Luthier

Luthier was my FOMO purchase of the month, and I completely understand why it catches the eye. It is a beautiful, thematic production, steeped in the wave of great classical-music works from another era. On the table it is gorgeous, but also an optical endurance test: colours, icons, and little bits everywhere. Not exactly a welcoming sight for tired eyes and multifocal glasses.

At its core, the game mixes racing, tableau building, and area majority, with enough resource management to keep me constantly occupied. The sense of progression is satisfying and, despite the sheer amount of stuff in front of me, the gameplay felt fairly streamlined.

Players race in parallel to build the strongest position, use their resources well, and gain ground wherever majority matters. Interaction comes mainly from that pressure of the race and the contest for space, rather than from direct attacks; however, character and goal choices can dramatically affect how competitive each player is able to be.

On my first play, that was precisely my major objection. The craftsmen’s asymmetric powers felt alarmingly uneven, as though nobody had gone through the obvious stage of saying, “let’s play the game before printing it.” When, for three hours, I feel like the poor relation because of the violin-maker I happened to draw at the beginning, all that Trickerion-like stimulation of the decision-making centre loses some of its magic. The lack of control over, or ability to predict, the end-game scoring cards can also create some very ugly BLTG moments. In a short game I might swallow that more easily; here, not so much.

Even so, I cannot ignore how full and enjoyable it is when everything falls into place. The first play left me disappointed, with a pile of new arrivals staring at me accusingly. The second one brought me back around: I now consider it probably the strongest gameplay package among this season’s lavish euros, ahead of Seti, Planta Nubo, and Thebai. If you can stomach the price, it deserves a place on your shelf.

Updated session

The second play was plainly better than the first. We all had a clearer idea of what the game wanted from us and did not end up with random character and goal choices, so the race for first place was fair and decided by a few points. My initial concerns about imbalance did not disappear, but the experience improved enough that Luthier stopped being merely the disappointing FOMO purchase of the moment.