In a February that has offered up a giddy Midsummer Night’s Dream at the RSC in Stratford, and a repeat visit to the cult, postmodern mayhem of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show, you’d have likely gotten long odds that the month’s most mind-warping, fever dream of a stage experience was to be a Nikolai Foster musical adaptation of An Officer and a Gentleman. By the time underwritten, one-dimensional ‘Aunt’ Bunny (Wendy Harriot, far too good for what she’s given here) was battling to even be heard as she crooned a discordant rework of Kim Wilde’s ‘Kids in America’ as a half-shirtless deadbeat father spun around drunkenly on stage and our leading lady swooned on her bed, I even began to wonder if something had been slipped into my pre-show lemon water.

And whilst it’s never fun to bash on a fledgling new show, in a climate where so many productions and theatre creatives are gasping for breath, the sad truth is that this is amongst the most bizarre, uninspired and lifeless musical experiences you could fling your cash at.

It’s pitched as a romantic, sweeping jolt of nostalgia and feel-good, and to those familiar with the original, key moments such as its iconic finale certainly garner their fair share of whoops and hollering. And for a jukebox offering, some of the artists whose work is crowbarred in – an Eighties smorgasbord of Bon Jovi, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, amongst others – suggests potential. Yet at almost every turn, uninspired staging, flaccid direction and drab choreography, slathered over its problematic, derivative narrative, manage to make even obvious crowdpleasers like ‘Living’ on a Prayer’ and ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ practically dead on arrival. Even anthematic Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes favourite ‘Up Where We Belong’, teased by the orchestra throughout, is relegated to a late-game free for all, when a rousing duet or curtain closer was right there within reach.

“…doesn’t even seem to understand quite what a musical is or needs to be…”

Ultimately, An Officer and a Gentleman doesn’t so much not work as a musical, as it doesn’t even seem to understand quite what a musical is or needs to be. The disjointed, stop-start nature of its flimsy plot is magnified tenfold when it all gets cast aside for what are often completely conflicting pop music interludes. Watch on in bemusement as young Paula (Georgia Lennon) belts the yearning and need of ‘How do I get you Alone?’ …about a character she’s been successfully bonking and, well, alone with, for several weeks now. Brace yourself for the tonal whiplash of a grisly, downbeat suicide being immediately intercepted by a stomping, rifle-swinging rendition of Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’. And if the tone-deaf decision to completely undermine one of the few female characters with any sort of agency or arc by having her only achieve her goal by being literally lifted by the male characters around her to do so threatens to lose you, then fear not – moments later it all breaks out into a baffling, campy, groin-thrusting rendition of Billy Ocean’s ‘When the Going Gets Tough’ for your viewing delight.

What semblance of a plot remains amidst the noise and silence (recurrent mic and sound issues, flubbed lines and missed cues all alarmingly frequent in the performance reviewed – though it is early in the run, so we’ll cut it some slack here) is, for better or worse, fairly faithful to the original. But if much of the gender relations and representation of the early Eighties Richard Gere romance have already aged worse than Mickey Rourke in a bath of sour milk, it seems completely lost on the creatives of this tonal clusterbomb. Following a group of young naval recruits as they begin a gruelling programme of training in the hopes of earning their wings, finding romance and distraction within the neighbouring community, the common bugbear of the militaristic often not gelling well with the medium of musical rings loud and true, here.

“Georgia Lennon is a palpable musical theatre talent, and nails some tough sings as love interest (and little more than that) Paula…”

Our naval grunts and love interests are all equally forgettable, cookie-cutter offerings. Luke Baker as protagonist Zack Mayo occasionally restores sanity with genuinely impressive vocals, but it’s a thankless, one-dimensional character that only really registers as human when he’s singing or shouting. Georgia Lennon is a palpable musical theatre talent, and nails some tough sings as love interest (and little more than that) Paula, but like so many of the cast, she’s underserved and far too good for this uninspired rubbish. Elsewhere, Melanie Masson and Jamal Crawford give spirited supporting turns as Paula’s kindly mother and an overbearing drill sergeant, respectively, but they’re yet more rote, formulaic ciphers.

Things do momentarily threaten to come to life with the jostling back and forth of Paul French and Sinead Long’s secondary romance. They’re by some measure the most interesting characters in the piece (which is, admittedly, not saying much) and some of their Act II back and forth actually injects some drama and stakes into it all. French proves himself to once again be a fascinating, idiosyncratic stage performer, lending his troubled son of privilege nuance and substance, whilst Long is a commanding presence and vocal powerhouse, injecting what little flashes of life moments such as a deeply imitative ‘Material Girl’ can manage.

“[Paul] French proves himself to once again be a fascinating, idiosyncratic stage performer, lending his troubled son of privilege nuance and substance…”

It’s just a shame that, with some solid groundwork done, and two great performances from French and Long, their subplot descends into insensitive, borderline offensive dross. The audience is given no clear steer on whether Long’s Lynette is ultimately misguided and naive, or something notably more heartless, sinister and unforgivable (the show seems to suggest both). Regardless, even though half the audience are likely ready to see her get some sort of comeuppance by the end, Long’s Lynette is clumsily lumped in mere moments later as part of a completely unmotivated sisterly belt of Helen Reddy’s ‘I Am Woman’. Because, why not.

For Comic Relief 2009, French and Saunders memorably set their parodic sights on Phyllida Lloyd’s Mamma Mia the Musical. The duo take aim at the utter barminess of it all, and the disjointed marriage of story and music. ‘The Genius of Abba! With Words in Between!’, ‘Beggars Belief!’ and ‘It’s A Nonsense!’ flash across the screen, during their characteristically silly but loving takedown of the musical adaptation. One can only imagine what comedic gold they’d manage to mine with this.

In truth, it’s difficult to recall the last time a musical dropped the ball and failed to harmonise on quite so many levels, and the responsibility to review a piece honestly, knowing that for some, it may be their only affordable theatre experience of the year (or beyond) rings out deafeningly here. It’s a rare but notable misfire from the usually dependable Nikolai Foster. Michael Taylor’s industrial staging, punctured with suitably Eighties neons and jet silhouettes, gives the whole thing a sense of production value and verticality, but it cannot save the mess of a show that it quite literally cages. Nor can a company that are mostly solid and giving it their all.

Throughout An Officer and a Gentleman the Musical, Zack’s posse of fellow wannabe pilots gradually dwindles down as each hit their limits, broken by tough taskmasters, food deprivation or other gruelling obstacles. They finalise their drop out with the ringing of an on-stage bell. And for all but the most ardent of fans, or those content with a handful of fleeting pinches of the nostalgia glands, it’s highly likely that by the midway point (or even sooner) of this lifeless, noisy, confusing mess of a musical, you’ll be tempted to take to the stage and do the same yourself.

A cursory glance over Scythe, its components and glorious artwork – Jakub Rozalski’s rural dieselpunk vistas having been one of the game’s central inspirations – could easily suggest a game firmly ensconced in wargaming territory. Its board – a sprawling, intricately segmented map of a fictional 1920’s Europe (named here ‘Europa’) – offers glimpses of territory control a la, say, Risk or Game of Thrones. Elsewhere, the double-dip of character and action boards that each player has at their command, littered with cubes, meeples, wooden tokens and insignia, suggest engine-building, worker placement and resource management reminiscent of another hit from the Stonemaier catalogue, Viticulture.

It’s a testimony to the thematically and mechanically rich, yet relatively intuitive, design of Scythe, then, that this is a game that is all of those things (and more) at once, with little-to-no baggage. With its stunning depictions of hulking mechs – neatly realised in plastic form, to boot – and warfare-tinted symbols and embellishments, it’s perhaps the militaristic elements of Scythe that make the strongest first impact. And yet, despite clashes for territory and resources being indeed part of the tapestry here, combat plays a perhaps surprisingly minor part of most games of Scythe. Indeed, as we discovered in our sessions, even hotly-contested four or five-players games can play out on a knife edge with relatively few direct tussles even taking place.

Much like the aforementioned Viticulture, there’s a fair amount of visual language to Scythe. It can make for a slightly daunting first impression, but once the basic mechanics and symbols are understood, it all becomes pleasingly straightforward and responsive.

Play is divided between the main boad – a central map of ‘Europa’ – and each player’s pair of character and action boards. As expected, the map is where you will place and move workers, build structures, harvest resources, and send your unique ‘character’ on a journey to experience ‘encounters’ – narrative cards with one-off, multiple choice bonuses – and perhaps even engage in a combat or two. When you’ve gathered enough resources, you can start fielding your mechs – combat and movement-focused figures who can help carry your workers about, support your character in combat, or even engage in fights of their own.

How you do all of this is dictated by your two boards. Character boards, for the most part, govern special rules and unlockable bonuses tailored to whichever faction you are assigned at the start of the game. Your mechs, for instance, begin the game here, covering special ‘peekaboo’ bonuses; every time you field one (moving it from your board onto the map), you get to use the bonus rule that revealed when you do so. One such example is ‘riverwalk’ rule – which means that once that particular mech is fielded, your character and all mechs now gain the ability to cross otherwise impassable rivers that weave throughout the map.

“There’s a fair amount of visual language to Scythe… but once the basic mechanics and symbols are understood, it all becomes pleasingly straightforward and responsive.”

Elsewhere on the character boards, unique rules for each faction are available from the offset. The fairly self-evidently inspired ‘Rusviet Union’, for instance, get to bypass restrictions on not repeating actions, whilst the workers of the ‘Nordic Kingdom’ are allowed to move through those previously-mentioned rivers, that otherwise bar passage to other factions. Each faction and character board have unique unlockable bonuses, too, including those hidden mech bonuses, meaning that your overall strategy and approach will likely differ depending on which faction you are randomly assigned at the start of play. The aforementioned Nordics, for instance, in being able to cross rivers, are not as territorially-restricted in the early game, meaning fast expansion and aggressive resource grabbing can be a legitimate approach. The ‘Polania Republic’ player, meanwhile, will want to be planning to send his character out to as many ‘encounters’ as possible, as their special rule allows them to harvest two benefits (of a possible three) from each encounter card, whereas other players are restricted to picking only one.

Moving over to the action boards, these are sub-divided into four sections, and each turn players must move their marker to a new section from the one previously on – in a vein similar to, say, Ravensburger‘s Villainous titles – and may fulfil one or both of the actions of that section. There are some conditionals – if choosing both actions, you must complete the top one first, and you can’t complete an action if you don’t have the required amount of resources to pay for it.

These actions are the crucial mechanics enable you to fulfil the key objective of Scythe – which is, namely, to be the player at the end of the game who has accrued the most cumulative wealth. Sample actions include being able to move your pieces across the hexagonal territories of the Europa map, harvest various resources – wood, oil, food and more workers – from territories currently under your control, engineer buildings and structures for further resources and bonuses, enlist recruits to get short term but also game-long benefits, build and field your four mechs, and even upgrade and tinker with your boards in ways that will make future actions cheaper, and the benefits from doing so even better.

A fairly straightforward but robust ‘star’ system tracks both individual players success, and the overall progress of the game as a whole. Each player begins with six stars, and when certain achievements, thresholds or milestones are hit, players will place a star on the respective section of the board. Much like actions, the variety and breadth of options for star placement is fairly broad – max out your ‘reputation’ by doing good deeds and avoiding scaring off enemy workers? Place a star. Win your first combat? Place a star. Successfully complete one of the unique ‘objective’ cards you’re given at the start of the game? Place a star. Manage to field all four of your mechs? …You get the idea.

As soon as any player lodges their sixth and final star, though, the game ends immediately (even if this takes place in another player’s turn), meaning Scythe as a whole is something of a managed and calculated race. With wealth being the final barometer of victory, though, you can easily get situations where a player may hold back on placing their final star (thus ending the game) until they’ve spread out a little further, or acquired that extra bit of wealth or resource. The worst thing you can do is prematurely end the game, only to realise that one of your fellow players actually has notably more territory or gold in the bank.

It’s the sheer wealth of options and approaches that makes Scythe such an absorbing and multi-faceted puzzle of a game to tackle. Unlike many other games of its ilk, it’s rarely about being just the most overtly aggressive or expansionist player. Indeed, for some factions, the resource and reputational cost of simply going all-out on the offensive can be entirely counter-productive. Some players and factions may yield success by carefully cultivating their own area, focusing on getting their mechs and buildings out, and possibly never encountering a fellow player at all. Others, such as the aggressive ‘Saxony Empire’, contrarily, have unique rules that favour being combative and warmongering. The stars system and action boards are robust and diverse enough, though, that there are countless approaches and strategies that can be tackled with practically every faction.

For some, there’s the risk that this can cultivate a curious dichotomy in the wealth of choices and pathways that Scythe entrusts its players with. Once the initially intimidating catalogue of iconography, actions and mechanics become understood and familiar – which is, to say, likely quite quickly (so neatly-designed and instinctive as they are) – it’s very easy to become lost in a broil of attempting to do all things at once. Indeed, Scythe gives you so many options and routes to victory, it is very easy to get bogged down trying to accomplish too much at once.

“It’s the sheer wealth of options and approaches that makes Scythe such an absorbing and multi-faceted puzzle of a game to tackle.”

It isn’t really so much a criticism of the game as it is a word of strategic warning, but it’s still likely that the more focused thinkers will dominate early games, until the realisation that targeted efficiency is the name of the game here truly sinks in. Said efficiency, and being willing to disregard (or at least not prioritise) entire chunks of the game’s mechanics, isn’t something that the surplus of options makes immediately obvious or organic, though.

Indeed, there are whole elements of play we haven’t even touched upon yet, too, such as the ‘power’ scale, a chart that your faction will climb up and down on, and one completely separate from the similarly numerical ‘reputation’. ‘Power’ governs your ability to dish out damage in combat (more on which, shortly), but can also be both another resource and another pathway to placing a coveted star. Of ‘reputation’, your faction’s placement on this important scale provides an at-times decisive end-game multiplier to your wealth, territory and resources. And then there’s the ‘factory’, a unique space in the centre of the board that not only counts as multiple territories during endgame calculations, but also gives a powerful expansion to action boards for any players that manage to guide their unique character figure there (which can, in and of itself, be a risky, exposing journey).

Which leaves combat. Again, often neither as ubiquitous nor decisive as perhaps expected, it nonetheless hinges upon another neatly-realised mechanic. Any instance of shared territory – where one player moves a mech or character into a space occupied by an enemy counterpart (lowly workers do not initiate fights, they simply flee) – immediately initiates combat. Courtesy of a hidden dial, each combatant then secretly assigns some – or none – of their accumulated power (which is then lost, win or lose) and can further buttress this with a number of combat cards equal to the number of fighters (characters, mechs) they have in that particular combat. It’s a hidden numbers game, essentially, and when both players reveal their combat ‘total’ – power spent and any bonuses on cards played – the highest wins (attackers breaking a tie), sending the loser packing back to their starting spot. The secretive nature of assigning power and cards can lead to genuinely tense stand-offs and, like much of Scythe, there’s flexiblity to try out different tactics. Can you bluff or double-bluff your opponent into thinking you’re not even going to add any cards, or perhaps even force another player to overspend and waste power on a combat you are going to throw anyway? It’s another enjoyable and flavoursome wrinkle in what could have very easily been a simple card or dice throwdown.

“Combat… another enjoyable and flavoursome wrinkle in what could have very easily been a simple card or dice throwdown.”

Moving from mechanics and gameplay over to realisation and design, and the components, build quality and aesthetic of Scythe prove just as impressive and absorbing as its gameplay. Rozalski’s sumptuous, evocative artwork underpins it all, including a well laid-out and accessible rulebook. The myriad cards, player boards, character designs et al, are all at the pinnacle of what you can expect from a contemporary board game. It all looks and feels premium, quality and, crucially, sturdy. The five plastic faction characters – each complete with animal sidekick – are suitably detailed, distinctive and dynamic, which extends through to each faction’s mechs being of a unique design, too.

There are some quality of life and future-proofing touches, too; whilst initially a 2016 release, it’s nice to see the base map and board natively providing spaces and insignia for its eventual expansion factions. A bespoke deck and additional set of rules for solo mode (courtesy of Automata Factory) are further indicators of a considered and inclusive approach to the game’s design and release. Whilst we have yet to test the solo mode, Automata have a solid reputation in this area, and general consensus from both critical and user feedback seems to be that Scythe’s 1-player experience can be an exciting – not to mention surprisingly aggressive – experience.

There’s a fair amount in the box, and if the recycled plastic bags that contain many of the wooden components and cards are expectedly flimsy, it is nonetheless always nice to see a manufacturer being environmentally-conscious. Two branded Stonemaier plastic tubs are included (and can open out to provide four trays for in-game use) for the numerous card tokens that the game requires – currency, encounter markers etc. – but you’ll likely want to handle the bags with care, or otherwise source some inserts, as there is plenty to keep tidied away that you really don’t want left loose rattling around and getting mixed up in the box.

For a relatively recent release (first landing, as mentioned, in 2016), Scythe has become rapidly established within the board game community as a title of real substance and renown. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from playing and reviewing the game, is how it isn’t at all as ‘heavy’ an offering as first impressions could perhaps suggest. Again, it’s reflective of the hallmark of Stonemaier’s approach (and doubtless exhaustive testplaying) that its expansive, diverse catalogue of strategies, options and approaches become second-nature remarkably quickly.

“That its gameplay excellence is equally matched by its aesthetic and artistic quality only sweetens the deal.”

For certain, it likely won’t sway casual gamers, and at higher player counts you’re likely looking at a circa 2-hour time sink, but it cannot be overstated how this is an intuitive, responsive and engaging board game experience that will likely appeal to a far broader base than its optics (and reputation) may first suggest. Contrarily, for those who may enjoy getting lost in the headier, day-consuming, endlessly-intricate machinations of, say, Twilight Imperium or its contemporaries, then Scythe will perhaps feel a breezier, lighter affair (for better or worse).

On balance, though, this is a masterfully and robustly designed offering from Jamey Stegmaier – a rich, involving, asymmetric playground of consequence, competition and choice. Part worker-placement, part engine-builder, part territory-control, part resource-management, Scythe practically demands repeat plays. To test out the elasticity of its factions, to try out different approaches and strategies, and simply because its mechanics are so damned fun. That its gameplay excellence is equally matched by its aesthetic and artistic quality only sweetens the deal.

It may not be for everyone, but for those who take the (refreshingly brief) time to get a grasp of its gears, they’ll find in Scythe a rewarding and compelling dieselpunk challenge of very few equals.

The worker placement genre is a (fittingly) busying world. Whether reaching quite literally upward with the treetops and expansionism of Starling Games’ Everdell, or plucking at Hollywood IP with the deck building and placement hybrid of Dune: Imperium, it’s an ilk of board gaming that has stayed the course, and continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

Whilst this review lands just as a brand new expansion – the co-operative Viticulture World – releases, it still makes Stonemaier Games‘ core Viticulture game, at just shy of a decade, almost a relic in board gaming terms. The original release, back in 2013, which sees players competing to build the most successful and productive Italian Vineyard, garnered praise for its gorgeous styling and simple-yet-versatile mechanics. Reprints and expansions inevitably followed, which added extra options, wrinkles to the formula, and additional components, but at its core, Viticulture remained refined but relatively untouched; a taut, accessible yet compelling worker placement puzzle.

In 2015, Stonemaier released what is now the definitive (and only available) version of the core Viticulture boxed set – Viticulture: Essential Edition. Most notably, this Essential release bore a small handful of quality of life improvements (for instance, merging the alternating versions of the game and player boards in to singular, perfectly honed compromises), as well as improved card decks and a handful of extra refinements and add-ons from the popular Tuscany expansion, in particular.

And yet, as mentioned, the board gaming world continues its international explosion, only fuelled by the pandemic boon, and seven years, let alone nine, can prove an eternity in game development.

So, does Viticulture remain an Essential addition to a gaming collection?

For the most part, it’s a resounding yes. The core Viticulture experience remains a polished, fairly easy to learn/difficult to master gaming challenge, buttressed by gorgeous artwork and, typical of Stonemaier, faultlessly-executed theming.

Players compete to be the first to acquire 20 XP, which they gain through a variety of tasks as they build up their Vineyard empire. One of Viticulture’s best and most unique ideas is how each round consists of a ‘year’, split up into the four seasons. The first, Spring, sees players bid for what position they wish to spend the rest of the ‘year’ starting in. Bid lower, and you risk going late or even last in every phase, yet the compensation for doing so can be bonus XP or even a free extra worker for the year. ‘Spring’ is one of the best mechanics in Viticulture, introducing strategic risk-reward considerations from the off.

Skipping ahead, Autumn gets players a free card or two, but the real gameplay lands in the worker placement of Summer and Winter. Anyone familiar with the likes of Lords of Waterdeep or many worker placement games will be in recognisable territory here, as your finite number of workers can be sent out to fulfil an impressive diversity of tasks – from gaining currency, drawing or playing cards, constructing vital buildings, and, of course, the multi-step process of making your precious wines.

“Wine-making is a fun, addictive and multi-faceted mini-game in and of itself.”

Wine-making is a fun, addictive and multi-faceted mini-game in and of itself. In Summer, you can draw and discover the best vines, juggle the process of planting them in fields where you grow them (each field having a maximum value that you cannot plant above), and then, in Winter, go through the process of harvesting your grapes and then crushing them into wine. Naturally, at the end of each year, all of your wines and grapes age, making them more valuable, but you’d best hope you’ve constructed the improved wine cellars as you progress through the game, or risk losing some of their ageing progress.

If it sounds at all impenetrable, it really isn’t. At first glance, the difference between planting, harvesting and wine-making may seem a little complicated and obtuse, but it’s remarkably intuitive and easy to pick up, with a palpable sense of pride and joy as you watch a lowly Pinot harvested and ripen, before merging it to create, say, a hugely valuable blush or sparkling wine.

One of Viticulture’s best ploys is how it forces players to strategise between Summer and Winter. Your pool of workers – which, inevitably, you can add to over the course of the game – are for the entire year. Of course, half of the essential mechanics are split fairly evenly between the two seasons, so it remains a perpetual balancing act on how many you wish to conserve for later in the round.

Complimenting this is the relative variety of ways you can go about charting victory. The main, and often most lucrative, method is to complete Wine Orders, where you are required to cultivate specific values of red, white, blush and/or sparkling wine, and then use one of your workers in Winter to fulfil this order. You lose the respective wine, but often garner big XP in return, as well as ongoing, residual end-of-year income.

“One of Viticulture’s best ploys is how it forces players to strategise between Summer and Winter… a perpetual balancing act.”

Outside of these orders, though, which in and of themselves often help direct your strategies, there’s a wealth of additional ways to accrue XP. Many of the optional buildings you can construct will yield annual XP bonuses. For example – build yourself a Tasting Room and you get an XP every time you ‘give a tour’, itself already a popular placement action as it yields you 2 – 3 currency. The Windmill, likewise, is a powerful early go-to, giving you, as it does, bonus XP for the core action of planting vines. Many of these are limited to a maximum bonus of 1 XP per round/year, but even so, funnelling them together with the myriad of Summer and Winter cards (each season having its own deck) that can give circumstantial XP, can easily chart a player on a steady course to victory. In one of the games played for this review, I comfortably won whilst fulfilling only a single wine order, so lucrative were all the side hustles and XP card plays that I managed to pull off.

On the subject of decks, Essential Edition features improved seasonal decks, which mean that the vast majority of cards you will draw will have some utility, even if not immediately. One of the major criticisms of the original Viticulture was that the visitor decks (i.e. Summer and Winter) were stacked with highly circumstantial conditions and effects that would rarely prove useful. Now, in Essential Edition, spending two valuable workers to pick up and then play a card is almost always valuable, and can even occasionally prove game-changing.

Much like its contemporary Waterdeep, Viticulture: Essential Edition is showing hints of its age in places, but is still a thoroughly pleasant and immensely repayable offering, and certainly more immediately accessible for less hardcore gaming groups than the likes of, say, Scythe.

Perhaps its biggest potential ‘flaw’, reviewing seven years on in 2022, is that whilst it does what it does extremely well, and with superb presentation, it doesn’t really do a tremendous amount more. The aforementioned Everdell and Dune: Imperium layer tableau and deck building, respectively, on top of their worker placement mechanics, whilst other contemporaries such as Marco Polo and Hallertau throw dice and card play into the mix.

“Much like its contemporary Waterdeep, Viticulture: Essential Edition is showing hints of its age in places, but is still a thoroughly pleasant and immensely repayable offering…”

There’s also little by way of direct player interaction, too. Some of the seasonal cards can give you the chance to offer your opponents circumstantial ultimatums (i.e. ‘give me one of your coins or I will get a free card’), but these are relatively few and far between, and for the most part you’ll be far more focused on your own turn and strategy.

Similarly, the concept of ‘blocking’ your opponents feels a little too forgiving, namely owing to the inclusion of a special ‘Grande’ worker. For context, depending on the player count, there is always a limited number of spots available at each action space. Let’s say you want to draw a card, only you ended up bidding low in Spring so you are third or fourth in the turn order, meaning that by the time you get the chance to place one of your workers, the two ‘draw a card’ spaces are already taken by other players. You’d be forgiven for thinking this could lead to a wealth of tense moments where players strategically block one another or deprive a position out of spite or competitiveness, and yet every player has one special ‘Grande’ worker, who can take an action even if its spaces are blocked.

It’s a neat idea that prevents completely wasted turns or overt nastiness, and you do only get one Grande worker, so have to consider carefully when you will utilise him each year, but there’s no denying it’s a mechanic that does suck some of the tension and conflict out of proceedings, and can sadly undermine some of the consequential hustling of Spring in particular. In larger games, there are ‘bonus’ action spaces which give extra benefits to the player who places there first, and which Grande workers can’t benefit from, which does go some way in making games with players counts of three or more a trifle more competitive (the bonus spaces not being accessible at all in two-player games).

It means that, for the most part, Viticulture is a pleasant, mostly non-confrontational experience where, at worst, you may temporarily inconvenience an opponent, rather than stopping them dead in their tracks.

“…a gorgeously crafted board game, with fantastic, high-quality components and beautiful art direction that reaches into every nook and cranny of its execution.”

For some, all of this will be no bad thing, but for others, the lack of extra mechanics and relative lightness of player interaction may make Viticulture, even with the enhancements in this Essential Edition, perhaps a little too slight.

For everyone else though, the game remains, even in the bustling genre it helped define, an easy recommendation. Viticulture: Essential Edition is a gorgeously crafted board game, with fantastic, high-quality components and beautiful art direction that reaches into every nook and cranny of its execution.

It’s also, crucially, supremely playable, impressively polished, and a benchmark release in the worker placement crowd that, whilst perhaps missing some of the bells and whistles, extra heft and cutthroat interaction of many of its successors, brings enough charm, variety and thematic uniqueness to make it, for the most part, Essential indeed.

As the fortieth (gasp!) anniversary of social deduction favourite Mafia, and its equally popular reskin, Werewolf, looms on the not-too-distant, you don’t have to glance too far afield to see the countless pretenders to the throne that they have inspired.

The core Mafia structure, which sees a group of players split into two groups, with secret evil players gradually picking off the rest, whose job it is to try and survive and identify the lurking ne’er-do-wells in their midsts, has been frequently imitated, rarely bettered. Some notable successors include Bruno Faidutti’s more card-centric Mascarade, the mild questing of Resistance/Avalon, and, of course, the wildly popular ‘One Night Ultimate’ franchise, which distils all the action of a typical game of, say, Werewolf, into a single manic round of accusations and finger pointing.

Elsewhere, other more conventional releases have injected tendrils of the social deduction gene into a broader tabletop experience, such as the potential ‘Traitor’ mechanic in Plaid Hat Games’ Dead of Winter, the nefarious, backstabbing objectives tucked away in the decks of Awaken Realms’ recent hit Nemesis, and gaming experiences more directly oriented around hidden identities, such as Evan Derrick’s Dark Moon (itself a reskin of the hugely popular Battlestar Galactica Express).

In short; social deduction, hidden identities and, let’s face it, the fear, thrill and possibility of a fellow player throwing a decisive wrench in your strategy (or dagger in your back), remains an increasingly popular and present ingredient in the tabletop oeuvre.

Enter designer Steven Medway and The Pandemonium Institute who, in Blood on the Clocktower, seem to have thrown down the gauntlet to their genre competitors to offer up the most exhaustive, expansive and – they hope – exhilarating social deduction experience on offer.

Firstly, there’s no getting away from the sheer size and heft of Clocktower. It’s a weighty thing, and, having gone through various incarnations, redesigns and prototypes, the final delivered product is an impressively present beast.

Everything comes housed in the ‘Grimoire’, an oversized, mythical tome that each game’s ‘Storyteller’ – Clocktower’s version of a DM or games master – will carry round with them to help assist in their omniscient duties in running this almost intimidatingly variable experience.

“…there’s no getting away from the sheer size and heft of Clocktower… the final delivered product is an impressively present beast.”

The Storyteller will almost invariably be the arbiter of how enjoyable (and successful) a game of Clocktower will turn out to be. Much like Mafia, they are an overseer to the action; they will not be assigned a role, character or team, but will instead adjudicate and direct the gameplay, as the other players are secretly assigned roles (each with their own special power, rule or ability) and, if they are good, seek to take out the head of the evil forces (the ‘Demon’), who will, in turn, slowly be picking off good players for death, with the help of its ‘Minions’.

Clocktower proceeds over a cycle that will be instantly familiar to Mafia/Werewolf fans. During ‘Day’, players discuss what information they may or may not have, point fingers, call for executions and, in some cases, use their abilities. By ‘Night’, the Demon and his minions lurk, attempt to kill players, whilst a variety of other special roles and abilities may be awakened and put to use, too.

It is, initially at least, a tremendous amount of information to absorb and remember for one individual, but Clocktower shrewdly provides a number of quality of life aids, from the aforementioned Grimoire, with inserts that run through the Storyteller’s duties in a step-by-step, night-by-night fashion, and a full character reference sheet for every player, so they can try and deduce which roles may or may not be in play (good and evil alike). For, unlike many other social deduction experiences, players do not even know which roles are in circulation in any given game (it is entirely up to the Storyteller to decide this at the outset) and, even when a player is killed, what their role or alignment was.

Another interesting wrinkle being that here, death is not the end. Whereas being killed in, say, Werewolf, would see a player essentially sat out of the rest of the game, their role exposed, in Clocktower deceased players continue to partake in all of the discussions – their role and allegiance safely secret – and even get one final ‘ghost’ vote on executions (more on which later).

It leaves Clocktower as a perpetual puzzle, right up to its climactic moments. Twists in the gameplay, such as ‘poisoning’ and ‘drunkenness’, can mute players’ abilities without them even realising, or allow the Storyteller to give information-seeking characters incorrect clues. More than any of its contemporaries, there is always doubt and suspicion circulating every claim and supposition of Clocktower, even your own.

For instance, let’s say you’ve drawn the ‘Fortune Teller’, an information-savvy character aligned with the good team. In the dead of night, when all other players are ‘asleep’, you have been awoken by the Storyteller. You point at two of your fellow players, and the Storyteller nods, revealing to you that one of the two whom you indicated are in fact the Demon; the essential role that your team must identify and execute. That’s great… only, you don’t know which of the two it is. And, even more than that, you can’t even really be sure that you can fully trust that nod you’ve just been given. A fiendish minion called ‘The Poisoner’ may be in play, and if they’ve targeted you earlier this round (which you won’t know) then the Storyteller can give you completely inaccurate information. Or perhaps you accidentally pointed at your ‘Red Herring’, a character that will register as the Demon to the Fortune Teller’s power, even though they aren’t. Or perhaps you stumbled upon the ‘Recluse’, an Outsider character who, whilst on the good team, can also incorrectly register as the Demon, should the Storyteller see fit.

Or maybe, just maybe, you are in fact ‘The Drunk’, a secret character that can be assigned at the start of the game, that means you aren’t even who you think you are, and certainly don’t access have that power (though the Storyteller, naturally, must act as if you do).

If it all sounds overwhelmingly complicated, then you’re witness to what is, in many ways, the genius of Blood on the Clocktower, and what makes for such an absorbing and almost endlessly replayable experience. Conventional social deduction titles can easily fall flat if a pivotal role falls in the hands of a less capable bluffer, or if one of the special characters gets off a lucky guess or target with their ability. Quarterbacking can easily creep in, when more confident or vocal players get certain powers or roles.

“If it all sounds overwhelmingly complicated, then you’re witness to what is, in many ways, the genius of Blood on the Clocktower…”

Here, the Storyteller routinely has tremendous leverage to balance a game that is heading too quickly or decisively in a particular direction, buoyed by the fact that there are no vanilla characters; everyone has some form of special rule or ability and, as just detailed with the Fortune Teller, you can never be completely certain that what information you do have is infallible.

Heck, even the pivotal, evil mastermind of the Demon is given access to three ‘good’ identities that aren’t in play that they can bluff as, as well as cheeky ways of avoiding their own death and thus ending the game. A particularly cunning Demon, for instance, can even kill themselves in the night phase to avert suspicion, in which case one of their minion teammates is promoted to the role. Or maybe they will choose to ‘kill’ an already dead player, meaning there is no fresh death that night, thus throwing the good characters into a state of confusion as to how and why.

More than pretty much any of its contemporaries, no two games of Blood on the Clocktower are remotely similar, and yet the anchor behind all of this does hinge on the game’s biggest potential caveat; namely, the importance of the Storyteller.

Firstly, disregard any notion that the Storyteller somehow gets an inferior, sidelined or truncated experience. It’s a devilishly fun role, and one that is extremely active throughout, with decisions regularly needing to be made on how much you help or hinder each team, as well as conducting pivotal moments such as the votes for executions that take place in each Day phase; the democratic voting process that is, in many instances, the good players’ only opportunity to kill those who they suspect may be evil players.

“…disregard any notion that the Storyteller somehow gets an inferior, sidelined or truncated experience. It’s a devilishly fun role, and one that is extremely active throughout…”

It is nonetheless a lot to absorb though, and, as solid a job as the Clocktower base set does in gradually introducing the elements of play for new Storytellers, in addition to the aforementioned visual aids and tokens, there will likely be a number of mistakes or oversights made in initial games particularly. Thankfully, given the variable and unpredictable nature of the game, these are often easy to mask or recover from. The breakthrough moment invariably comes, though, half a dozen or so games in, when, with the general ruleset and mechanics now understood, a Storyteller really awakens to the potential of the gleeful chaos and narrative possibilities they have, quite literally, at their fingertips.

There’s scope for plenty of player-induced skullduggery, too, for unlike many social deduction games, Clocktower actively encourages players to facilitate private discussions between themselves – including the Storyteller. Keen eyes – and keener ears – may be privy to plotting or secret information this way. Who isn’t going to raise an eyebrow when that person – you know, the one whom you are absolutely certain is up to no good – decides to cosy up in a corner and plot with your most trusted teammate.

And yet, there’s no avoiding the fact that the experience lands a heavy onus on the Storyteller role. There are, already, a number of websites and fan-made apps available that replace the need for much of the physical assistance that the Grimoire and its nest of tokens provides, but in truth, not only are these digital alternates fettered with errors and potentially game-breaking shortcut the tactile, the very manual nature of a physical copy of the game not only lends an extra layer of appeal and immersion to Clocktower, but physically manoeuvring the respective tokens, reminders and the like provides the best possible practice for new Storytellers getting to grips with roles and mechanics.

There’s a lot of content found in the base game, too. Three different game modes, beginning with the introductory Trouble Brewing, followed by the more adventurous and varied Bad Moon Rising and (the marvellously-named) Sects & Violets, each offers a completely separate rosters of characters, tokens, reference sheets and even character rulebooks. The starting mode, Trouble Brewing, has enough variety and diversity to get likely countless games from, whilst Rising and Violets not only introduce wildly different characters and Demons, but whole new mechanics, too, such as ‘madness’, which compels players to take actions they’d probably rather not. Then there’s the roster of Travellers & Fabled included, too, an additional set of extra powerful and even more unpredictable characters, that can be included in any of the three modes to expand the player count, or spice up proceedings when smaller groups start getting a bit too savvy or complacent.

The roster of ‘Fabled’, in particular, are an excellent inclusion, and should be an early read for all new Storytellers, including as they do, extra roles and rules that can make the game more accessible (including for those with cognitive/sensory impairments, disabilities or learning difficulties), more inclusive (such as roles that silence veterans for the opening minutes, or protect newcomers from early death), or simply deal with complications and frustrations. Issues catered for here include everything ranging from early leavers, truncated game times, and even those unruly few who refuse to stay quiet whilst you’re undertaking your essential Storyteller duties. Even the most bullish and vocal of flocks shall come to fear the wrath of a Storyteller aided by the ‘Hell’s Librarian’, whom, if you dare to speak over, can doll out instant punishment, and even death.

In regards to production value and finish, the various rulebooks, reference sheets and included accessories – such as a stand to rest the Grimoire upon, incredibly useful storage boxes to compartmentalise each mode, an accompanying fabric token bag – all help give the finished product, for the most part, a sense of real craft and artistry. The rulebooks in particular are beautifully characterful, doubly so when compared to their more rudimentary prototype versions. There are a couple of choices, such as the fact that the two halves of the Grimoire are held together with three provided binder clips (of all things), that feel decidedly less polished, though, and although there are clear improvements on some of the early prototype versions, there still remains some degree of concern as to how future-proof some of the felt-backed tokens may be; a couple were already threatening to peel apart when punched from their sprue.

It leaves appraising Blood on the Clocktower in relation to its not-insubstantial retail price tag of $145 (roughly £120) an especially contextual consideration. It’s a big, heavy and impressive chock of social deduction excellence. It’s as visual and atmospheric an experience as it is social and highly entertaining. Not including a modified free version for smaller player counts, you really need a minimum of 6 players (Storyteller included) to field it, though games of 7 or 8+ really provide the optimal experience. And of course, at least one of these whom must be able to be, or at least develop into, a half-competent Storyteller. If you can meet these numbers, you will doubtless get many hours of incredible, varied and highly memorable play out of Blood on the Clocktower, that will easily evaporate its hefty up-front cost.

Pushing aside cost, though, and for some the prohibitive player count requirements, and, if you are able to field it, you have in Blood on the Clocktower what is almost certainly the apex of social deduction gaming. It is the natural evolution of almost four decades of tabletop bluffing and backstabbery. Sure, there’s a lot to ponder and learn, but, by extension, this gives every player something to say and do, and crafts an experience where every role is important and potentially game-changing. It is an elaborate, engaging party game of almost breathless invention and tireless variety, an experience of deduction and accusation steeped in doubt and uncertainty, where every decision you make will be predicated with apprehension, where every action a fellow player takes will see you question their allegiance, all underpinned with a breadth of original and creative flourishes too numerous to mention here.

Some may perhaps quibble that a party game doesn’t need to be this big, this in-depth and complicated, or have this many options and characters to choose from, but to levy such an accusation at Clocktower would be to bypass its raison d’être entirely.

Anyone could be anything. Nothing is certain. Trust no one… including, potentially, even yourself.

It’s difficult, if not downright impossible, to name another social deduction experience that can make such claims so boldly, and have them so firmly ingrained into every element and aspect of its gameplay.

It is, quite simply, excellent, matchless ‘tabletop’ trickery.

Nearly four decades on from Mafia and Werewolf, a new claimant to the throne is come.

Long live Clocktower. May its reign be bloody.