Tag: Worker Placement

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

Lords of Waterdeep

| T3d-1978
Lords of Waterdeep

Lords of Waterdeep

Waterdeep, the City of Splendors – the most resplendent jewel in the Forgotten Realms, and a den of political intrigue and shady back-alley dealings. In this game, the players are powerful lords vying for control of this great city. Its treasures and resources are ripe for the taking, and that which cannot be gained through trickery and negotiation must be taken by force!

In Lords of Waterdeep, a strategy board game for 2-5 players, you take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep, secret rulers of the city. Through your agents, you recruit adventurers to go on quests on your behalf, earning rewards and increasing your influence over the city. Expand the city by purchasing new buildings that open up new actions on the board, and hinder – or help – the other lords by playing Intrigue cards to enact your carefully laid plans.

During the course of play, you may gain points or resources through completing quests, constructing buildings, playing intrigue cards or having other players utilize the buildings you have constructed. At the end of 8 rounds of play, the player who has accrued the most points wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Hidden Roles
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.46

Lions of Lydia

| T3d-1978
Lions of Lydia

Lions of Lydia

The ancient world is changing. The kingdom of Lydia has minted the world’s first gold coin. Bartering and trading will soon be supplanted by coins as the dominant medium of exchange throughout civilization…

Lions of Lydia is a bag-management and engine-building game about the dawn of currency. As an influential leader, you send merchants out to barter for resources and increase your landholdings. When the nobles arrive, they bring their Lydian Lion coins into play—which have unparalleled buying power.

To achieve victory, you must manage the merchants in your bag and complement their abilities with the cards in your tableau. Traditional merchants produce basic resources, which are necessary to build your engine—but if you fail to convert your resources into coins, you will not be able to buy the most valuable cards! Thus, noble Lydian merchants—and their golden Lion coins—are the key to success. When enough properties are developed, the game ends, and a winner is declared!

Will you draft the best merchants to achieve your goals? Will you be the first to gain the most valuable properties? Will you master the new, golden currency: the Lions of Lydia?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Deck Building
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Kingsburg

| T3d-1978
Kingsburg

Kingsburg

In Kingsburg, players are Lords sent from the King to administer frontier territories.

The game takes place over five years, a total of 20 turns. In every year, there are 3 production seasons for collecting resources, building structures, and training troops. Every fourth turn is the winter, in which all the players must fight an invading army. Each player must face the invaders, so this is not a cooperative game.

The resources to build structures and train troops are collected by influencing the advisers in the King’s Council. Players place their influence dice on members of the Council. The player with the lowest influence dice sum will be the first one to choose where to spend his/her influence; this acts as a way of balancing poor dice rolling. Even with a very unlucky roll, a clever player can still come out from the Council with a good number of resources and/or soldiers.

Each adviser on the King’s Council will award different resources or allocate soldiers, victory points, and other advantages to the player who was able to influence him/her for the current turn.

At the end of five years, the player who best developed his assigned territory and most pleased the King through the Council is the winner.

Many alternate strategies are possible to win: will you go for the military way, disregarding economic and prestige buildings, or will you aim to complete the big Cathedral to please the King? Will you use the Merchant’s Guild to gain more influence in the Council, or will you go for balanced development?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.43

Kero

| T3d-1978
Kero

Kero

June 2471, and kerosene – KERO – is scarce. Two clans are struggling to survive, exploring New Territories in their tanker trucks. Running out of fuel is a risk each time they leave camp! Fortunately, a local tribe of Tuareks can lend a helping hand…

Kero is a two-player game set in a future unfriendly world, where players will be clan leaders – managing a camp, a tanker truck and 7 Explorers – competing for the same lands. Their ability to win the game will be based on how much kerosene (Jerrycans) they can find and how they use it wisely… Collect as many resources as possible while using as little as possible of the KERO in your tanker-truck to upgrade your camp and claim New Territories! Score the more points (by adding up the points on cards and territories) and become the 2471 Badassest Clan!

The game is played in 3 rounds (ending when a Claim card is revealed), each comprising several turns. Making snap decisions and mistakes under time pressure is part of the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling
  • Move Through Deck
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.97

Kanagawa

| T3d-1978
Kanagawa

Kanagawa

1840: In Kanagawa, the great bay of Tokyo, the Master Hokusai decided to open a painting school to share his art with his disciples. You are one of these disciples, and more than anything, you want to prove yourself worthy of the “crazy, old artist”. Follow his teachings to expand your studio and paint your preferred subjects (Trees, Animals, Characters, Buildings), all while paying attention to the changing of the seasons in order to make the most harmonious print… the one that will become the work of your lifetime!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Istanbul

| T3d-1978
Istanbul

Istanbul

There’s hustle and bustle at Istanbul’s grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything…

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

  • Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
  • Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
  • Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
  • Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.
  • Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who’s reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59

Imhotep: Builder of Egypt

| T3d-1978
Imhotep: Builder of Egypt

Imhotep: Builder of Egypt

In Imhotep, the players become builders in Egypt who want to emulate the first and best-known architect there, namely Imhotep.

Over six rounds, they move wooden stones by boat to create five seminal monuments, and on a turn, a player chooses one of four actions: Procure new stones, load stones on a boat, bring a boat to a monument, or play an action card. While this sounds easy, naturally the other players constantly thwart your building plans by carrying out plans of their own. Only those with the best timing — and the stones to back up their plans — will prove to be Egypt’s best builder.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Honga

| T3d-1978
Honga

Honga

Excitement in a prehistoric period! The saber-toothed tiger clan is looking for a new leader, but which one of you can best take care of the clan in Honga and prove to be the most worthy leader?

There are multiple ways to prove your worth: gather supplies, comb through the dark forest, pay homage to the old nature gods, attract mammoths, and successfully trade with other clans. But! No matter how busy you are with these tasks, you can never forget Honga! Whenever you ignore the local saber-toothed tiger, he will come and eat your food — and getting rid of him can turn out to be tough.

Honga is an action selection resource management game for 2-5 players, age 8+, set in the prehistoric period. Players take turns playing their action card to the central board, paying careful attention to where they place it, and how it’s rotated. The number of hands pointing to an action space determines how many times you may use that action. Gather resources and use them to complete trade agreements, lure mammoths to the tribe herd, and pay homage to the old nature gods. But! If you don’t make sure that at least one action point is allocated to Honga’s den, he’ll come steal food from you! Players must balance between keeping Honga at bay and using their limited action points effectively.

With multiple paths to victory, light player interaction, and a 45 minute play time, this game will have you coming back again and again to play with Honga, the local saber-tooth tiger that’s really just a big kitty at heart.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.89

Holotype

| T3d-1978
Holotype

Holotype

A fast-paced light-strategy worker placement board game about paleontology for 2-5 players.

Players use their Paleontologist, Grad Student and Field Assistant workers to gather fossils, do research and publish new Dinosaurs and Marine Reptiles as Holotypes. Personal and semi-collaborative Global Objectives feature modern paleontology concepts such as cladistics and taxonomy.

The player with the most Victory Points from publishing Holotypes, completing Personal Objectives and contributing to Global Objectives wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Helionox: Deluxe Edition

| T3d-1978
Helionox: Deluxe Edition

Helionox: Deluxe Edition

Helionox is a movement based deck building board game where great leaders vie for control in a shattered solar system. One to four players can attempt mastery over competitive, cooperative, and solo modes. Designed to play fast with a quick setup and an imminent ending, Helionox has tension to spare from the first turn to the last.


The Deluxe Edition of Helionox brings together the original core set of Helionox: The Last Sunset and incorporates it with a brand new expansion called Mercury Protocol. The Kickstarter will offer a full sized box and game board along with the expansion and can be purchased via Kickstarter with or without the original core set.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59