexterity.
If you want to change things up, the cardboard crane can be built and placed in the middle of the starting construction. The pictures show what a player must add to the site and the instructions tell them how to add these items. It packs a surprising amount of game into a seemingly simple concept, complete with tough decisions, funny moments, and satisfying rewards for being bold.It’s a competition to find out who’s the best at holding their nerves, and their construction materials. If you’re not sure what constitutes a dexterity game, I think of them as any game where the physical movement of pieces constitutes the game, not necessarily what happens when they get there. A hardhat for a Worker Meeple, or a Girder for, well a girder, but be careful when constructing as any fall to the ground will result in your go finishing and more importantly you loosing a precious Safety Certificate! A girder however might have to touch two girders of different colours to itself, or might have to balance on a single other girder. If any pieces fall to the table during cleanup, that player loses a safety certificate and passes the hook to the next player.
At least a tower-wide collapse forces somebody to pick through the rubble and possibly lose a certificate of their own. The structure is stable enough in general that you don’t have to hold your breath, although players do have to be careful not to jostle the table. If the piece which succumbs to gravity’s irresistible pull hits the table, the player who caused it to happen loses one of their safety certificates.
Pretzel Games has a knack for producing quality dexterity games, I love that Plan B has branched out into this market with their label. Thirty-one years later and I still can’t believe Men at Work successfully added `Vegemite sandwich` into the lyrics of a hit song. The construction grows higher and higher, and before long, the steel girders reach dizzying heights. Secondly, and most importantly, the game is so short that even when someone gets eliminated relatively early, they only tend to have to watch for 5-10 minutes before the game ends.
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