Hey you! Yeah, YOU! Do you want to join our construction company and build some awesome buildings? Well, we’re short staffed, so we’ll pretty much take anyone, lucky you! Don’t worry, we promise it’ll be a good time! All you have to do is hire a few employees to help out, build a few floors and roofs in your plaza and …. oh yeah, maybe tear down a bunch of our competitors’ floors too. Hey, we just want to be the best! Now get building!
What Is It?
The full name of this game is actually Builders!: The Building-Building Deck Building Game which gives you a little bit more information in a fun way! Basically, this is a deck-building game, as the title suggests, but while building your deck up with employees, you’re also adding buildings/floors to your plaza, aka your tableau, so it’s a neat combo deck/tableau building game in that way. It ends when one person has a certain number of floors, so you want to make sure you build a bunch of great floors so you can maximize your score!
Who Is It For?
I’d recommend this to deck and/or tableau building fans because it combines them well. I think light game gamers would like it because you don’t have to build your deck up a lot and hope for crazy combos; your deck stays pretty trim and you focus more on trying to build up your plaza. Finally, I think ages 10+ would be able to get into this one easily.
Contents and Quality
There’s not much here, it’s just a deck of cards. They’re average quality cards, so nothing bad. The box is just your average, basic deck box, and the cards probably would not fit inside of it if you wanted to sleeve this one. The art is also pretty basic overall, but illustrates what it needs to.
The rules are well written and easy to follow, but my issue with them is that they’re printed on a grid (like blueprint paper) which is cool, but made it much harder to read than I would have liked (at least for me).
PROS
- Unique deck + tableau builder
- Small/Portable
- Player decks stay pretty trim, allowing you to cycle your cards often, which is neat
- Plays smoothly
CONS
- The “take that” element of tearing down others’ floors seems to be less useful than just building your own things up more since it still spends permits, so it didn’t seem to happen much and it was forgotten about a lot. Luckily, the game still plays well so you don’t feel like you’re forced into it
- The game can feel a little repetitive because of that not building your deck up element
Difficulty
I thought that this was on the easier side because it doesn’t have a lot going on and is pretty smooth and streamlined, so I would probably give it a 2/5 for difficulty. Turns move quickly, all the symbols and rules make sense, and everything works well together!
Final Thoughts
I thought this was a pretty cute deck builder that’s good if you’re looking for a light one, and/or one that’s unique with it’s mechanics. I also think it’s very approachable and would be good for younger gamers or newbies to the genre. Plus, it’s small and easy to bring to any game night! If you have the chance to try it, check it out!
My Rating: 6/10
Happy Gaming~
Additional Information:
Designers – Maud Croal, Tyler Omichinski, Cameron Parkinson, Nat Sanderson
Artist – Maud Croal
Publisher – Broken Things
BGG
BGA
*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*
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