Worker placement

I happen to really like Last Will.

Games that don't take themselves very seriously score big points with me. The idea of being an irresponsible Victorian era douchebag is a theme/setting that seems to resonate with all who play the game.

I'll agree that the iconography is a little rough...but once you get past it the rules are actually a breeze to teach. Things for the most part make sense. For example people can easily understand that if you don't pay to maintain an estate, it will lose value. The trickier rules that the rulebook sort of do a shit job explaining are the adding of a chef/horse/dog to a property. It's just a little obtuse in the rules, when it's actually fairly simple.

That being said, I've played this with people of all skill levels. After a one round everyone seems to get the gist of it. Some people will pick up little combos quicker than others, but everyone will understand the game fairly quickly. The clear objective of spending all your money seems to help. Players can understand that throwing a huge party will cost lots of money and in the game THAT'S A GOOD THING. The fun part is that everyone seems to try a different strategy at going bankrupt. Some folks are shitty estate barons, while other just let all their friends mooch the money away. By the end everyone has crafted some sort of story about what kind of asshole they were. It adds to the cheeky nature of the game and tends to occur naturally. It probably has to do with the fact that the game deals with real life things so people can more easily relate to it. Last Will gets big thumbs up from me.

If you want a little conflict in your worker placement, Sons of Anarchy. You're limited to 3 or 4 players, but I like it. I wouldn't recommend it if getting hosed by card draws offends you.

Another interesting WP game is Ground Floor. It puts an economic spin on it (as does Pret-a-Porter, which is a good game hampered by an inscrutable rulebook). It's more intricate than something like Stone Age, but not as piecemeal (each action being a tiny portion of some larger action) as Agricola. I like it a bunch.

I wanted to try that. I looks like a neat dice game kind of.

Alien Frontiers is mathy?? I never thought I'd see a sentence like that before and I have no idea how anyone could get that idea.. it is not mathy at all. Unless you only have like grade one math comprehension. It's actually quite simple really. Very natural.

In any case Alien Frontiers and Carson City are my two favorites for worker placement... I'd love to try After Pablo too but it's hard to find. AF, and CC allow some level of fuckery so you aren't just stuck with whatever you're given.

I can't believe people here will poo poo Stone Age and then bring up Agricola... Agricola is way too tight, the cards are fucking ridiculous and over complicate what should be a much simpler game. It's ok, but it's over produced and over designed. Stone Age is much more fun for what it is and when it comes to passive interaction it allows a lot more leeway for fucking with other people's plans without paying too big a cost.. Agricola does not allow that, it's far too tight. That game doesn't allow leeway because of it's over designed problem. So you can forget about forgoing a location just to hurt someone else except in very rare cases. Stone Age is actually quite robust, you can starve workers instead of feeding them, you can fuck someone who tries that out (but you'll need help from others), almost every turn- once the game gets going- there will be someone screwing with someone else's plans. Because of it's much simpler format I find that people play the players more than they would in Agricola (where generally you just play the rules), the game allows for this kind of thing whereas most over designed Euro's do not. It's the same reason that I prefer Carson City and Alien Frontiers.

I haven't played Lords of Waterdeep, but if you're only experience is via iPad I have to say... based on playing a few others on iPad, it's a bad way to judge what the game would be like in person. For Alien Frontiers for example it's ok on the iPad but having real people you can piss off around the table makes it a much different experience. It's possible that LoW suffers form that too. I can't say though.

RobertB wrote: If you want a little conflict in your worker placement, Sons of Anarchy. You're limited to 3 or 4 players, but I like it. I wouldn't recommend it if getting hosed by card draws offends you.

If you use some proxy pieces, you can use a 5th/6th gang. The only change is you put out eight locations instead of six and the black market sell values (6p 1-5 = 3, 6-11 =2, 12+ = 1; 5P 1-4 = 3, 5-10 = 2, 11+ = 1).

I've played Manhattan Project three times, and every time it's been dull and procedural with very limited interaction or real choices to make. It may be a group thing.

I played Yedo this weekend, still fantastic. It's structured around completing missions for resources/points but there's some room to maneuver (I came in second with an alternative strategy). I would suggest Viticulture except that it only begins to fill out as a game with the Tuscany expansion, and that's a lot to spend.

I FINALLY got to try Dominant Species over the weekend (and somehow managed second place against some reasonable experienced players). Wow! Can't wait to play that again (the iPad version doesn't count since the AI sucks so badly). It's always nice to play something euro-y that lets you screw with the other players.

A friend also picked up a copy of Mushroom Eaters in an auction this weekend, so hopefully I can experience that sometime soon.

JEM wrote:

RobertB wrote: If you want a little conflict in your worker placement, Sons of Anarchy. You're limited to 3 or 4 players, but I like it. I wouldn't recommend it if getting hosed by card draws offends you.

If you use some proxy pieces, you can use a 5th/6th gang. The only change is you put out eight locations instead of six and the black market sell values (6p 1-5 = 3, 6-11 =2, 12+ = 1; 5P 1-4 = 3, 5-10 = 2, 11+ = 1).

The Grim Bastards mini expansion is out now, which adds the orange pieces, player screen, Grim bastards clubhouse card, and additional money/order tokens.

It's $20 for some army men.

JonJacob wrote: Alien Frontiers is mathy?? I never thought I'd see a sentence like that before and I have no idea how anyone could get that idea.. it is not mathy at all. Unless you only have like grade one math comprehension. It's actually quite simple really. Very natural.

THIS.

I can't believe people here will poo poo Stone Age and then bring up Agricola... Agricola is way too tight, the cards are fucking ridiculous and over complicate what should be a much simpler game... Stone Age is actually quite robust, you can starve workers instead of feeding them, you can fuck someone who tries that out (but you'll need help from others), almost every turn- once the game gets going- there will be someone screwing with someone else's plans.

OMG. We're like twins.

I haven't played Lords of Waterdeep, but if you're only experience is via iPad I have to say... based on playing a few others on iPad, it's a bad way to judge what the game would be like in person. For Alien Frontiers for example it's ok on the iPad but having real people you can piss off around the table makes it a much different experience. It's possible that LoW suffers form that too. I can't say though.

Lords of Waterdeep is a really good game. The problem I have with it is that it's more of a race than anything. I've played it at least 50 times now and it's kind of past the point that I'll ever play it again. I even have a shrinkwrapped copy which will probably remain so in perpetuity since I have Bootleggers and Stone Age, both of which are superior in a lot of ways. I will say that on a "first few plays" Lords of Waterdeep appears to be deeper and more interesting, but after a great deal of plays, each game becomes samey and borders on boring. The expansion gives it a lot of new life, though, so if I ever find myself with a copy of that again, I might end up opening the LoW copy and playing with the expansions.

I had a really bad experience with Alien Frontiers. You start with three dice, and you can get more if you have the correct resources and roll a double of any number with your dice. I had my resources stolen on turn 1, rolled my only double for the whole game on turn two, so I was stuck with three dice while everyone else was rolling 5+ very quickly. There are cards you can get that can help, but I estimated it would take two-three turns to mine the stack for them, or steal them from other players if they are out already. If a game puts you in a state where you may as well start saying "You guys all take three free turns, and I'll join in then," then there's a problem.

Except there isn't. Because you find that the game is a 2.5 hour slug-fest of endless "pull down the leader" anyway. You're still hosed, but the others are tearing each other apart.

I see you were also interested in Kingsburg. I'm not sure you'll find much love for the game on this site. I've owned the game close to the time that FFG started publishing it in the US. I really enjoyed it for about 5 plays or so. Then the flaws become readily apparent. For me the game is very procedural. There is nothing to really ever spice it up or make it interesting. The battles at the end of the year are a complete joke and I'm not convinced that the game is properly balanced. My friend plays with the same "farm rush" strategy and I don't think he's lost in over 2 years. So you basically mimic what he is doing or try for one of the other paths to victory and wind up getting crushed. The mechanic of rolling dice and then placing them on advisors is interesting and clearly the strongest aspect of the game. The building of your own village/city tends to feel scripted if you want to do well. The game is mediocre in almost every way. To be honest I'm MUCH more interested in the reworked game Kingsport Festival from the same designer. From most accounts it is the better game. If it worked well with two it would have already replaced Kingsburg in my collection.

A game I would suggest is Tribune from FFG. I believe it's out of print. However, the game is very simple to understand how to play, but it takes getting a whole game under your belt to figure out how to play well. It doesn't seem to get much love, but I say check it out if you can find a copy. The first time I played it I swear we were done in less than hour with rules explanation. It has an interesting combination of placing workers and set/character card collection. There is a list of achievements everyone is fighting to complete and the first person to complete a few of them is the winner. There are several different factions that players are jockeying for and controlling them gives you a special power...but you're constantly losing them to other players. It has this great back and forth pacing that I enjoy. I dunno...it's interesting and it's unlike most worker placement games where you're just trying to score gobs of points. I like it.

Pugnax555 wrote: Dominant Species . . . and somehow managed second place against some reasonable experienced players.

There's plenty of stories just like this one available, where people that have never played the game do remarkably well. My last game had a complete noob well out ahead of everyone else, and me in second place in spite of my primary food source being wiped off the board. I asked the guy why he was doing so well and he didn't have a clue. I really didn't know how I was doing well either, I think due to the sheer complexity occurring in a six-player game. You really have little control over how things will be on your turn.

From that perspective it's a pretty solid simulation of evolution! Sometimes shit just falls your way.

I've given up on the game not because I think it isn't "good" or well designed, but just because there's too much time spent placing workers and placing pieces on the planet. You really need an entire afternoon free if you're playing more than three players. With that time frame opened up I have a lot of other plays I'd rather get in.

S.

I agree completely with Egg Shen. I never liked Kingsburg, though, so I didn't ever have to endure playing against the dominant strategy.

Tribune is a really good, often overlooked game. It doesn't feel as much like worker placement due to the "workers" being cards. A lot going on in a short play time.

JEM wrote: It's $20 for some army men.

As opposed to $20 for some colored cardboard?

There's two small sheets of counters, two black market cards, a screen, the miniatures, and a rules sheet. It's also only $13 at online stores.