Tag: Worker Placement

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

Everdell Farshore

| OTSG Staff

The Forever Sea is calling…

The rugged coast north of Everdell Valley is a land brimming with adventure and mystery. Stalwart sailors search for bountiful islands and valuable treasures. Dutiful monks inhabit abbeys and scriptoriums, meticulously translating and illuminating. Hard-working folk gather resources and build their cities in unison with the ever-changing waves of the mighty ocean.

Welcome to Everdell Farshore, a standalone game set in the country of Farshore. Through each season, you lead a crew of critter workers to build up a prosperous city and to explore the enchanting ocean beyond. You must plan your actions carefully in order to build and to sail, for only by adapting to the winds of change will you succeed.

The wind is high. The sun is breaking the horizon. It is time to set sail for adventure!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.83

Everdell Duo

| OTSG Staff

In Everdell Duo, you either compete against your single opponent or play co-operatively with another player to earn the most points. You accomplish this by placing workers to gather resources, then use those resources to play cards face up in front of you, creating your own woodland city.

Cards may be played from your hand or from the face-up area on the board called the meadow. However, only cards touching the sun or moon token may be played from the meadow, and players move these tokens each time they perform a turn. Therefore, planning for and timing which cards you play is critical.

Each game you try to achieve various events, the requirements of which differ from game to game, making certain cards and combinations more important to pursue.

The game lasts for four seasons, then players add their scores to determine the winner. If you’re playing co-operatively, check the requirements for the chapter you are playing to see whether you have won.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.74

Evenfall

| OTSG Staff

It’s Evenfall, and the Clans of Magic are preparing for a new era. Evenfall is the time when the boundaries of reality collapse and the supernatural awakens. The World-Tree opens its glowing gateways to unknown distant regions. Send Witches from your clan to discover and control new Places of Power. Use them for arcane rituals and battle for the favor of the Powerstones. But there is only one seat on the Enchanted Throne! Do you have the skills to lead the world into a new era?

Evenfall is a card-driven, engine-building game with both novel and familiar mechanisms for 1 to 4 players. Manage your resources, execute your actions in an efficient order, and discover card and action synergies that generate victory points. The game ends after three rounds, then the player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.11

East India Companies

| OTSG Staff

In the 18th and 19th centuries, shipping companies aimed to strengthen the trade between the West and the Far East that had begun in previous centuries. Tea, spices, coffee, and silk are commodities much consumed in Europe, and their buying and selling prices depend closely on supply and demand. Fortunes can be made and gambled depending on circumstances.

In East India Companies, players manage a large shipping company that trades with far flung trading posts in India. They must manage their ships and invest in buying shares of their own company or those of their competitors. Most importantly, players have to keep an eye on the constantly fluctuating market prices! Is it better to invest your money in the stock market or in buying goods? Do they prefer to use fast ships with low tonnage or slower ships with larger holds? Whatever the players choose, their strategies will influence those of their opponents.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Dungeon Petz

| OTSG Staff

Become the leader of an imp family that has just started a new business – breeding and selling petz. Sound simple and safe? Well, we forgot to mention that those petz are for Dungeon Lords. This means magical, playful, sometimes angry monsters that constantly desire attention and at the very moment you want them to demonstrate their qualities to buyers they are sick or they poop. Sometimes you are even glad that you got rid of them – but the profit is unbelievable.

Dungeon Petz is a standalone game set in the Dungeon Lords universe. The game consists of several rounds in which players use unusual worker placement mechanisms (players simultaneously prepare different sized groups of imps in order to play sooner than others) to prepare themselves for the uneasy task of raising creature cubs and pleasing their different needs (represented by cards) in order to sell them as grown and scary creatures to Dungeon Lords. In the meantime, they also attend various contests in which they show off their pets, scoring additional points.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.63

Dune: Imperium – Uprising

| OTSG Staff

In Dune: Imperium Uprising, you want to continue to balance military might with political intrigue, wielding new tools in pursuit of victory. Spies will shore up your plans, vital contracts will expand your resources, or you can learn the ways of the Fremen and ride mighty sandworms into battle!

Dune: Imperium Uprising is a standalone spinoff to Dune: Imperium that expands on that game’s blend of deck-building and worker placement, while introducing a new six-player mode that pits two teams against one other in the biggest struggle yet.

The Dune: Imperium expansions Rise of Ix and Immortality work with Uprising, as do almost all of the cards from the base game, and elements of Uprising can be used with Dune: Imperium.

The choices are yours. The Imperium awaits!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.52

Doggerland

| OTSG Staff

Doggerland was a landmass that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe that disappeared under the North Sea after the last ice age. Humans lived on these fertile lands where multiple resources and animals were found.

In Doggerland, you play a clan at around 15,000 BCE. Your goal is to expand your clan in order to leave a trace of its existence for centuries to come. Players increase their population, make crafts, paint murals in caves, raise megaliths for the gods, and (most of all) survive the rigors of the seasons. To do this, they explore the surrounding territory and adapt to the resources at their disposal. The territory differs in each game, thanks to modular tiles.

Each round, players program their actions, then carry them out. These actions vary, based on available resources, abundance or scarcity around their villages, and also based on the actions of other players. As time passes, resources run out, and clans must migrate to find what they need for their development and survival.

In each clan, there is a leader who brings bonuses, and a shaman who allows powerful and unique actions thanks to knowledge and magic. After 6-8 seasons, the clan with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.31

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

| OTSG Staff

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write is a roll-and-write version of the critically-acclaimed game Dinosaur Island.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write is a unique game in which players draft dice and then use those drafted dice as workers in a worker placement phase. Then, a fun polyomino puzzle ensues as you try and fit all your attractions and Dinosaurs into your park while buildings roads and routes to the exits for bonus points. At the end of the game, have more victory points than your opponents to win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Network and Route Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Paper-and-Pencil
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Deep Space D-6

| OTSG Staff

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

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.66

Darwin’s Journey

| OTSG Staff

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:

  • Contracts
  • Pick-up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

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