Worker placement

RobertB wrote:

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.

Way Out West, Wallace's worker placement game from before the term worker placement existed.

I've eyed Way out West a few times...Is it good?

I like Ground Floor. It was a Kickstarter game and the full retail release didn't come for some time after the KS hype died down, which is the only reason I can think of that it didn't get more attention. The main reason I like it is that it's a worker placement game with a modern theme where the theme works. You start as a small company with almost no payroll. Each employee is abstracted in that they provide you with extra time tokens (your workers that are placed) but also reduce your income (labor costs). You use them to advertise, produce goods, sell them, and build up your company. There are two types of currency (money and information) and you have to balance both. Focus too much on one currency and you'll short yourself on the other. You have your own play area with actions that are always available to you, and you upgrade your play area as you build up your company. But all player interaction happens on the game board.

Especially neat is the market section where you try to sell the goods you've produced. The market section has different pricing tiers with limited spaces per tier. There are a limited number of consumers to purchase goods, and while you know the range of possibilities based on the economic forecast (for example there may be 2-4 consumers) the card isn't revealed until after the market spaces have been allocated. The consumers will always buy the cheapest goods first, so positioning your goods/tokens poorly means you get no money from sales this game round. Any unsold tokens shift down a pricing tier each round so you can take a risk in hoping to sell next round, but you could get shafted by the next economic situation or other players positioning their stuff at a lower price point.

It's not an amazing break-out this is so fresh worker placement game, but it's a solid game and one of the few worker placement games I really enjoy.

Well, Agricola for me. It's what I picked after a thorough research on worker placement game. With the exception of worker placement itself (which is required to be there for it to be a competitive, multiplayer game), the game is highly thematic. There's light spatial element, there's supply chain, and there's... the cards.

Amazing player scaling, amazing complexity scaling.

Absolutely great game.

The only weakness is that, seen in overhead view, you're doing the same thing over and over each game. But the cards ensure that you go through different routes.

VonTush wrote: I've eyed Way out West a few times...Is it good?

I played it ages ago and quite liked it. I would like to recommend Deadwood as a quick, not overly mathy worker placement game which has the bonus of being able to gun down your opponents' workers.

Seems to be really underrated but I've enjoyed every game I've played.

Sevej wrote: Well, Agricola for me. It's what I picked after a thorough research on worker placement game. With the exception of worker placement itself (which is required to be there for it to be a competitive, multiplayer game), the game is highly thematic. There's light spatial element, there's supply chain, and there's... the cards.

Amazing player scaling, amazing complexity scaling.

Absolutely great game.

The only weakness is that, seen in overhead view, you're doing the same thing over and over each game. But the cards ensure that you go through different routes.

This would be my reaction. Something right down the middle. I think there's merit in admitting the worker placement genre for what it is, an interaction-lite economic engine genre. And not trying to figure out a way to fiddle in some kind of crazy head to head mechanic into the game.

Almost a year later, I've got my hands on Dungeon Petz, played it 5-6 times, and sold it. Fun, but too many things going on. Since I'm the rules guy, I felt I was spending more times helping the other players than actually playing against thhem and enjoying the game.

It's mostly down to Last Will or Manhattan project. Some (on bgg) have also suggested Belfort. Which one provide the most replayability, the most thinking. Easily accessible regarding rules, but deep gameplay?

Green gogol wrote: Almost a year later, I've got my hands on Dungeon Petz, played it 5-6 times, and sold it. Fun, but too many things going on. Since I'm the rules guy, I felt I was spending more times helping the other players than actually playing against thhem and enjoying the game.

It's mostly down to Last Will or Manhattan project. Some (on bgg) have also suggested Belfort. Which one provide the most replayability, the most thinking. Easily accessible regarding rules, but deep gameplay?

I like Belfort OK, but it can drag depending on your group. The rules aren't too numerous, but there is some math going on when planning your resource collection and with the areas control part. The theme and artwork is great, though. But then again, Dungeon Lords/Petz are probably my favorite WP games, so my opinions may be moot for you.

I've heard good things about The Village here, but it's pretty rules heavy, so I'd avoid. Honestly, Agricola is probably the king of raw worker placement games, and it's hard to go wrong there if that's what you like. If you want accessible, Lords of Waterdeep with Skullport expansion is still probably the best light-WP game out there. Yes, I know you found it boring, so I'm honestly not sure what you're looking for.

Well, in fact, followinf lots of discussion and recommendations. I am now considering Manhattan Project, Last Will, Stone Age, Kingsburg, and Lords of Waterdeep.

Manhattan project: seems really fun, and the French version comes with all the expansions. But I am concerned about the playing time. I am going to try the ipad version

Last Will: probably not, since the iconography is obscure, and I don't want to spend most of my playing time explaining and helping the other players.

Stone Age: maybe. But something is bothering me a bit. The scoring seems unintuitive and having played a bit on the ipad, I can't figure out what I should be doing. It is a bit abstract. Huts is not thematic enough. Should ba able to buld the chief's hut, the shaman's hut, ,etc, for different amounts of points. Now it's just huts that have different requirements to get different amounts of points. Same thing for civilization cards. You don't get agriculture, horse riding, cattle raising, writing, and the like. It's just cards collection.

Kingsburg: same problem for me as stone age somehow. Can't figure out what I should be doing exactly. Played on the Ipad. Maybe it is because you have a limited view of what is going on in the ipad version.

Lords of waterdeep: played some more on the ipad and have begun to enjoy it. Just not sure about the depth. And it is not available in French.

Manhattan Project is a game that seems more interesting than it is. With espionage and bombing it looks like it will be a lot more cutthroat and in-your-face, but bombing is almost entirely a waste of time and espionage is primarily there to piss off other players forever because it's such an unbalanced pain in the ass. Other than that it's fairly routine.

I've been posting in the boardgames played site about Fields of Arle. My wife and I are enjoying it more than Agricola, because the space is more open. I don't know how the game would be as a competitive worker placement, though, we play it as an uncompetitive activity where we count up points at the end.

The one thing about Fields of Arle I legitimately love is no new workers. You start with 4 actions. You don't get more than 4 actions. Done. The rest of the game is very involved but you never have to figure out how to get more workers as quickly as possible, nor do you start with this intentionally constrained decision space with 2 workers per season or whatever. I do not like how in Agricola you have to expand your family and get more workers, because in almost every worker placement game I've played it's pretty much a no brainer to do so as soon as possible.