I was putting my collection back together after redecorating over the weekend and noticed a distinct lack of worker placement games in my collection!
We’ve played (and enjoyed!) Architects of the West Kingdom and Tiny Epic Dinosaurs in the past, but both belong to a friends collection and don’t want to overlap with them.
What worker placement games do you own and enjoy?
Everdell has also some worker placement elements and is, overall, a really great game.
Lords of Waterdeep
Raiders of the North Sea
Paladins of the West Kingdom
It was my entry game too, so it holds a special place in my heart. The biggest downside to it for me is that there is almost no theme at all, so I don’t really play it anymore except to introduce to new people. Sure, it’s D&D themed, but it’s incredibly thin. To the point where it doesn’t need to be D&D and you could slap almost any other theme over it and it would work fine.
I really like A Feast for Odin with the Norwegian expansion.
Dune Imperium is great - it’s a mix of deck building and worker placement
Beyond the Sun has only 1 worker but it is a personal favorite of mine
Seconding Feast for Odin, the worker placement style combined with the Tetris puzzle and the feeding your people really makes for a great game
A couple recommendations:
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Dune: Imperium - Haven’t been able to play it yet but worth checking out
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Viticulture Essential Edition with the Tuscany Essential Edition expansion
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Targi - 2 players only
In the realm of worker placement/action drafting games, I think Rosenberg is king, and of his WP games, O&L is the only one ** I’ve kept for multiple years now. The decision space for what to do on any given turn (especially late game) is absolutely massive is part of that reason. Also, kudos to @lolzy_mcroflmao for not wanting to overlap across friend groups. We do the same thing in our household.
If 2p is a requirement, then I would suggest The Colonists by Tim Pulz and once you play it once, start in era 3. It’s a longer game in general though, but I find it’s a much better 2p experience for the same proverbial question.
** (I have Rosenberg’s newest Canal game, but it just arrived and I haven’t played it yet. Also, I don’t really consider Glass Road a WP game which is why it didn’t make the list).
Since you explicitly mentioned it - in your opinion, is the Tuscany expansion for Viticulture really essential (pun intended)? I only played the base game so far, sometimes also with the Rhine Valley expansion cards. Doesn’t Tuscany only add more complexity?
I feel like the game without the expansion is a 7.5/10 and with the expansion is a 9/10. The new board really opens up the game.
The expansion comes with several modules and you can side them out if you think they add too much complexity or randomness (I hate the orange deck). I think I only play with the map and don’t feel like it adds that much complexity.
I actually don’t have a lot of worker placements either, but the one I do have, I really enjoy and recommend: Yokohama. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/196340/yokohama/
I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, but I think it’s interesting that the workers also act as the paths that your president can move through to activate a space, so you have to balance placing your workers in places you want to eventually produce while also placing them in tiles that will let you travel to your target space.
Simultaneously, having more workers on a space when it is activated gives higher return, so there are interesting decisions regarding waiting to activate a space when you have more workers on it or activating it early to get the resource you need.
There are quite a few more smaller mechanics that are nice additions. For example, there are also some race mechanics that give you a small incentive to be the first to activate a space, research technologies to make production more efficient, and building mechanics. All work together to make a great experience.