Tag: Worker Placement

Games with a Worker Placement mechanic require players to coordinate various workers as those workers gather resources.

Demon Worker

| T3d-1978

Who will become the next demon king? In Demon Worker, you send demons with special abilities to the human world, weapons factory, and other locations to collect resources efficiently, with both humans and weapons being examples of those resources.

With these resources, you can summon new demons and create impulse points — and whoever ends up with the most impulse points will claim the demon throne.

Game Mechanics:

  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.39

Deep Space D-6

| T3d-1978

You are a Captain of the UEF! Your RPTR class starship was on routine patrol of the Auborne system when a distress call was received. Upon warping in you quickly realized it was a trap! With the help of your crew, you must survive until a rescue fleet appears.

Deep Space D-6 is a solitaire dice game about surviving the cruel depths of space. Each turn you’ll roll Crew dice and assign them to stations. You must plan carefully to take care of internal and external threats to your ship. Survive to win.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Worker Placement
  • Solo/Solitaire

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.66

Darwin’s Journey

| T3d-1978

When all you can identify in the horizon for many long days is the line that detaches the sea from the sky, the glimpse of a distant shore appearing before you will make you shiver at the understanding that the adventure is about to begin.

You find yourself astonished, landing on the shore that will be the origin of an extensive exploration through the Galapagos, a magic place of inconceivable beauty and endless biodiversity. There, you will gather repertoires and expand your knowledge of the natural sciences. Your eyes will learn how to detect the hidden species in the tropical forest, gazing at the countless colors and textures of nature. After inspiring hours spent studying and getting to enlightening conclusions, you will rest under a sparkling sky, admiring the stunning complexity of the animal realm.

Darwin’s Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame in which players recall Charles Darwin’s memories of his adventure through the Galapagos islands, which contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

With the game’s innovative worker progression system, each worker will have to study the disciplines that are a prerequisite to perform several actions in the game, such as exploration, correspondence, gathering, and dispatch of repertoires found on the island to museums in order to contribute to the human knowledge of biology. The game lasts five rounds, and thanks to several short- and long-term objectives, every action you take will grant victory points in different ways.

Game Mechanics:

  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement
  • Contracts

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.90

Daitoshi

| T3d-1978

We have finally perfected the power of steam, and we can now use it to our advantage! We live in an unprecedented era of progress, and new steam-powered inventions are developed faster than ever. Cities are growing, trade is flourishing, and we are developing our most ambitious machine ever: a giant contraption that will bring even more progress to the city. Yes, some trees are being cut down, and the river doesn’t flow as plentifully as before, but there’s still an abundance of trees and water, and we can use the extra space to expand our city — and it’s not like the old creatures on those forests can do anything about it.

On your turn in Daitoshi, you either produce or move your magnate to a new district in which you will be able to send your workers to work, command the exploit of forest or river hexes to fuel your endless need for steam, and perform an action to expand and show your greatness to the city.

These actions not only help you in your search for acknowledgement, but help all the inhabitants of the big city. You will expand the city and electrify its districts, discover and develop new steam-powered inventions, and trade with faraway cities. You may even help the city build its gargantuan project: the mega-machine. Some forests might be cut down, and some rivers may be dried up, but in your generosity, you will help the displaced workers from those areas by giving them new jobs at your service.

Old legends suggest the forests and rivers are guarded by Yōkai, but progress can’t be stopped because of some old fairy tales. Just in case, though, it could be wise to participate on some reforestation projects and hide your participation in the abuse of the natural resources…

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  •  Rondel
  • Modular Board
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.94

Cities

| T3d-1978

You’ve been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighborhood in the city. You have the opportunity to build new housing, office buildings, parks, and leisure areas near the waterfront. It is in your hands to make the city a better place.

Cities is a city-building game in which you draft the best projects and arrange them in your own playing area. With action and resource draft mechanisms, it will give you the opportunity to visit the cities of Sydney, Venice, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. Can you design the most magnificent neighborhood?

The game is played over eight rounds (or four rounds in a two-player game). Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their discs on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Critter Kitchen

| kithorning

In Critter Kitchen, you are a proud restaurant owner determined to set yourself apart during Restaurant Week at Bistro Bay! You’ll do this by completing various ingredient-related challenges over the course of the week and hopefully impressing the celebrity critics with a grand meal at the end of the week. However, you can’t be everywhere at once, meaning you’ll have to rely on your chefs to gather as many ingredients (and rumors!) as they can throughout Bistro Bay. Each round players will simultaneously and secretly decide where to send their workers, and deciding who goes where. Some chefs are fast but can only carry one item, whereas others are slower but can carry much more! Wow the critics and establish yourself as the best restauranter in this adorable game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Programmed Movement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.51

Colonists, the

| T3d-1978

You and your opponents will take on the role of mayors of different villages forming in a newly established colony. The goal is to have the highest level of employment, and as mayor you’ll have to create jobs, educate your people, and strategically use your limited resources to expand your city and sow the seeds for greatness in the future.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Area Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Solo/Solitaire
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.06

Armageddon

| T3d-1978

In a post-apocalyptic world, players try to rebuild society. Using the debris, they build new towns for the remaining survivors to live in — but these friendly folks aren’t the only ones still out there. Marauders want to pillage your town and see it burn. Scavenge what you can and build new structures to help you defend against the marauder threat. While you can get more things done in town when you house more survivors there, they all have to have a space to sleep or they might turn against you and join the marauders.

Armageddon is a strategy game that offers many tactical choices and different strategies to claim victory.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.96

Cargo Noir

| T3d-1978

In Serge Laget’s Cargo Noir – his fourth standalone box game from Days of Wonder – players represent “families” that traffic in smuggled goods in a 1950s noir setting. Each turn, you’ll set sail to various ports where cargo is known to get “lost” for the right price – Hong Kong, Bombay, Rotterdam, New York and more – and you’ll make an offer for the goods on display. If another family then offers more in that port, you’ll need to up your bid or take your money and slink away to look for goods elsewhere. Stand alone in a port, though, and you’ll be able to discretely move the goods from the dock to your personal warehouse. Says Laget in a press release accompanying the game announcement, “Everything in Cargo Noir grew from a core auction mechanism that is simple and trivial to explain – you can only bid up, and the last bidder standing gets the goods.”

Once you collect goods, you can trade them in to add more ships to your fleet – allowing you to scout for wares in more locations – purchase Victory Spoils, or take other actions. The more goods you collect, the more valuable they can be. The player with the most Spoils at game end wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2- 5 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.09

Anachrony 🟠

| T3d-1978

It is the late 26th century. Earth is recovering from a catastrophic explosion that exterminated the majority of the population centuries ago and made most of the surface uninhabitable due to unearthly weather conditions. The surviving humans organized along four radically different ideologies, called Paths, to rebuild the world as they see fit: Harmony, Dominance, Progress, and Salvation. Followers of the four Paths live in a fragile peace, but in almost complete isolation next to each other. Their only meeting point is the last major city on Earth, now just known as the Capital.

By powering up the mysterious Time Rifts that opened in the wake of the cataclysm, each Path is able to reach back to specific moments in their past. Doing so can greatly speed up their progress, but too much meddling may endanger the time-space continuum. But progress is more important than ever before: if the mysterious message arriving through the Time Rift is to be believed, an even more terrible cataclysm is looming on the horizon: an asteroid bearing the mysterious substance called Neutronium is heading towards Earth. Even stranger, the scientists show that the energy signature of the asteroid matches the explosion centuries ago…

Anachrony features a unique two-tiered worker placement system. To travel to the Capital or venture out to the devastated areas for resources, players need not only various specialists (Engineers, Scientists, Administrators, and Geniuses) but also Exosuits to protect and enhance them — and both are in short supply.

The game is played in 4-7 turns, depending on the time when the looming cataclysm occurs — unless, of course, it is averted! The elapsed turns are measured on a dynamic timeline. By powering up the Time Rifts, players can reach back to earlier turns to supply their past “self” with resources. Each Path has a vastly different objective that rewards it with a massive amount of victory points when achieved. The Paths’ settlements will survive the impact, but the Capital will not. Whichever Path manages to collect most points will be the new seat for the Capital, thus the most important force left on the planet…

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.01