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Let's face it there are a lot of worker placement games, from building cities to raising cattle the list is endless. However with so many games, there is certainly not enough time to fit them all in!! Fortunately here at Zatu we have a solution to your problem.
I present to you our "best of gaming" articles. Each month our writing team pick out a few of our favorites from a particular genre in order to make that next game dilemma process that much easier. We kick things off with the very best games form the worker placement genre.
Agricola
Agricola is my favourite worker placement game of all time because of the limitations the game throws at you. You’ll have to get creative and you’ll have to plan ahead, second guess your opponent and beat them to that precious and substantial resource.
Players will start the game with an empty plot of land and two farmers. With those two ‘workers,’ you’ll send them off to collect wood, clay, or reeds, or perhaps to fish or to plough a field ready to plant some wheat later on.
For every choice you chose, for every plan you hatch, there are many that you’ve ignored or denied, and you’ll have to hope yours doesn’t collide with your opponents.
With no direct player conflict, Agricola pitches player’s intellect and ability to strategies and plan. The resources that become available each round are the same – just in a different order – meaning that if you time it right you can pick up those sheep and drop them into your pre-built pasture right before Harvest time.
You can increase your workforce, but to do that you'll need a bigger house, and you'll have to gather more food to feed them - so while you're doing that, you're not working your farm. Everything in this game has a cost, not in terms of a resource, but in terms of a choice.
With multiple play modes (both family and normal), and a great player scale, Agricola works well as a more casual two-player game, or a deeper, more competitive five player affair. The edition that is currently available has the upgraded components so you’ll be playing with wonderful ani-meeples and veggie-meeples.
Agricola
Agricola is my favourite worker placement game of all time because of the limitations the game throws at you. You’ll have to get creative and you’ll have to plan ahead, second guess your opponent and beat them to that precious and substantial resource.
Players will start the game with an empty plot of land and two farmers. With those two ‘workers,’ you’ll send them off to collect wood, clay, or reeds, or perhaps to fish or to plough a field ready to plant some wheat later on.
For every choice you chose, for every plan you hatch, there are many that you’ve ignored or denied, and you’ll have to hope yours doesn’t collide with your opponents.
With no direct player conflict, Agricola pitches player’s intellect and ability to strategies and plan. The resources that become available each round are the same – just in a different order – meaning that if you time it right you can pick up those sheep and drop them into your pre-built pasture right before Harvest time.
You can increase your workforce, but to do that you'll need a bigger house, and you'll have to gather more food to feed them - so while you're doing that, you're not working your farm. Everything in this game has a cost, not in terms of a resource, but in terms of a choice.
With multiple play modes (both family and normal), and a great player scale, Agricola works well as a more casual two-player game, or a deeper, more competitive five player affair. The edition that is currently available has the upgraded components so you’ll be playing with wonderful ani-meeples and veggie-meeples.
Viticulture Essentials
Viticulture Essentials takes most of the best elements out of the Tuscany expansion and puts it all into one neatly packaged box. If you are into thematic Euro’s then look no further.
The mechanics are your standard Worker Placement affair. You have your own player board with areas that you build upgrades on and turn order is dictated by a track where players stipulate how early they will get up in the morning.
The longer they leave it, the better the bonus, but they risk going last. The piece to represent this is a wooden cockerel which if like most gamers you have the mental age of a child, will provide its own fair share of amusement.
The main board is split into four sections, one for each season. Spring and Summer focus on quick cash, planting vines and building upgrades. Autumn and Winter focus on harvesting fields, making wines and shipping them off for income and points. Throughout the game you are undertaking various aspects of wine making. You plant some vines of various grape types, you harvest the grapes and then you turn those grapes into wines.
Viticulture was a fairly big surprise for me. I didn’t expect it to pack as much theme as it did in the box, but this is on the same level as Uwe Rosenberg for capturing the essence of what you’re setting out to do – run a vineyard. And it is Euro games that achieve this that make my collection over the drier cube pushers.
Viticulture is a solid medium weight Euro game that only requires a game or two to grasp the base concepts. The full Tuscany expansion gives the best experience, but Essentials gives you a decent chunk of it and is worth the money.
Viticulture Essentials
Viticulture Essentials takes most of the best elements out of the Tuscany expansion and puts it all into one neatly packaged box. If you are into thematic Euro’s then look no further.
The mechanics are your standard Worker Placement affair. You have your own player board with areas that you build upgrades on and turn order is dictated by a track where players stipulate how early they will get up in the morning.
The longer they leave it, the better the bonus, but they risk going last. The piece to represent this is a wooden cockerel which if like most gamers you have the mental age of a child, will provide its own fair share of amusement.
The main board is split into four sections, one for each season. Spring and Summer focus on quick cash, planting vines and building upgrades. Autumn and Winter focus on harvesting fields, making wines and shipping them off for income and points. Throughout the game you are undertaking various aspects of wine making. You plant some vines of various grape types, you harvest the grapes and then you turn those grapes into wines.
Viticulture was a fairly big surprise for me. I didn’t expect it to pack as much theme as it did in the box, but this is on the same level as Uwe Rosenberg for capturing the essence of what you’re setting out to do – run a vineyard. And it is Euro games that achieve this that make my collection over the drier cube pushers.
Viticulture is a solid medium weight Euro game that only requires a game or two to grasp the base concepts. The full Tuscany expansion gives the best experience, but Essentials gives you a decent chunk of it and is worth the money.
Le Havre
Where the sienne river meets the English Channel there lies a port known as Le Havre. Here, one to five tycoons are locked in a battle for supremacy.
Le Havre is Uwe Rosenberg's worker placement game that ISN'T about farming. Each player assumes the role of a tycoon aiming to monopolise the port.
A player's turn consists of distribution of goods to 'offer spaces' on the board then one, single action. That action can be either to load up on goods of one type from an offer space or to use an available building card's action.
After seven turns, there is a harvest phase, not unlike Agricola's harvest phase, wherein players gain bonuses and must feed their workers. This is one complete round.
After a fixed number of rounds there is a final turn for each player then the game ends. When this happens, players count their riches, including the monetary value of ships and buildings, and the player who has amassed the greatest fortune is the winner.
Throughout a game (which is admittedly quite lengthy) players have the opportunity to build premises, like wharfs and leather factories, as well as upgrade their wooden cargo ships to steel freighters, all while trying to maintain a steady income through managing their resources.
Each building a player builds allows everyone to perform the specific action printed on that card. Although Le Havre can be slightly long-winded, it does present an interesting challenge in the form of a balancing act between gathering/managing your resources and maintaining enough of an income to feed your workers, and trying to expand your collection of premises to improve the smooth running of your waterside empire.
A well conceived, interesting and beautiful addition to any collection.
Le Havre
Where the sienne river meets the English Channel there lies a port known as Le Havre. Here, one to five tycoons are locked in a battle for supremacy.
Le Havre is Uwe Rosenberg's worker placement game that ISN'T about farming. Each player assumes the role of a tycoon aiming to monopolise the port.
A player's turn consists of distribution of goods to 'offer spaces' on the board then one, single action. That action can be either to load up on goods of one type from an offer space or to use an available building card's action.
After seven turns, there is a harvest phase, not unlike Agricola's harvest phase, wherein players gain bonuses and must feed their workers. This is one complete round.
After a fixed number of rounds there is a final turn for each player then the game ends. When this happens, players count their riches, including the monetary value of ships and buildings, and the player who has amassed the greatest fortune is the winner.
Throughout a game (which is admittedly quite lengthy) players have the opportunity to build premises, like wharfs and leather factories, as well as upgrade their wooden cargo ships to steel freighters, all while trying to maintain a steady income through managing their resources.
Each building a player builds allows everyone to perform the specific action printed on that card. Although Le Havre can be slightly long-winded, it does present an interesting challenge in the form of a balancing act between gathering/managing your resources and maintaining enough of an income to feed your workers, and trying to expand your collection of premises to improve the smooth running of your waterside empire.
A well conceived, interesting and beautiful addition to any collection.
Village
When I first came across Village I thought this might be dull, then again I initially thought a game about farming would be dull – how wrong I was on both counts.
At heart Village is a worker placement game, each player takes on the role of a family trying to become the most prominent in the village.
Family members can work in various areas, at home in the farm, in the church, as a travelling merchant or craftsman, in the village hall, and there are also options to trade and to bring future generations into play.
There are two kinds of resources in the game, the wooden cubes of five different colours, and time. Generally speaking the cubes are gained by activating or placing a worker in an area and spent to obtain other resources, to activate other worker in subsequent turns in the pursuit of various options for victory points.
The other resource is time. Every action costs time, as time passes the earlier generation of the family passes on, but there can only be so many master craftsmen, so many travelling merchants and so on. The successful, those who die first in the right place, become part of the history of the village and score victory points.
Winning is determined by victory points, these can be earned in numerous ways, so there are many different strategies and options to progress. Manipulating time is crucial as can be manipulating turn order, collecting the right cubes for future actions, crafting the right resources, dominating the church and ultimately ensuring your family members are not consigned to the public graveyard.
Unlike some worker placement games Village tends not to suffer from decision paralysis. Village is easy to pick up and learn, the components are good and no two games are ever going to be the same. It’s challenging, competitive and a whole lot of fun.
Village
When I first came across Village I thought this might be dull, then again I initially thought a game about farming would be dull – how wrong I was on both counts.
At heart Village is a worker placement game, each player takes on the role of a family trying to become the most prominent in the village.
Family members can work in various areas, at home in the farm, in the church, as a travelling merchant or craftsman, in the village hall, and there are also options to trade and to bring future generations into play.
There are two kinds of resources in the game, the wooden cubes of five different colours, and time. Generally speaking the cubes are gained by activating or placing a worker in an area and spent to obtain other resources, to activate other worker in subsequent turns in the pursuit of various options for victory points.
The other resource is time. Every action costs time, as time passes the earlier generation of the family passes on, but there can only be so many master craftsmen, so many travelling merchants and so on. The successful, those who die first in the right place, become part of the history of the village and score victory points.
Winning is determined by victory points, these can be earned in numerous ways, so there are many different strategies and options to progress. Manipulating time is crucial as can be manipulating turn order, collecting the right cubes for future actions, crafting the right resources, dominating the church and ultimately ensuring your family members are not consigned to the public graveyard.
Unlike some worker placement games Village tends not to suffer from decision paralysis. Village is easy to pick up and learn, the components are good and no two games are ever going to be the same. It’s challenging, competitive and a whole lot of fun.
Worker Placement - Until next time
So that's our best of worker placement games, are there any you think we have missed? If so write a comment below. Next month we will be taking a look at area control games. I think I know which Old World game is my favorite for that category...