Tag: Worker Placement

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

Fresco: Big Box

| T3d-1978
Fresco: Big Box

Fresco: Big Box

In Fresco, players are master painters, working to restore a fresco in a Renaissance church.

Each round begins with players deciding what time they would like to wake up for the day. The earlier you wake up, the earlier you will be in turn order, and the better options you will be guaranteed to have. Wake up early too often, however, and your apprentices will become unhappy and stop working as efficiently. They would much rather sleep in!

Then, players decide their actions for the turn, deploying their apprentice work force to various tasks. You’ll need to buy paint, mix paint, work on painting the fresco, raise money by painting portraits (which you’ll need to buy the aforementioned paint!), and perhaps even send your apprentices to the opera in order to increase their happiness. Points are scored mostly by painting the fresco, which requires specific combinations of paints, so you’ll need to buy and mix your paints wisely, in addition to beating other players to the paints and frescos you would like to paint.

Fresco: Big Box contains all of the material from the original Fresco game, plus all expansions released through the end of 2012 and the all new 2nd expansion (with modules 8, 9, and 10)! You can play without expansions for a lighter family game, or add in expansions – whether one, two, or all – to vary play and to increase the decision-making and difficulty, resulting in a very flexible game with a high replay value.

Game Mechanics:

  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.73

Floating World

| T3d-1978
Floating World

Floating World

Set in feudal Japan, Philosophia: Floating World is a deck-building game which can be played either in turn-taking or fully simultaneous mode. You can build majestic pagodas and Shinto shrines, learn ancient eastern wisdom, explore the world, or fight ancient monsters — or all of the above. This is a sandbox-style game, and how you play is up to you!

In Floating World, you play as one of six unique characters from Edo Japan, each with a unique power and a mysterious secret. The game plays simultaneously over three phases that repeat until one player has gained a victory condition. All phases occur simultaneously, and they are:

  1. The Draw Phase: Draw six cards from your deck, then pass them to another player. They take these cards, discard one of their choice, then separate the remaining five cards into two piles, one containing two cards and one containing three. You do the same for another player, then take your two piles, discarding one of them and playing the other.
  2. The Collect Phase: Collect items and bonuses indicated on the cards in your hand. You may also pay time tokens to perform extra actions in the next phase.
  3. The Action Phase: Simultaneously take actions based on your cards in hand and those that you chose in the collect phase. Disputes caused by the simultaneous nature of these actions are resolved using the influence track, where the player at the top of the track chooses the outcome; choosing in your own interest, however, drops you to the bottom of the track.

Rounds continue in this way until a player gains any of the seven victory conditions available, such as collecting all four ganbaru tokens or discovering another player’s secret location and achieving any two of the ganbaru tokens.

Philosophia: Floating World contains over 200 tarot-sized cards and 12 intricate miniatures and is filled with beautiful Ukiyo-e style Japanese art, all digitally remastered to regain the original vibrance of the era. Welcome to the Floating World!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Managment
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.20

Feudalia

| T3d-1978
Feudalia

Feudalia

After an everlasting period of wars, it’s finally time to collect the spoils. The King has named the feudal lords who will bring glory and prosperity to the conquered lands. To that end, the nobles will have to hire workers and master craftsmen to make their feuds grow as well as helping in the construction of a glorious cathedral, a symbol of the King’s proximity to God.

Feudalia is a deck-building and resource management game for 1-4 players, who will take the roles of the feudal lords of the new lands. Each player will rule three feuds, and all the vassals living in them, who will work those lands to improve their territories, all of it while trumping your opponent’s progress with military incursions into their territories. But the King wants his share too, and the tax collector will appear frequently, taking part of the resources stored by the players.

The goal of the game is to be the first player to earn 10 points. Players earn points by building, either developing their own feuds or helping in the different phases of the construction of the cathedral. During a turn, each player plays their vassals from their hand to gather money and resources, to further invest in new workers or new buildings. Resources can be saved, but be careful! the tax collector will show at your door when you least expect him, and he’ll take half your resources from each feud.

Manage your vassals wisely, hire the best master craftsmen, spend your resources in the cathedral before the tax collector arrives, and become the most prosperous feudal lord in Feudalia!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Open Drafting
  • Trading
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.11

Expedition to Newdale

| T3d-1978
Expedition to Newdale

Expedition to Newdale

At the beginning of the game you have your personal board, a coal mine as your start building and 5 hand cards. Depending on which chapter you are playing, the appropriate game board sits in the middle of the table. Each round is divided into 5 phases which are played in order (or partially parallel, once you become more familiar with the game). 

 

In phase 1, a new event is revealed which usually alters the course of play in this round slightly (e. g., by introducing new buildings). Additionally the event card shows a fixed amount of workers which are available this round. An information which is much appreciated, as you have to place your action markers in phase 2. The latter are numbered 1 — 4 which is important for phase 4 and means that you need to plan ahead. But first phase 3: in this phase, more workers are drawn from a bag and get added to the others. This means that productions which would have been impossible before (because workers were missing) are now easily done. Pushing your luck might be beneficial! Phase 4 is the opposite to phase 2. Instead of placing your workers, you resolve their chosen action in order of their numbers. We hope you had a backup plan in place if your desired workers were not drawn in phase 3, because this can trigger an unpleasant chain of events! 

Not enough workers could mean that a production does not happen, which then means that you might not have enough money to build the building with your second action marker. Oh, and your third marker was planned to directly produce in the newly built building? Well, where there is no building, there’s no place to produce in, right? Clearly: planning ahead, a little luck and good alternatives are the way to success. In Phase 5, all players can either use a free building action or draw new hand cards. 

The last phase is used to resolve all buildings which do not need workers, e. g., an automatic coal production or a building which offers the conversion of a certain good to victory points. Afterwards the next round starts, of which you play a total of seven. A final scoring at the end of round seven will then show if you win or lose.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Push Your Luck
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Everdell

| T3d-1978
Everdell

Everdell

Within the charming valley of Everdell, beneath the boughs of towering trees, among meandering streams and mossy hollows, a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. From Everfrost to Bellsong, many a year have come and gone, but the time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. There are buildings to construct, lively characters to meet, events to host—you have a busy year ahead of yourself. Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?

Everdell is a game of dynamic tableau building and worker placement.

On their turn a player can take one of three actions:

a) Place a Worker: Each player has a collection of Worker pieces. These are placed on the board locations, events, and on Destination cards. Workers perform various actions to further the development of a player’s tableau: gathering resources, drawing cards, and taking other special actions.

b) Play a Card: Each player is building and populating a city; a tableau of up to 15 Construction and Critter cards. There are five types of cards: Travelers, Production, Destination, Governance, and Prosperity. Cards generate resources (twigs, resin, pebbles, and berries), grant abilities, and ultimately score points. The interactions of the cards reveal numerous strategies and a near infinite variety of working cities.

c) Prepare for the next Season: Workers are returned to the players supply and new workers are added. The game is played from Winter through to the onset of the following winter, at which point the player with the city with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.81

Eternal Palace

| T3d-1978
Eternal Palace

Eternal Palace

In Eternal Palace, you are a noble family who has pledged to help the Emperor rebuild his palace left derelict for centuries so that you may gain his favor. You must send your team to collect resources and rebuild monuments. You will also honor the Emperor by painting a beautiful picture of his beloved gardens and palace — but others are trying to impress him, too, and only one will have the honor of being chosen as the Emperor’s favorite.

In this game, your team of workers is represented by dice, and by placing them on the game board you contribute towards rebuilding the different parts of the Eternal Palace. Each location is reached based on dice rolls, but if others have gone to an otherwise inaccessible location, you may visit it too by paying fish, one of the resources in the game. Complete tasks first — or contribute more than your competitors to these monuments — to earn tokens reflecting your overall effort. Recruit new workers to your team, and use the painting pieces you receive as each location is unlocked to “paint” a record of your work, layer by layer.

Who will contribute the most to the reconstruction and gain the favor of the Emperor? Find out in this tense and highly interactive Eurogame!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Programmed Movement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.63

Endless Winter

| T3d-1978
Endless Winter

Endless Winter

Designed by Stan Kordonskiy (Dice Hospital, Rurik, Lock Up), developed by Jonny Pac (Coloma, Sierra West, Lions of Lydia), solo mode by Drake Villareal (Solani, Spook Manor), and illustrated by The Mico (Raiders of the North Sea, Paladins of the West Kingdom, Valeria), Endless Winter: Paleoamericans takes place in North America, around 10,000 BCE. Players guide the development of their tribes across several generations—from nomadic hunter-gatherers to prosperous tribal societies. Over the course of the game, tribes migrate and settle new lands, establish cultural traditions, hunt paleolithic megafauna, and build everlasting megalithic structures.

Endless Winter is a euro-style game that combines worker placement and deck building in an innovative way. Each round, players send their tribe members to various action spaces, and pay for the actions by playing cards and spending resources. Tribe cards grant additional labor, while Culture cards provide a variety of unique effects. As an alternative, cards can be saved for an end-of-round Eclipse phase, where they are simultaneously revealed to determine the new player order, and trigger various bonus actions.

The game features a novel blend of interwoven systems and mechanisms, such as multi-use cards, area influence, tile placement, and set collection. Plus, there are many viable paths to victory. After four brisk rounds, scores are tallied, and the tribe with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.22

Egizia

| T3d-1978
Egizia

Egizia

Egizia: Shifting Sands is an updated version of the beloved strategy game Egizia. Players travel down the Nile, placing boats as they go, to collect resources that will help them construct some of Egypt’s most famous monuments. With new monuments to build, new cards to collect, and a constantly shifting river, Egizia: Shifting Sands Edition is a streamlined, modern update that both longtime fans and new players can easily pick up and enjoy.

In Egizia, players must place their pawns following the course of the Nile, moving northwards. In this way, each placement not only blocks the opponents from choosing the same square (except monuments, where multiple players are always allowed), but also forces the player to place their remaining pawns only on the squares below the one they just occupied.

When the placement phase is over, the workers of the players (which are separate from the pawns) must be fed with the grain produced in the fields. The production of each field is based on the floods of the Nile, so some fields may not give grain each turn. If a player doesn’t have enough grain for all their workers, they must buy it with victory points. After that, stones are received from the owned quarries and used to build the monuments (if the right to do so was reserved earlier) along with the workers.

In this new edition, players each get a chance to build across the Colonnade, a new monument. The more columns you build, the better powers you unlock to help you on the river. Perhaps once per turn you can place boats on occupied river spaces or upstream, or gain an extra point each time you place bricks in monuments. With randomized rewards from game to game, the Colonnade is a dynamic new monument to shake up traditional gameplay.

Below the Colonnade, where the graves once stood, lie the mysterious statues — a new monument unlike anything else in Egizia. These tiny build sites are cheaper than any other monument, but they hold the potential for high reward if you fulfill their requirements. Players must plan early as they can place only one brick in a statue per round, and each level they build has more strenuous requirements for endgame bonuses.

Egizia: Shifting Sands keeps all the painstaking risk/reward decisions of the original Egizia and adds new depths of strategy, balance, and gameplay for a fresh twist on a timeless classic.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.75

Dune Imperium

| T3d-1978
Dune Imperium

Dune Imperium

Dune: Imperium is a game that finds inspiration in elements and characters from the Dune legacy, both the new film from Legendary Pictures and the seminal literary series from Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson.

As a leader of one of the Great Houses of the Landsraad, raise your banner and marshal your forces and spies. War is coming, and at the center of the conflict is Arrakis – Dune, the desert planet.

Dune: Imperium uses deck-building to add a hidden-information angle to traditional worker placement.

You start with a unique leader card, as well as a deck identical to those of your opponents. As you acquire cards and build your deck, your choices will define your strengths and weaknesses. Cards allow you to send your Agents to certain spaces on the game board, so how your deck evolves affects your strategy. You might become more powerful militarily, able to deploy more troops than your opponents. Or you might acquire cards that give you an edge with the four political factions represented in the game: the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Fremen.

Unlike many deck-building games, you don’t play your entire hand in one turn. Instead, you draw a hand of cards at the start of every round and alternate with other players, taking one Agent turn at a time (playing one card to send one of your Agents to the game board). When it’s your turn and you have no more Agents to place, you’ll take a Reveal turn, revealing the rest of your cards, which will provide Persuasion and Swords. Persuasion is used to acquire more cards, and Swords help your troops fight for the current round’s rewards as shown on the revealed Conflict card.

Defeat your rivals in combat, shrewdly navigate the political factions, and acquire precious cards. The Spice must flow to lead your House to victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Dinosaur World

| T3d-1978

The triumph of science that led to dinosaurs returning to the world once more has become public knowledge. New parks spring up regularly, often beginning operations even before everything has been finalized. There is no shortage of patrons eager to be entertained by these returned species in new and exciting ways. However, as with any form of entertainment, elements of triumph are often accompanied by elements of tragedy. This means it is of the utmost importance that you take every precaution by ensuring each visitor signs the safety waiver before enjoying the wonders of Dinosaur World!

Each round in Dinosaur World, you draft a new résumé card to acquire new workers; spend workers to take public actions building your park and acquiring DNA; spend further workers to take private actions improving that park; then drive your jeep around experiencing the wonder and excitement of what you have built! Throughout the game you acquire victory points through a variety of means — and possibly a few visitor deaths as a natural consequence of overly enthusiastic dinosaur encounters. At the end of the game, you lose points if you accumulated too many deaths, then the player with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.32