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.
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?
Hehe.
What makes Fresco fun for me is that it offers a competitive space. Every one is collecting paints behind his screen. But don't wait too long cause that 24 point tile is going to disappear fast. Maybe it would have been more fun for LoW if it worked this way. Instead of picking up the quests, have only the 4 quests available at any time. Then you are competing to complete them first. As it is now, I have this quest that requires orange cubes, but the spot is taken, instead i'll focus on this other quest that I have that requires purple cubes. Lacking in tension.
We should have "trigger warning!" yelled out every time someone brings up STONE AGE. Fuck that game. There's probably a doctoral thesis in these message boards on the contrary opinions about that one.
I agree with the sentiment on LORDS OF WATERDEEP. It gets jazzed up a little with the expansion, but it's still pretty dry. Also has a gang-up tendency that can make the game so shitty for one player if she gets an early lead.
I have been converted to the charms of AGRICOLA--it is tight as hell. If you can manage the I Deck (interactive?) into your games, it is on-like-Voltron.
At the same time, I agree with Repo--DOMINANT SPECIES is the best worker placement game. It is tough to learn, but it is so good once you know what's up. That is a game you can go back to every week and folks will dig it. Get the later edition, which doesn't have Comic Sans.
I was going to say Manhattan Project too, as that game does a couple of different things with WP, including being able to wreck your opponents' shit with bombs. However, it's worth pointing out that MP is on my Ultimatum list because I can never get it played. And although the espionage track is often used (you get to use an opponent's spaces), the actual bombing rum track is hardly ever used in our games because it's an action that only stalls your opponent and does nothing for you. Like the mandatory quests in LoW, the benefit hardly ever outweighs the cost of not furthering your own goals. So I'm not sure how good it actually is.
The other WP game I'd suggest is Pret-a-Porter, which is a brutal economic game. Oh, but it's about the fashion industry, so people elsewhere won't play it because "they can't get into the theme". So instead it's back to the more involving themes about erecting the biggest tower to please the Royal Towerjudge.
People also seem to really like Tzolkin but eff that thing.
Carson City is a decent one that doesn't seem to get discussed much. The western theme is a refreshing change. AND if somebody takes a spot you wanted, you can shoot that fucker in the face.
If you don't like math-y games with lots of calculations, then stay far, far away from Dominant Species. I like the game's theme, and it can be surprisingly nasty ... but constantly having to recalculate "dominance" every time the board state changes gets tedious pretty quickly.
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