Luthier

• Designers:  Dave Beck, Abe Burson
• Publisher:  Paverson Games
• Developer:  Richard Woods
• Solo Designers:  David Digby, Richard Woods
• Artists:  Vincent Dutrait, Guillaume Tavernier
• Players:  1-4
• Age:  14+
• Duration:  2-4 hours
• Times Played:  2

We’re here to talk about the new game Luthier, but first, a couple of questions.  The first is, what exactly is a luthier?  If you don’t know, don’t feel bad—I didn’t either until the game came out.  Turns out it’s a person who constructs stringed instruments (particularly violins), and that’s just what we’re doing here, although the game does extend the definition to include wind, percussion, keyboard, and percussion instruments as well.  The second question is, how the hell is the word pronounced?  Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any agreement on that.  It’s a French word and apparently the French pronounce it loo-thee-AY.  I’ve seen two English pronunciations, either LOO-tee-er (since the word comes from “lute”, the stringed instrument—this seems to be the pronunciation favored by classical music buffs) or LOO-thee-er (since that’s the way the word is spelled).  I’d say just pick one and use it.

Anyway, this game with multiple possible pronunciations is one of the hot new titles.  It’s actually been available in Britain for a couple of months, but the Kickstarter copies just hit the States recently.  I got the chance to play it a couple of times last month, so I thought I’d post my first impressions, together with a summary of how it’s played.

Luthier cranks up the Wayback Machine all the way to the 17^th through 19^th centuries, during the Golden Age of Classical Music.  The players represent families of musical craftsmen duking it out to make their reputation.  The time period predates the rise of the middle-class, so it was essential for a craftsman to find a patron to support them, in exchange for doing requested tasks.  That’s one of the main features of the game, so you’ll be building instruments, and even repairing and performing on them, all to satisfy your demanding patrons and obtain prestige.  At the end of six rounds, the player with the most prestige wins the game.

A bird’s eye view of the starting position, including the central board

The setup time for the game is less than we’ve seen for many modern titles.  There are four decks of cards—for patrons, instruments, performances, and repairs—and each deck is shuffled and an initial display is dealt out for each one.  Each player is then given two patron cards, two instrument cards, and two family tiles (in each case, they choose one to keep), as well as four personal goal cards (they choose two to keep).  The family tiles dictate what money and resources the player starts with; it also determines the initial player order.

Workin’ Blind

Luthier is a worker placement game, with the players’ workers being the members of their family.  Each worker is a chip of the player’s color with a number from 1 to 5 on its top.  These numbers are the worker’s skill level, with the higher numbers representing more skilled workers.  At the start of the game, each player begins with their Level 1, 3, and 5 workers.  Later on, they will acquire their 2 and 4 workers.  In each round, you take an action for each of your workers and those are the only actions you get.  So over the course of the game, you’ll be taking 3, 4, or 5 actions per round.  It all adds up to only 24 actions for the entire game to accomplish all of your goals.  No pressure!

The numbered disks at the top are your workers; the bottom shows a player board

There are seven locations where you can place your workers, in order to carry out actions.  Five of them are on the main board and are available to all players; two of them are on your player board and are available only to you (so you can’t place your workers on the locations on an opponent’s player board).  Figuring out how, and when, to utilize these actions is the heart of the game.

Left side of the main board, showing the Patron (Salon), Perform, and Balcony locations

Right side of the main board, showing the Instrument (Guild) and Repair locations

Each round is made up of two phases:  a Planning Phase, when you place your workers; and a Resolution Phase, when the locations are activated one at a time.  In the Planning Phase, the players, in player order, take turns placing one of their workers.  They choose a location and place one of their unplayed workers there.  The worker is placed face down, so that their skill level is hidden.  In addition to their worker, the player has the opportunity to add some apprentice chips, up to the number that they own (players can never own more than 3 apprentices).  Each apprentice adds 1 to the skill level of the worker at that location.  Players are allowed to add their chips to a location where an opponent has previously placed; in that case, they place their chips on top of the pile.  Players are also allowed to place more than one worker at the same location.

After all the players have placed their workers, the Resolution Phase begins.  In player order, each player either selects one location where they have a worker, or goes to the Market.  If a location is chosen, all the workers that were placed there are revealed.  Each player with a worker there carries out an action at that location.  The player with the highest skilled worker (including taking apprentices into account) goes first, followed by the next highest worker, and so on.  In case of ties, the player who placed their worker earlier goes first amongst the tied players.

If a player chooses to go to the Market, they have the opportunity to buy and sell resources, buy apprentices (as long as they have fewer than the maximum number of 3), or even gain player abilities (for a stiff price).  There are three resources in the game:  animal (think bone, catgut, or horsehair), wood, and metal.  The price for these is randomly determined at the beginning of each round, although the range of possible prices for each one is fairly narrow.  Resources are needed in order to build or repair instruments.  Each player can only go to the Market once per round.

The Market, together with a card showing that round’s price for the animal, wood, and metal material cubes.  The horse and carriage tokens are moved to the opposite side to show that a player has visited the market that round.

The resources.  Top row shows the three denominations of coins.  Middle row is a Metal material token and an Inspiration token.  Bottom row is an Animal and a Wood material token.

So what about the actions the players can carry out at the locations?  Those are really the crux of the game.  One of the most significant ones is the Patron location (which is on the main board) and since patrons have such a key role in Luthier, it’s high time we discussed them.

It Pays to Please Your Patron

Each patron card lists from 1 to 3 requirements.  One of these requirements is always constructing a type of instrument (either a stringed, wind, or percussion/keyboard one).  If there are any others, the player is given some choice about a type of instrument construction or a type of repair or performance.  The card also shows two gifts the patron can bestow, which can be money, resources, apprentices, or inspiration (tokens which can be used as money, but which have other purposes I’ll discuss in a bit).  Finally, each card has a reward for the player who satisfies all of its requirements.

Clockwise from the upper left:  A Patron card, an Instrument card, a Repair card, and a Performance card

When a player acquires a patron card, they place it in one of three spaces on their player board.  Each space gives the player something when it is filled—money, a resource cube, or an apprentice.  At the beginning of each round, players advance a patience token along a track for each patron they have.  The first two times this happens, the player receives the gift shown on the first (or second) spot on patron card (the first one is always greater, reflecting the patron’s higher enthusiasm).  If the token advances a third time, though, the patron is out of patience and is so P.O.’d with the player that they leave their display and the player loses prestige for each requirement they didn’t fill.  The way to avoid that fate is to fulfill the patron’s requirements.  Every time the player does that, the patience token is reset back to its initial spot, giving the player both more time and the prospect of continued gifts.

Another view of the player board.  The three Patron slots (together with their Patience tracks beneath them) are on the upper right; the Roughing Bench is on the lower left; and the Finishing Bench is on the lower right.

So it’s all about meeting those requirements.  To give the players even greater incentive, they receive prestige points if they fulfill all of the patron’s requirements, along with a special ability that they can use for the rest of the game, as specified on the card.

The location where patrons can be acquired will have a number of cards equal to the number of players.  Only about half of them can be taken for free; the others will cost money.  There is also an alternate action available at this location (in this case, it lets the player take an apprentice and some extra inspiration).  The alternate action might be useful, but the real reason it’s there is that the patron the player had their eye on might have been taken by another player (remember, the workers are placed face down, so you can’t be sure in what order you’ll be choosing in each location).  Finally, there is an additional reward if the worker you place has a minimum skill level.  For example, at the Patron location, if you place a worker with a skill of at least 4, you can move a patron’s patience token one space backwards and gain any of their gifts.

You Can Make ‘em, You Can Play ‘em, and You Can Fix ‘em

The Instrument, Performance, and Repair locations have much in common with the Patron location.  Each is on the main board, each has a display with a number of their location-specific cards equal to the number of players, about half of these are free, there’s an alternate action, and there are rewards for workers with high skill levels.  The differences come mostly with how you execute the cards you acquire at each location.

Instrument cards need to be constructed.  This is a two-step process—first you must do a rough construction on your roughing bench, then you finish the construction on your finishing bench.  The benches are the two locations on your player board and can be activated with workers just as with the main board locations.  Each bench has room for two instrument cards.  Every instrument cards states what resources are needed to complete each of the two steps.

When you construct an instrument by paying the resources at the finishing bench, you get to place it in the Orchestra.  This is an area of the board that has room for 16 instrument types.  There are three rows, for the three instrument classes (string, wind, and percussion/keyboard) and three vertical areas, for the three musical eras covered by the game (Baroque, Classical, and Romantic).  So, for example, there’s an area for Baroque Wind instruments.  There are 1-3 boxes in each area, with each one dedicated to a specific instrument.  There are two cards for most of the instruments in the deck.  If you are the first player to construct a type of instrument, you can place one of your tokens in the First Chair portion of its box.  This gives the player an award and is worth prestige points at the end of the game.  If there is already a player’s token in that box, your token goes in the lower part of the box, giving you a lesser award.  However, there are circumstances where you can kick other player’s tokens out of the First Chair portion and claim it for yourself.

The orchestra midway through the game. Those big hunks of wood may look like Ack-Ack guns, but they’re actually the instrument tokens showing which player has First Chair for that instrument.

When you acquire a Performance card, you roll two special dice to see how well your performance went.  You add the sum of your roll to the skill level of the worker you used to acquire the card to come up with a total.  Then, consult the performance card you took.  Each one lists three ranges for the total, along with the award for achieving a performance of that level.  After the dice are rolled, the player has the option of paying one or more Inspiration tokens—each such token raises the total by one.  Players can acquire abilities to improve their chances of performing well, including rerolling dice and getting to use dice with more pips.

The Performance dice.  The white dice are the standard ones, the black dice are the improved ones, and if you gain the ability to also roll the purple die, you get additional materials, money, or prestige when you perform.

Some patrons have requirements which can be met by performing.  However, the performance must fall in the second or third range in order to qualify.  Any performance in those ranges also allows the player to place a token in the Orchestra.  They can even be used to take First Chair, but if another player constructs an instrument in the same category, they’ll kick out the performance token.

Finally, when you acquire a Repair card, you must pay the resources indicated on the card in order to make the repair.  As with performances, repairs can be used to satisfy some Patron requirements.  They also let the player place a token in the Orchestra, under the same restrictions as performance tokens.

The fifth location on the main board is called the Balcony.  Placing a worker at the Balcony lets you take one of three actions and even though none of them help you with your Patrons, they’re all pretty sweet.  You can either take 6 money, take 2 of your apprentices, or claim a Public Award.  We haven’t talked about the Public Awards yet, but these are achievements that are revealed at the start of the game (such as completing Patrons or constructing instruments).  There are three numerical levels for each Award and when you go to the Balcony, you can choose to claim one of the levels for prestige.  Each level can only be claimed by a single player, so this can be a bit of a race.  Claiming a level also lets you unlock an ability on your board, which you’ll have for the rest of the game.

Just as important, when you go to the Balcony, you can adjust the turn order.  After each round, the turn order is adjusted by letting the player who went to the Balcony with the highest skill level go first, followed by the next highest skilled player who went there, and so on.  Turn order can be really critical in this game, so that’s definitely a good reason to check out this location.

There are also three tracks in the game you can move up on, usually through the high skill rewards.  The tracks are for Performance Skill (which gives you things like rerolls and better dice when performing), Craft Skill (which includes things like letting you do two roughing or finishing actions with a single worker), and Reputation (which includes letting you take more cards for free from the displays or getting additional prestige whenever you finish an instrument).  There are some powerful abilities here and they can really benefit a player who chooses to specialize in an area.

There are a few other details that I’ve glossed over, but those are the major ones.  The game ends after 6 rounds have been played.  The players then score endgame prestige points based on the number of their tokens which occupy First Chairs in the Orchestra, any endgame points from their completed Patrons, points from their Personal Goal cards, and a few other miscellaneous sources.  The player with the highest prestige wins.

So, Is It Sweet Music or a Sad Trombone?

I’ve played Luthier twice, both times with 4 players.  The first time, we only had time for about half a game before we had to stop.  The second time, we managed to finish, although it took us a full four hours.  I’d expect that duration to come down with experience, but I’d still assume 45 minutes per player.

It’s not that hard a game to learn.  I’d put it in a similar category as Endeavor: Deep Sea—reasonably meaty games where the rules explanations aren’t too long.

In many ways, the game wasn’t what I expected it to be.  Mechanically, it’s quite straightforward—just place your workers and resolve the different locations.  And yet, thanks to the skill system and the varied effects at the locations, there was more to think about than I first supposed.  At the start of my first game, I wasn’t really sure how to proceed, and, paradoxically, I liked that—it was an indicator that the game had some depth.

There was also the thought that, because of the need to satisfy the patrons’ requirements, and the stiff penalties for not doing so, this might be a harsh and unforgiving game.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  There are a lot of different ways of getting things done.  Once you understand the location abilities, as well as the bennies the patrons and location tracks can give you, you realize that you can accomplish quite a bit with your tiny number of actions.  The challenge then becomes figuring out what the optimal actions are and sequencing them properly in order to score the most points.  But even if you make some blunders, there really isn’t anything like a death spiral here.

One of the things I was worried about after reading the rules was the blind placement of the workers.  Since you can’t be sure when your worker will be activated—other players might pile on top of you after you place and wind up going ahead of you—I was somewhat concerned that the level of control in the game would be lessened.  I needn’t had worried.  Yes, this isn’t my favorite aspect of the game, but honestly, given the way the skill system is implemented, I don’t see how else they could have designed it.  Placing the workers face up could have really ramped up the Analysis Paralysis and would have put the players going early in the turn order at a considerable disadvantage.  The only other option would have been to have the players program their turns secretly at the start of each round, but I very much doubt that the benefits of that would have been worth the effort.  So they made the right choice and, more to the point, it doesn’t affect the game nearly as much as I was afraid it might.  You go in with your eyes open, you know a high skilled worker will usually be able to accomplish what you want, and you try to have a backup plan if things go sideways.  The fact that each location has an alternate action certainly helps and was an excellent design choice.

An additional chaotic effect is that you don’t know the order in which the locations will be resolved.  It’s entirely possible that a player’s master plan might require Location A happening before Location B, but another player might choose to resolve Location B early on (either deliberately to mess with the player, or just because they need it to happen now).  I can see where this could hurt a player, but since everyone knows it’s a possibility, taking steps to avoid it or minimizing its effect if it does happen seems prudent.  It certainly had an effect on how I planned for my turns at times, but I didn’t view it as a negative, just another factor to take into account.

No, rather than those things, what winds up having a much greater effect on the strategies (at least in our games) is focusing on the high skill rewards, usually for placing workers of at least skill level 4.  These let you do a lot of cool things and make specializing in certain activities more attractive.  They’re definitely a nice way of getting maximum bang for your action buck, so you would often plan your turn around where you wanted to place those high skill workers (possibly with apprentice support) and then work out the rest of your turn to best support that.

It all adds up to a satisfying game experience.  The attractive and unusual theme certainly helps.  I honestly don’t know a great deal about the music from that period, but I am a musician, so even for me, the theme adds to my enjoyment.  The game features a ton of thematic elements, so the theme does shine through, even though a bunch of liberties were taken with the history of the period.  In particular, the relationship between the players and their patrons is portrayed with some accuracy and it’s a very sound foundation for a game.  And even though you might be able to accomplish many of your goals without worrying too much about what your opponents are doing, you’d be foolish to ignore them.  Luthier is far from being multi-player solitaire.

I can’t say there’s too much that’s innovative here.  Having workers of varying abilities isn’t typical, but neither is it all that unusual.  Placing your workers with their skills hidden might well be unique, but as I mentioned, it has less of an effect than you might think, as long as you’re careful.  The patrons feel different, but in game terms, they act much like contracts and we’ve seen games where you get a benefit simply by adding a contract to your display (Nucleum is one of them).  So there’s nothing that blows you away with its originality, but the combination of things is unusual, and the way they strongly relate to the theme adds considerably to the game’s appeal.  (For example, the patrons act just how you think they should, whereas if they were mere contracts, the benefits and penalties would make little sense.)  The game may not be that different, but it feels different, and that’s probably more important.

There was one thing that held back my enthusiasm a bit at first.  It seems as if it’s hard to come up with an overall approach to the game because so much information is hidden from you.  Even with the full number of players, there’s only four cards in each display and, at most, two of them will be available next round.  So if you’re trying to figure out what you should be planning for next turn, you may not have much to go on.  That might mean Luthier is largely a tactical game, which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but many people might prefer more strategy.  However, during my second game, I embraced the turn-to-turn aspect and found it worked out just fine.  You check out which cards are available, figure out how you want to achieve that turn’s goals (again, there’s so many ways of accomplishing things that you’re usually able to come up with some plan), take your opponents’ likely actions into account, and put things into effect.  It didn’t detract from my enjoyment, but if you like games that allow you to do a lot of planning, that might be a red flag for you.

As I mentioned earlier, both of my games had 4 players. With 3 players, you remove some spaces from the board, but otherwise, it plays much like the 4-player game does. The solitaire game uses an AI. The 2-player game uses some tiles to cover up spaces on the board and quite a few cards are removed from the decks. Other than that, it’s the standard game, although they do give you the option of using the AI as a dummy player and using the 3-player rules instead.

As you can see from the pictures I’ve shown you, Luthier is a big, opulent game and the components fit that standard.  The central board is enormous, so make sure you have a big table, but as a result, all the information is presented in a clear and easy-to-read fashion.  The cards are also attractive and well designed.  The artwork on both of those is excellent throughout, just as you’d expect from Vincent Dutrait, and it very much matches the time period of the game.  In the Kickstarter version I played with, the materials are definitely overproduced (for example, the metal material tokens actually are made of metal, instead of just being colored wooden cubes), but that’s what we’ve come to expect from KS products—I doubt anyone will complain about it.  So overall, it’s a first-rate physical production.  The rules are pretty good as well.  They’re not always consistent with their terminology, but there’s a bunch of examples provided and it’s fairly easy to learn to play the game from reading the rulebook, which, sadly, is not always the case these days.  So thumbs up for that.

So what do I think of the game?  I really like it.  The theme is a good one, planning how to place your differently numbered workers is a nice challenge (without it being too brain-burny), and the many benefits you can obtain from your patrons, the tracks, and your high-skill workers give the game a positive feel.  Since so much depends on what your patrons want, and since they come out in a random order, I suspect the game will have good replayability.  I don’t think it’s necessarily a great game, but it’s a very good one and a title that should appeal to a lot of different kinds of players.

In summary, Luthier is a meaty, sumptuous looking game with a very strong and attractive theme.  It’s easier to learn than most games of its weight, but there still seems to be some good depth.  The “blind” worker placement system works well and is not as capricious as it first seems.  It appears to be largely tactical, with multiple paths to victory.  It’s not a short game and if you’re limited for time, I could see where this might play better with 3 players than with 4.  Even with that number, don’t assume you’re going to be able to polish this off too quickly, at least at first.  Some of us lack the patience to sit through an entire opera and if you feel the same way about longish games, this might not be a title to fiddle around with.  But if the time investment doesn’t frighten you, there’s a lot to like about Luthier.  No matter how you choose to pronounce it.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (1 play):  I am not generally a fan of the modern style of heavy Euros, but this game, while definitely in that mold, has a much cleaner design than most such games which makes it more to my tastes: players are not confronted with a sea of cards and tokens, all with little bonus extras requiring players to optimize long action chains to accomplish anything. In Luthier, the focus is squarely on the few actions you are taking each round with your workers – you get some bonuses from patrons and whatnot, which are, of course, important, but there are just enough to make things interesting. That being said, it’s still on the long side for the amount of game, for my tastes, so I am not sure how much I will want to play it, but I am willing to play again, which is more than I can say for many similar games.

Alison Brennan:  In many ways this is a game of hope. Hoping the cards revealed this round match your contract (patron) requirements. Hoping that you placed meeples in an action zone with enough strength to get the cards you need (to satisfy your contract) – not many cards come out each round and there’s no replenishment. Hoping other people don’t need to collect the same things as you. But it’s also straightforward. Collect contracts. Get resources. Spend resources to build instruments (3 actions to collect, frame, build) or repair instruments (one action) to help satisfy a contract. Or roll dice (a performance action) to help satisfy a contract. Everything delivers points along the way, and there are private and public goals to give direction. But downtime is a factor – there’s so much risk with each action re what you’ll get, you need to be very careful with the planning phase (where meeples are assigned to actions but strength is hidden), ensuring you have alternate plans if things don’t pan out how you’d like. But somehow the downtime didn’t bug me as much as other recent games – partly due to the theme (which I adore), partly because each action has weight rather than just being one of many churn actions. I enjoyed the game, but that 3+ hour timeframe may well hinder replay.

Alan How:  I was an all-in Kickstarter backer. I’ve played the game several times now, all at three player counts. I’m not seeking to play at 2 or 4 players, as three player games have provided the right balance for me between competition and time to play. At the other player counts, I feel this equilibrium would be disturbed.

The game has been a major success for me and those I have played with. Like Larry, I had concerns that the hidden worker placement aspects would lower my enjoyment, but it had no bearing – if anything I found the game process worked admirably. 

Excellent game elements that gelled for me were:

• The theme, as it all fits together well.
• The low overhead of learning the game, but the challenging decisions.
• The player interaction, not just from placing workers, but from achieving first chairs and the major targets.
• The wide range of choices and the sequencing of carrying out actions. As has been mentioned, you have to bear in mind this might not work well for you, but forewarned is forearmed.
• The presentation, which is wonderful (and the game mat is enormous, but so beautiful).

Specific rules have been well crafted. 

• There are several rules that allow players to overcome issues through better planning or because of cleverly designed rules. 

• I like the fact that you can visit the market once a round to overcome shortfalls of resources and even play the market as you know the range of prices on offer. I thought this rule really enhanced the game experience – it’s possibly the best rule in the game.

• The way cash and inspiration can be used to pay for or boost actions works well and dovetailing that with moving along the improvement tracks means you can really make progress quickly in later rounds.

• Apprentices are a great way of providing more high value progress options and need to be part of the planning process players make each round.

• Finally, you can use an apprentice to gather a missing item. It’s not guaranteed to be a perfect match but gets you out of a hole, though it is expensive to do this.

Game experiences

• In some of my games, players experimented with multiple patrons to satisfy providing more resources, but trying to keep them all happy. It worked most of the time. I like the fact that different approaches are possible. (For me, a bit like the one or many rocket builds in Galactic Cruise.) 

• In my first few games, some areas didn’t look like promising avenues to explore, but now all areas appear similarly attractive as knowledge has increased about how to make progress and the value of each area. I now look for what’s coming up on other people’s turns. 

• And in three player games, players are often out of synch with one another, so the competition isn’t always for the same options. Towards the game end, player order can have a big bearing, but this is another one of those things to be wary about.

Not surprisingly, I’ve really enjoyed every aspect of the games I’ve played and appreciated games more as I gather more ways to consider what to achieve. The time frame has gradually reduced with experienced players, while the range of choices has remained high. I don’t see this ever leaving my collection.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

I love it:  Alison, Alan
I like it:  Larry, Dale Y
Neutral:  Dan B. (but, y’know, a high neutral)
Not for me: