Worker placement

Hello! I've been playing Fresco with extension 4,5,6 lately and I really enjoy. Except it's not my game, but one of my friend's. I'd like a similar worker placement game that I could buy. About the same complexity.

I own Santiago de Cuba and really enjoy it but don't consider it a worker placement. I tried Lords of waterdeep on the ipad but found it boring. A space to get gold, a space to get orange, a space to get blakc, another for white, etc. It all fell bland and samey. In Fresco, what I like is that each space is really different. You can buy paints in the market, spend paint in the chapel, paint portraits to gain favors in another space, blend colors in another. So you accomplish your goals in multiple steps. Something that is not present in LoW.

And there is no math involved in Fresco. I would like to keep it that way. I hear alien frontier can get kind of mathy...

Any suggestions?

Ooops, I was sure I posted in the euro forum, but for some reason I was in the ameritrash forum. Sorry guys!

Rococo, for all the hate I have for it, is in the same vein as what you are talking about.

In my opinion the best worker placement game is Dominant Species but that does have a lot of calculating in it so it doesn't meet your criteria.

My favorite worker placement game is Agricola but it definitely has its share of bean-counting, especially in the final couple turns. Still one of my favorite Euros, because the cards have kept it challenging for me.

One newer one that isn't really a "worker-placement" game but uses the mechanic well is Robinson Crusoe. It's a very thematic game where placing workers makes total sense. Really fantastic, that one.

Worker placement isn't a mechanism I feel is used very well, but have you played Agricola? I've never played Fresco, but similar to what you described with paints having multiple uses, resources (wood, clay, stone) all have multiple uses. Its use of cards is what really makes it more interesting than the rest of the field.

Havent played Fresco either, but just thought I'd throw one out there for you to look into: Age of Empires III. Honestly, I dont even know if it's still in print, but as far as worker placement goes, this one always had the cutthroat "oh you took the spot I wanted" mixed with planning ahead to get the spot next time and a good dose of luck (with each age's available advancements being random) and conflict (gotta love the attack option in WP).

Lords of Waterdeep. It's a good worker placement game with no more counting than is necessary for any worker placement game.

RobertB wrote: Lords of Waterdeep. It's a good worker placement game with no more counting than is necessary for any worker placement game.

Dude, thanks for taking the time to answer, but I think you forgot to read the part where I said I found LoW boring.

You might also consider Manhattan Project. Not an overused theme, and allows for some fun interaction between players.

My two favorites are Age of Empires III and Dungeon Lords. Not a big fan of the genre, though.

Is Dungeon Petz worker placement? I haven't played that one yet.

The last one I tried was Euphoria, which I didn't like at all.

Edit:

After Eagle Games lost the AoE license, they were supposed to reprint AoE3 as Empire: Age of Discovery. Not sure that happened, though.

Dungeon Petz does appear to be a WP game. My euro-friendly BGG geekbuddies rate it pretty highly.

I've always been partial to Dungeon Lords. It's my favorite worker placement game. Instead of simply gathering resources for VPs you are instead building your dungeon and filling it with monsters to protect it. Sure doing these things eventually gets you points...but it's not buy good A, sell it to person B...Score 3 points. It just feels different and I like that.

I find the game has several different paths to victory and trying out new strategies is part of the fun. Do you go heavy on evilness and try to attract the Paladins for big points? If you can't kill them they will RUIN your dungeon though.

The game is interesting in that I feel like the end of the year battles are a test of how well you planned/played. There is so much to think about...different heroes are weak/strong vs specific monsters and vice versa. Certain rooms will give you special abilities or score you big points...but if they get destroyed they are worth nothing.

I just really enjoy the game. I don't play it all that often, but when I do I REALLY enjoy it. It's very meaty and completely satisfying. I'd say it takes about 4-5 plays to fully digest and understand what's really going on under the hood. It's worth investing the time into it though.

The worker placement part of dungeon petz is poorly implemented. This is a game that should have been an auction game, but since it came out in 2012 it was shoehorned into a wp engine.

I've been very interested in dungeon petz in fact. Seems easier to trasp than dungeon lords. I'm still worried at it will be too much for the group.

In a way, Petz is pretty straight forward, but there are several things that don't jive as well with the buy pets, raise pets, sell pets formula. There's a podium which is a confusing thing to deal with, there are magic items which really aren't needed to make the game interesting, there's the obligatory "get more workers" space and the game punishes you if you don't, and there's hospital which is the "well I got nothing else to do" space. It's a fun game but it's over designed, I won't say it's under-developed because all these systems work together fine, but it's like rigging up 6 AA batteries into a 9 volt slot. you'll get the thing working, but it'll take more work and look kind of hokey. That said, it's a fun game, play it.

Dude, thanks for taking the time to answer, but I think you forgot to read the part where I said I found LoW boring.

I read it, but couldn't conceive LoW as boring.

Seriously, my bad. Anyway, Stone Age?