Board Games 101: What is a Worker Placement Game?
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2024
- Professor Ryan teaches the "worker placement" board game mechanic in its most basic form, and recommends some games the exemplify and innovate on the idea.
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Great video to introduce worker placement!
Some of my current favorite worker placement games are: Viticulture, Dinosaur Island, Lords of Waterdeep, Champions of Midgard, & Rajas of the Ganges
I like worker placement quite a bit, but I really like different takes on it:
Trickerion: adding action points to worker placement.
Anachrony: Put a worker in a worker to put on a space. Meta-worker placement. *drool*
Euphoria: using dice as workers (also found in Bora Bora IIRC) and the bump mechanic (also in Charterstone and The Gallerist) to get your workers back
On Mars: just started playing recently but using workers to activate and/or boost actions is neat, and needing to plan which side of the map you are on to open different actions is great
Yeah - bumping's very cool. IF you like dice worker placement, try Alien Frontiers. Poo on Starling Games for a thousand years, but the game itself is good.
I'm here because I am designing a worker placement game and I wanted to collect ideas on how to not make it be "first player wins". Giving each player different winning conditions really helps, so that each player has incentive to place at different places than their opponents. I'm also using a limitation of how far a worker can be moved from the last place they were placed.
Yeah - secret goals and unlockable endgame scoring conditions are tried and true methods to keep final scores somewhat of a surprise by the end.
Your ever-evolving example game and dissection was really insightful and interesting for me to listen to even though most of the games I’ve played so far have been worker placement. I didn’t need to watch this to learn anything, but I’m still glad I did.
My favorite worker placement games are:
Caverna
Barrage
Carson City
Fields of Arle
Viticulture
Keyper
Raiders of the North Sea
Architects of the West Kingdom
Trickerion
Stone Age
Underwater Cities.
Trickerion! A woman after my own heart. Carson City and Underwater Cities are on my “want” list for sure. (Maybe i just have a thing for cities...?)
My absolute favorite is Century: A New World. Mainly because it is so easy to teach to new players but still offers choices for more experienced players.
Some other good ones that I'll never say "no" to are Endeavor, Everdell and Scythe. I guess one can't say that they are solely worker placement games, but they do utilize that mechanic.
i've only played the first Century game, but of course i'm all over Everdell and Scyhe. Endeavor is completely new to me!
Love the way you made the concept so simple.
Scythe. Scythe is basically a worker placement game. You place workers, and they can harvest resources. It is the single largest mechanic in the game - dealing with workers is a primary mechanic. Every other thing you do in Scythe is fundamentally dependant on the resources you harvest from those carefully placed workers. Without the workers, you can do nothing. Additionally, the more workers you have to place, the greater the cost to actually have the workers perform their work... but the more resources you can acquire. It is a neat trade-off.
Right. Scythe’s a hard one to place into this category, because it defies a number of conventions: if the hexes on the board are the worker placement spots, you’re not placing workers there like you would in a standard worker placement game - you’re moving workers from spot to spot. You don’t immediately derive a benefit from placing/moving a worker to a spot - you have to further place a “worker” (which is more of an action selector) on your own personal board to trigger an action that makes resources appear. Scythe has a lot more in common with games like Concordia, which i’m not sure i would consider a worker placement game.
I’ve gone bonkers for board games in the past 4 and a half months, and my family has kindly encouraged my new hobby as a balance to being a new homeschooling mom with two elementary-age kids (major COVID life changes require major new hobbies, or something like that). Your channel is just the ticket for all sorts of questions I’m having - one of many excellent channels, as I’m sure you’d agree - but this 101 series is particularly relevant to me at this moment, and I’m looking forward to more. So far the WP I’ve played and enjoyed are Viticulture EE, Lords of Waterdeep, New Bedford and, just today, A Feast for Odin. It’s a great mechanic that I hope to learn a lot more about in the years to come.
So glad i could help, Susannah! Home school teaching is tough gig. i've got a friend who's doing it. With the choice between me teaching them at home, and them doing remote learning, i'm not sure what's likely to leave the least amount of emotional scarring. :)
@@NightsAroundaTable It’s just a crazy time to be a parent! One silver lining of the homeschool gig is that the once-a-week co-op we joined has four other families who love board games, so I can pick their brains about how to homeschool and which board games they love.
@@susannaheisenbraun6635 There's a nice intersection of board games and education in what Genius Games is doing. i've made some instructional videos for their games Periodic (which would really help you get to know the periodic table) and Genotype (which taught Mendelian genetics even to a dullard like me), but it kinda depends on what your kids are trying to learn. They also have some younger-skewed board games that involve rudimentary math facts.
@@NightsAroundaTable WOW! I have never heard of this company, and now I cannot wait to get at least one of their games. Also, they are in our home town! What is it about St Louis, I wonder? Stonemaier, Genius... maybe other game designers? Thanks for the lead.
Great vídeo sir, as per usual. My favorite worker placement game is anyone that hits the table. ;)
Great video Ryan! even though I am very familiar with the worker placement mechanism, it was very interesting to have it broken down into simple terms.
We love:
Caverna
Keyflower
Scythe
Raiders of the North Sea
Thanks, Kim! Caverna’s on my shortlist to dust off soon.
Is Scythe really a worker placement game? Or is it action selection?
One of my favorites is Stone Age
Top WP games:
1. Agricola
2. Viticulture EE
3. Fields of Arle
4. Le Havre
5. Nusfjord
Viticulture is a great WP game
My favourite worker placement games are (in order):
A Feast for Odin
Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island
Caverna
PARKS
Agricola
Holmes: Sherlock & Mycroft
Stone Age
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small
So specific! i had a hard time with Robinson Crusoe. Odin and Creatures suggest you play 2p a lot?
Oh - sorry! i've gone and confused A Feast for Odin with Fields of Arle again (i haven't played either).
@@NightsAroundaTable Para mi, Robinson Crusoe is great once you get the hang of it, one of the best co-ops out there.
Yeah, Odin isn't just a 2-player, but you're still right, a few months ago most of my game-play was just 2-player games with the Mrs. :)
@@the_luggage My troubles with Crusoe MAY have started when we busted it out at a con at 4 in the morning and tried to learn it from scratch. But i still suspect it has UI problems at the very least.
Worker placement is not a favourite but my fave wp game is Viticulture Tuscany EE with the Rhine expansion.
Rhine expansion? That’s new to me! i thought the only expansions were little visitor packs? What is this expansions-on-expansions madness?
@@NightsAroundaTable Visits from the Rhine Valley expansion, which is an alternate set of visitor cards (yellow and blue). All cards have a focus on wine making, and they are less swingy than the original cards.
Argent the Consortium!
That game is NUTS.
My #1 worker placement game is definitely Dogs of War
Never heard of it! Sell me!
Viticulture EE, Champions of Midgard, Rajas of the Ganges, Ex Libris.
Heard so much acclaim for Rajas.
Ex Libris is one of my favourites - loving the workers with special powers. Also I work in a library (when I'm not stuck at home...) so I was totally sold on the theme :)
@@GenaraiTokekos i always confuse Ex Libris with Biblios. i've only played Biblios and (aside from not being a worker placement game) it wasn't my jam.
@@NightsAroundaTable That makes sense from the names. I haven't played Biblios.
My favorites are:
Targi
Everdell
Village
Never played Targi! i’ll have to look into it.
We need some love for Anachrony in here! :O.
The placement scheme in Anachrony is so interesting! Commit to placing x number of workers (at a cost), and then decide which actual workers you'll place when the time comes. It reminds me of their other game, Trickerion, where you commit to placing workers on certain spots before you even know how occupied those areas will be. Lots of thinking far, far ahead.
Asgard
So is Carcassonne a worker placement game?
i wouldn’t say so, because one of the hallmarks of a worker placement game is that all spaces are available to all players, and the spaces provide an immediate benefit. In Carcassonne, only he tile layer has the opportunity to place a worker in that space (or not), and can’t choose any other tile on the table. And the spaces don’t provide benefits until the end of the game. The “workers” aren’t even really workers because they’re not “doing work” - they’re not performing actions to help you get points. They’re just (eventually) getting points.
Bah, forget Agricola…. Play Caverna instead
i tend to agree with you.