It’s a competition to find out who’s the best at holding their nerves, and their construction materials.

Its spills are hilarious, offloading the burden of cleanup to some other poor sucker, and although its risks are soaring and mighty, they’re adequately compensated when achieved. Now place one of each of the different coloured girders however you like, as long as each of the supports has at least one girder touching it. My sense of control usually fades when things don’t go as planned, but when it does, it does feel rewarding.However, it that piece never makes it to the floor and stays clinging onto the structure, things are okay, and you keep your certificate. Once the active player places their building material or worker from the supply, they pass the Rescue Hook to the next player. I can imagine a situation in which some stacking aficionado, probably clad in a turtleneck with short sleeves — to eliminate the chances of brushing the tower with his cuff, you see — turns to me at a stuffy dinner party and says, in an affected accent from nowhere in particular, “It’s about the stacking, my good man. At the start of each turn, you turn over the card on the top of the pile to reveal the instructions. Men at Work fits the bill perfectly: easy to learn, cards that can be read and understood by my 6 year old and a level of difficulty that means nobody is immune to screwing up and bringing a fledgling building site crumbling.

Well, not so much – you’re going to be asked to do some things that are not quite standard building procedure. Compete to construct a tower while avoiding accidents and maybe, just maybe, becoming Employee of the Month. But if you’re the first to acquire a certain number of awards, you also win, urging you to throw caution to the wind. Players take on the role of construction workers, trying to safely build their piece of the structure. But, you also have to impress Rita, the boss, with your productivity if you want to be made Employee of the Month.

After all, Men at Work is a dexterity game, so the difficulty comes from placing the pieces on the construction site. It’s a little ghoulish at times, especially after an entire square dancing line of hot men has plummeted to their deaths. After all, future generations will be able to look at the sky where their toppled skyscraper should have been. Players take turns placing pieces -with one hand only – and the precarious structure grows ever-bigger. Men at Work is a brilliant fun dexterity game with great wooden components that fit perfectly their designated trays within the box.

I think the reason being is I feel like I have my own fate in my hands, and that I have a sense of control.

You must balance workers on the girders and, to make things even more nerve racking, your builders may have to carry little wooden bricks or wooden beams on their shoulders. I had my doubts, but I knew enough about the theme and gameplay that I went in prepared to cause accidents and watch other people have to clean up my mess. Instead, let’s talk about why Rita Modl’s Men at Work is one of the world’s perfectest stacking games ever.

Men at Work is indeed their project that seems more non-gamer friendly, and it works for what it does. It also has the right amount of charm to not make you feel too crushed when you ruin all the impressive work you and your opponents have built together. Introducing so much variation gives this game a decent amount replay value – something most stacking games can't boast! In either case, I usually have lots of fun with them, even if I don’t win which happens more times than not.

Once the pieces are set up, the deck of cards is shuffled with Boss Rita placed within the top quarter of the deck (more about Boss Rita later). I’m telling you, the accidents are the best part of Men at Work, rivaled only by the moment leading up to an accident, where everyone around the table anticipates watching the active player fail miserably at their seemingly impossible task.