I've never played a worker placement game.

Well not that I know of anyways. Are they as bad as I've heard?

Which is your least hated one?

Bah they're all alike!

My current favorite is Notre Dame. You play cards in your hand to place workers, but beforehand you pass cards to your left and receive cards from your right, so you can directly affect the choices of your opponents. Beyond card passing however, the game isn't very interactive.

I read someone on BGG writing Starcraft had worker placement. Please make him stop.

It would have to be Agricola...It cured my impotence...

wanker placement more like.

fuck these games!

Yeah, STARCRAFT's resource scheme isn't worker placement...it's just assigning resources to builds. It doesn't have the usual mechanical folderol associated with that sort of structure.

I'm not sure why I don't really like worker placement at all...but I don't. I think it's dumb, completely artificial, and the absolute epitome of gamey. The only game I've played where I thought it was OK was TRIBUNE, and that only because it kind of made thematic sense and it's in the service of a fairly light card game.

When you get down to brass tacks, CARCASSONNE is probably the primordial worker placement game and I think what we're seeing is folks trying to translate that kind of mechanic into larger, more involved games. But it's a light mechanic that strips down a lot of decision making to barest essentials and that's what makes it such a crap mechanic for bigger/heavier games.

I never even thought of Carcassonne as a worker placement game, but I guess it makes sense.

Carcassonne is my lest hated worker placement game, then. Not that I've played very many of them. The only other one I can think of that I've played is Keythedral. Wasn't a big fan of the game.

Worker placement works well for small scope micro-management themes, i.e. building a town. It is a simple and thematic mechanic for controlling resource variability. Place a worker here get these resources, place a worker there get those resources. This doesn't translate well to large scope theme like conquering the world. On this scale, for example, each chit or figure could represent 1000 troops. It is thematic to command 1000 troops as a unit and tell them to go here or there. It does not follow to also tell 1000 farmers to plant a certain combination of rice and wheat to feed the troops. At this level, resource managment is done in bulk, not individually. You receive whatever resources are availible this turn and use them as best you can. The micro-management task of getting those resources is delegated to your invisible Eurogamer underlings to optimize.

My guess is that Keythedral, which is a very early worker placement game, would be better than most for an AT crowd. You can build fences in it to stop other players' workers being able to reach a field to collect the resource. If someone blocks you like that you can collect wine cubes and your workers will get sloshed and go knock down the fence. The screwage in that game is more direct than most other games in the genre.

I can see the point about worker placement being a very gamey mechanic. It is abstract in a very eurogame way. The games are all pure efficiency puzzles. The other players take spots you want which lowers your efficiency. I like this kind of micromanagement of resources. I think Caylus and Agricola are great but I can see why others wouldn't.

Starcraft has workers but isn't a worker placement game. The workers you place can't be blocked by other players; they are just a representation of the amount you can build. I also don't think Notre Dame is a worker placement game that game doesn't have anything analagous to workers. Same with Carcassonne, it doesn't have any blocking of spaces other people could take.

An early placement game that I have heard ATers say favourable things about but I haven't played is Way Out West.

moss_icon wrote:

wanker placement more like.

fuck these games!

I'm proud of you my son.

Worker placement in most Eurogames today is just a fancy mechanic for drafting stuff. Personally, I like drafting. It maybe one of favorite mechanism other than blowing stuff up in a games. But there are a few things that piss me off. First of all, I have a feeling that there are people in the Euro gaming community who think Euro's invented drafting in games. I've been drafting since I was in first grade playing kickball. I bet there are even people in the Ameritrash community who think drafting is a Euro mechanism. I bet if there is a draft in the Conan the Barbarian there will be people on this site that will complain that they're using a Euro mechanism.

I can understand where the confusion is coming from. If you look at most of big hyped Euro games of the last couple of years, most of them have been using a worker placement / drafting mechanism. Drafting has replaced auctions as the number one way to get stuff. A few years back some of the games like Ticket to Ride used a very simple drafting mechanism. Than Caylus came along and added worker placement to the drafting mechanism. Pillars of the Earth, Leonardo, Cuba, Age of Empires, Agricola, Stone Age, Tribune, Year of the Dragon and a number of other games now use the worker placement. I look at work placement as kind of a draft place holder. It helps with sequencing events in game but in reality your still a drafting stuff. Worker placement is kind of like Miami Dolphins putting a Dolphins hat on Jake Long after they draft him.

What separates a good draft mechanism vs. a poor draft mechanism?

1. There should be a real significant spread in value of what you are drafting. The reasons people actually have NBA and NFL draft parties are because they are excited about picking up the next Shaq, Kobi or Lebron. If all the players were about the same nobody would care. That's what makes Ticket to Ride boring. Somebody takes the red card I wanted. No big deal I'll take the white card.
2. What you're drafting has to be exciting. Do you think anyone would sit around and watch somebody draft wood vs. stone or a blue card vs. a red card.
3. There has to be fear and greed in every draft. By that I mean you have to balance out drafting what you lust after vs. what you really need.
4. You have to be able to screw somebody. There should also be the option of screwing somebody vs. taking what you might need for yourself. Drafting a plow in Agricola is pretty stupid and boring but at least you can screw somebody by stealling the plow before they draft the plow.
5. The draft should be used to support a fun, exciting or interesting game. For many of the Eurogames if you look beyond the drafting mechanism their isn't much of a game going on.
6. A draft should never be used to build up some kind of economic engine.
7. A draft should support player interaction

Unfortunately, most of the Eurogames miss many of the key points I’ve listed. Tribune is problably the best of the worker placement / drafting games. I think sports games like slapshot and Collectable Card Games do a much better job with drafting than Euro games. I wish there were Ameritrash or wargame that used drafting. Wallace has used some drafting with some success in Railroad Tycoon and Struggle of Empires.

If Way Out West is a wanker placement game then I guess I have played one. Except it was so long ago I don't particularly remember the details of it. I do remember you could kill other players workers, which is okay in my book.

Nice post Kingput.