Grab your overalls and hard-hat as Rita, your friendly construction boss, is waiting for you on the building site to impress her with your delightfully delicate assembly skills. Will you reach dizzy heights, pass the health & safety inspection and earn employee of the month, or had you better run and take cover as the girders come crashing down!
Men at Work is a fantastically family-fun dexterity game for 2-5 players where you are competing to build a tower made up of support pieces and girders. Sound easy - you’ve played Jenga right? Well this will take it to another level! No two towers will be built the same - and you also have to add in worker meeples balancing beams and bricks, as well as clearing up any construction site debris left by previous players who may have had site accidents, all whilst trying to avoid any mishaps of your own!
Your challenge is to build the highest elements of the tower in order to earn Employee of the Month and collect enough rosettes to win the game, or be the last player standing after your opponents have have had their 3 heath & safety certificates revoked.
To set up choose a player to place 3 support pieces on the table and a girder of each colour to balance on top of the supports (in any order/design that they wish) and then place one of the worker meeples onto any girder. Each player gets three safety certificates and the construction card deck is shuffled with the boss card (Rita) placed into the deck about a 1/4 of the way down.
Players then take turns turning the top card over and following the instructions to add to the construction site - either place a coloured girder onto the tower as directed by the card or place a worker meeple, sometimes balancing extra pieces such as bricks and beams.
Once Rita is drawn from the deck, the player who places the highest element of the tower (use the measuring stick if there is any doubt) gains an Employee of the Month rosette. Heavy hands beware because as soon as an element of the tower falls to the table, the active player loses one of their safety certificates - 3 strikes and you are out of there!
There is so much to love about this game - the quality chunky components, including the most adorable worker meeples; the colourful artistic masterpiece that is so eye-catching on the games table; the different levels of difficulty (there is even a crane to add to the building site!) so there is a challenge for everyone and the fact that no two games are the same. Even if you get eliminated, you might sulk for all of a few seconds before being drawn back to the table to witness the next site accident!
Even if you are not normally a fan of dexterity games, Men at Work is more enjoyable than a Vegemite sandwich!
