Last Will - Spend all your money!

Last Will is a Worker Placement/Card game with a darkly comic theme. Your rich Uncle has died and left you a token amount of money to spend. The relation who spends this money quickest inherits the rest of the fortune.

The game follows up to 5 players exploits as they race around town spending money as quickly as possible.

The first phase of the game is a bidding section which determines turn order, drawing of new cards and the number of workers you can place in the next phase.

The second phase consists of placing your workers on spots to gain more cards, extend your player board, manipulate the property market and a few other options.

The third phase allows you to use actions to play cards or activate already played cards. This generally costs you money and is the main goal of the game.

The cards come in different types, one off 'event' cards which are played and then discarded (such as a boat trip or an expensive dinner with your dog). Black bordered cards are generally kept in front of you and either have an ongoing ability or an activated event. Finally there are property cards which allow you to purchase different types of real estate. You can either allow buildings to fall into disrepair, then sell them at a huge loss, or you can spend a regular fee each round to maintain them.

The game is played over seven rounds and whoever spends the most (or gets rid of his money first) wins.

The components are nice, each player gets a board which holds their cards and allows them to track actions. Each player gets 2 workers in the form of wooden top-hats. The cards are OK quality, nothing amazing but the artwork is top notch and some of the illustrations are very funny. This adds to the theme quite a bit.

As with other worker placement games, your strategy can be blocked by other players taking up space on the board, so positioning in the first phase is quite important and also you should have a back-up plan in case your first strategy can't be completed. This makes the first phase quite exciting because you need to work out how many actions you need, and also how many you can get away with, if you don't get the number you initially wanted.

Playing the cards themselves is the main part of the game, this allows you to spend money and get you closer to the goal of bankrupting yourself. Most cards require actions to complete although some are free to activate. I found the actions to be the limiting part of the game and it was fun working out what the best card combinations were for the number of actions I had.

I also found it quite entertaining working out the best way to spend money, there seems to be a few different strategies which work equally well. I bought 2 buildings early on and let them fall into disrepair, while at the same time I had a standing reservation at a fancy restaurant, with a snooty waiter on call - that I never went to! Tom had fun going on multiple boat trips, with his dog, his companion and a chef and someone else held a thunderously extravagant ball which went on for ages and was really expensive!

In the end we only played 6 of the 7 rounds, as Tom spent the last of his money while we still had a bit left. It seemed to be quite close at the end, I think the other players were really close to spending the final part of their initial allowance.

The downside to this game is it's iconography, each special action card has it's own icon which resulted in us checking the rulebook a few times. Also there isn't much interaction, the main conflict is in the bidding phase and worker placement. Length was about right for me (about 2 hours for 5 players, including teaching).

I liked the money which are cardboard chits, they could have skimped and included horrible paper money, I'm glad they didn't. The theme really comes through and is quite entertaining. I enjoyed this game and would recommend giving it a try if you like worker placement and card play.

RikTheChief wrote:Your rich Uncle has died and left you a token amount of money to spend. The relation who spends this money quickest inherits the rest of the fortune.

Am I the only one who instantly thought of Brewster's Millions?

I've heard this game explained before on various podcasts and never had much interest. Other reviewers made it sound tedious and unoriginal, and mostly skirted over the theme. But Rik's report has intrigued me, definitely to the extent that I'd like to give it a go eventually. It sounds like wholeheartedly embracing the theme would really add to the enjoyment of the game.

Thanks for the review, Rik.

Colonial Andy wrote:

RikTheChief wrote:Your rich Uncle has died and left you a token amount of money to spend. The relation who spends this money quickest inherits the rest of the fortune.

Am I the only one who instantly thought of Brewster's Millions?

No, you really are not

Have played it. Not a bad little worker placement game. Seemed to be a few options. Not too dry. Wasn't quite sure about how it all fitted together as a package but lots good about it and deserves to be given a chance.