I was putting my collection back together after redecorating over the weekend and noticed a distinct lack of worker placement games in my collection!
We’ve played (and enjoyed!) Architects of the West Kingdom and Tiny Epic Dinosaurs in the past, but both belong to a friends collection and don’t want to overlap with them.
What worker placement games do you own and enjoy?
I really like A Feast for Odin with the Norwegian expansion.
Dune Imperium is great - it’s a mix of deck building and worker placement
Beyond the Sun has only 1 worker but it is a personal favorite of mine
Seconding Feast for Odin, the worker placement style combined with the Tetris puzzle and the feeding your people really makes for a great game
Happy to see AFfO on here, it is one of my all time favorite games. Another vote for it from me!
Everdell has also some worker placement elements and is, overall, a really great game.
A couple recommendations:
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Dune: Imperium - Haven’t been able to play it yet but worth checking out
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Viticulture Essential Edition with the Tuscany Essential Edition expansion
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Targi - 2 players only
In the realm of worker placement/action drafting games, I think Rosenberg is king, and of his WP games, O&L is the only one ** I’ve kept for multiple years now. The decision space for what to do on any given turn (especially late game) is absolutely massive is part of that reason. Also, kudos to @lolzy_mcroflmao for not wanting to overlap across friend groups. We do the same thing in our household.
If 2p is a requirement, then I would suggest The Colonists by Tim Pulz and once you play it once, start in era 3. It’s a longer game in general though, but I find it’s a much better 2p experience for the same proverbial question.
** (I have Rosenberg’s newest Canal game, but it just arrived and I haven’t played it yet. Also, I don’t really consider Glass Road a WP game which is why it didn’t make the list).
Since you explicitly mentioned it - in your opinion, is the Tuscany expansion for Viticulture really essential (pun intended)? I only played the base game so far, sometimes also with the Rhine Valley expansion cards. Doesn’t Tuscany only add more complexity?
Viticulture with Tuscany makes the game so much better. I haven’t used the base board for years. It has four seasons instead of two and polishes the processes to perfection. It’s no more complicated than the base version, it just adds improvements. Definitely get it.
I feel like the game without the expansion is a 7.5/10 and with the expansion is a 9/10. The new board really opens up the game.
The expansion comes with several modules and you can side them out if you think they add too much complexity or randomness (I hate the orange deck). I think I only play with the map and don’t feel like it adds that much complexity.
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Depicts all the great games provided by others, I still love the simple not-that-worker placement rule of Agricola, yet the depth it has.
Lords of Waterdeep
Raiders of the North Sea
Paladins of the West Kingdom
- A Feast for Odin and/or Fields of Arle to get that Uwe in. Both are really good with different trade-offs.
- Lorenzo il Magnifico for a really cool dice worker and tableau building experience
- Everdell is another taken on worker-placement driven tableau building. Lorenzo is a more interesting game but Everdell’s charm makes up for some of that
- Rajas of the Ganges a worker placement game with dice as currency and the cool two-sided score track that Ark Nova uses now too
- Caylus 1303 is a rework of an early worker placement game that somehow still feels very fresh and unique. (I’d go for with the 1303 version unless you already have an attachment to the original)
- Lost Ruins of Arnak and/or Dune Imperium for worker placement combined with deckbuilding. These two are often compared but IMO they are different enough that both are worth getting, especially if you take expansions into account.
- Targi and/or Micro Dojo for small box worker placement for 2
- Tzolk’in for the cogwheels! A “gimmick” that actually works really well
- Istanbul for the really cool grid movement based action selection
If you’ve played & enjoyed Architects of the West Kingdom, Paladins of the West Kingdom is a great option. It is different enough that it won’t feel like it’s overlapping with your friends game, but with complimentary symbology/ graphics so it’ll make it easier to learn
I love Architects and actually prefer it over Paladins, but they are both great! Honestly I am a big fan of almost all Garphill games.
I didn’t realize how many worker placement games I own until I started going through them. These are the ones I would recommend:
- Caylus (I consider this a top one, but can be a bit hard to explain to beginners)
- Stone Age (Classic and easy to teach)
- Leonardo Da Vinci (I have not seen this one around as much recently but is always loved
Some have said Agricola, I’m iffy on if this is actual a worker placement, to me it is more turn based, with the “workers” just representing taken spots. But, if we are counting Agricola, then I would of course put in for Agricola, but argue highly for its much better cousin–La Harve.
I actually don’t have a lot of worker placements either, but the one I do have, I really enjoy and recommend: Yokohama. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/196340/yokohama/
I don’t have a lot of basis for comparison, but I think it’s interesting that the workers also act as the paths that your president can move through to activate a space, so you have to balance placing your workers in places you want to eventually produce while also placing them in tiles that will let you travel to your target space.
Simultaneously, having more workers on a space when it is activated gives higher return, so there are interesting decisions regarding waiting to activate a space when you have more workers on it or activating it early to get the resource you need.
There are quite a few more smaller mechanics that are nice additions. For example, there are also some race mechanics that give you a small incentive to be the first to activate a space, research technologies to make production more efficient, and building mechanics. All work together to make a great experience.
Really wanna try this game, it looks pretty sweet.
Just want to say a huge thanks to everyone for the recommendations so far! I’ve got a board game rental subscription with my local cafe, so I’ll have to scour their shelves and give some a try!
My top 5 worker placement games:
- A Feast for Odin (I see it gets lots of love in the comments already which is well deserved!)
- Architects of the West Kingdom
- Lost Ruins of Arnak
- Barrage - Oh my I love this game and am so bad at it
- Raiders of the North Sea - with all the expansions this game just shines. Has a really cool put-one-down then pick-one-up mechanic I haven’t seen in any other game!
I don’t really like worker placement games but I really like Keyflower and Tzolk’in
Keyflower is one of my favourite games!
Lords of Waterdeep is a good pure worker placement.
It’s arguably light on the worker placement, but Ishtar: Gardens of Babylon is a good choice. My partner and I picked it up on a whim and it’s fast becoming a favourite on board game nights with friends. It’s a very pretty game to boot!
15 years later and I still play the Agricola Solo Campaign regularly. Just having the cards at the beginning rather than drawing them randomly mid game makes it feel more like a puzzle or planning the optimal video game speed run route.
My favorite worker placement game is Viticulture (Essential Edition, with Tuscany Expansion). It allows a lot of interesting opportunities with both short term planning (how can I optimize my local space and play with the spaces the other players haven’t used) and longer term planning to develop your vineyard.
