Last Will: The Deal

Hi! It’s Ryan from Nights Around a Table, and this is Last Will, a worker placement, set-collecting, economic management game for 2-5 players. Here’s The Deal.

In Last Will, you and your friends have a rich, Victorian-era uncle who has recently died. In his will, the uncle expressed regrets about not enjoying his fortune to the fullest, so he’s bequeathed you all a small amount of dough to burn through as frivolously as possible; the player who spends all that money the fastest will inherit the lion’s share of your uncle’s money. And yes, before you ask, this IS the exact premise of Brewster’s MIllions.

In order to blow your wad as quickly and irresponsibly as possible, you’ll be going out to dinner, taking boat rides, and chumming around with some right deplorable people, as well as buying property for the sole purpose of trashing it and selling it at a loss. If you can find a way to bring a few friends or animals along for the ride, you’ll burn through your uncle’s money more quickly. The game lasts up to 7 rounds, and the player to run up the deepest debt without owning any property is the winner.

A round consists of a few different phases. In clockwise order from the starting player, everyone picks a turn order slot, which may give them extra cards, workers to place, and actions to take in a later phase. After that comes the worker placement phase where, in the turn order that’s been established, you place your errand boy top hats on various spots on the board to pick up more cards, fiddle with real estate prices, blow a bit of cash at the opera, or extend your player board.

After that, you spend the actions you gained on the turn order track to either fritter away your uncle’s money on one-off day trips on these white-bordered cards, or commit the black-bordered cards to your player board to build a longer-term engine, to help you lose money faster. After everyone has spent their actions, if no one is in debt yet, you tidy everything up, discard down to two cards, take your pieces back, deal out fresh cards, and advance the marker for another round.

And now you’re ready to play! If you’d like to know more about how to play, click the link at the end of this video or in the description below to watch my complete How to Play video, which includes the setup segment you just watched. And if you like what i’m doing, click the badge to subscribe, and the bell to get notifications. And now, we dance!