Tag: Worker Placement

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

Resurgence

| T3d-1978
Resurgence

Resurgence

No one really knows what triggered the One Day War between the superpowers, but a single day is all it took to end the Before World. After the governments collapsed, leaderless groups of survivors huddled in the ruins of once great cities. The climate is brutal, resources are scarce, and mutant tribes are roaming the wastelands. The world desperately needs a hero to rally the people and lift them out of the ruins.

Resurgence is a competitive, Euro-style board game for up to four players. It offers a unique blend of bag-building, hidden worker placement, and resource management that creates a one-of-a-kind gameplay experience. At the start of the game, each player selects a hero in charge of a small band of survivors and a few supplies. Each round of the game, players need to secretly plan where they are going to send their workers in order to accomplish various tasks and exert their influence, whether they’re completing missions around the ruins of Moscow; gathering fuel, food and spare parts; rescuing survivors; learning new skills; or building their base.

Resurgence offers different routes to achieve victory, and in-game events and end-game directive cards provide replayability and variability from game to game. At the end of the game, the hero whose faction is victorious becomes the new leader and unites all the survivor groups in the sanctuary of Hope Island.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.80

Reavers of Midgard

| T3d-1978
Reavers of Midgard

Reavers of Midgard

Reavers of Midgard is a single worker placement game with elements of set collection, dice combat and engine building set in the Champions of Midgard universe.

In Champions of Midgard, your quest was to become Jarl. You battled back the trolls, draugr and some of the epic monsters that once threatened the sanctity of your humble port town. Now it’s time to go on the offensive.

In Reavers of Midgard, you’ll be looking to gain glory by raiding nearby villages for their riches, sacking well-fortified castles and battling both man and monster on the open seas. You’ll not only need to take your rowdy crew of vikings and the food needed to keep them happy along for the ride but you’ll also have to recruit a crew of elite warriors – the Reavers.

Reavers can be used in three different ways. They can be made your ship’s leader, earning you a one-time bonus and enabling your warriors to be more versatile in combat. They can also be used to rally more warriors to your cause, filling your ship to the brim with the right fighters for the right situations. Finally, they can also be used to help your crew specialize, earning you a bonus every time your crew sails into battle.

Whoever can earn the most glory after six rounds will be the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Rajas of the Ganges

| T3d-1978
Rajas of the Ganges

Rajas of the Ganges

Through tactics and karma to wealth and fame…

In 16th century India, the powerful empire of the Great Moguls rises between the Indus and the Ganges rivers. Taking on the role of rajas and ranis – the country’s influential nobles – players in Rajas of the Ganges race against each other in support of the empire by developing their estates into wealthy and magnificent provinces. Players must use their dice wisely and carefully plot where to place their workers, while never underestimating the benefits of good karma. Success will bring them great riches and fame in their quest to become legendary rulers.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Network Building
  • Racing
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Raiders of Scythia

| T3d-1978
Raiders of Scythia

Raiders of Scythia

Many centuries ago, the Greek, Persian and Assyrian empires controlled vast amounts of land and riches. Yet, despite their fortifications and imposing armies, rumours began spreading of a formidable foe in the lands above the Black Sea. They came on horseback. Fierce warriors, both male and female. Skilled with the sword, axe and bow. But they weren’t mindless savages. Their artisans were renowned for their ability to craft detailed trinkets of gold. They fashioned leather armour and improvised the recurve bow. They trained eagles for hunting and war. Some even believe they inspired the Greek tales of the Amazons. But they were more than legend or fable. They were the Raiders of Scythia.

The aim of Raiders of Scythia is to be the player with the most Victory Points (VP) at the game’s end. VP are gained by raiding Settlements, taking Plunder and completing Quests. Players will need to assemble a Crew, train Animals and gather Provisions. The game ends when there is only 2 unraided Settlements or 2 Quests remaining on the Main Board.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.69

Pulsar 2849

| T3d-1978
Pulsar 2849

Pulsar 2849

It is the year 2849, and humanity has harnessed the power of the pulsars. Now we must find a way to distribute this power throughout the stars.
In this Euro-style game, players explore space, claim pulsars, and discover technologies that will help them build energy-distribution infrastructure on a cosmic scale. Dice are used to purchase actions, and players choose their dice from a communal pool. There are many paths to victory so you can blaze your own trail to a bright future.

Draft dice to explore the universe in Pulsar 2849. Game is only 8 rounds long.
Each round, roll dice based on the number of players, sort them based on their values, then draft dice to take actions.

Possible actions
□ Fly your survey ship
□ take a Gyrodyne
□ Develop a Pulsar
□ Build one or more energy transmitter vectors
□ Patent a technology
□ Buy a dice modifier
□ Complete a special project in your HQ and unlock Gate Run

Players score points each round based on what they’ve discovered and explored, and everyone has common goals that they want to achieve.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.35

Plunderbund

| T3d-1978
Plunderbund

Plunderbund

You lead a guild striving to dominate the market for illegal goods in the Sprawl, a city rich in history and lawlessness. Recruit and task an army of agents, racketeers, spymasters and others to build your reputation by selling your goods and causing chaos for your rivals. Through a light deck building mechanism you attempt to create the strongest network of agents, racketeers and the most desirable black market goods. Winners and losers are determined by a fun, yet sophisticated, supply & demand mechanic.

Plunderbund combines the innate corruption and profiteering of prohibition Chicago and the lawlessness of the fantasy setting, the Sprawl.

It’s an era before cell phones, e-commerce and customer relationship management tools, an honest guild had to get business the hard way: thieving, sorcery, money laundering and bribery.

Plunderbund is your chance to lead your guild to fame, fortune or disaster as you navigate the whims of the notoriously picky Sprawl consumer and deal with underhanded tactics from rivals determined to steal your business.

Each player will lead a guild with the power to decide where your finite resources are invested. A light deck building mechanic enables you to acquire and improve your black market goods, add agents, add racketeers, disrupt your rivals’ operations or just wreak havoc. Cards are added to your deck through a simple snake draft from a limited selection of over twenty different recruits.

Your guild gains reputation (VPs) as a sophisticated yet simply implemented supply and demand mechanic helps you sell your black market goods to merchants. At the end of the game you will be compared to your rivals on the strength of your network of agents, number of racketeers and black market goods qualities. All this growth comes at a cost, you have to take favors as you try to build your operation without the benefit of any gold in your coffers. As they say “paybacks are hell”. Fail to payback your favors and you pay the price as you see your reputation diminished at the end of the game.

Over the course of twelve months, divided into four seasons, you will build your reputation on the backs of your guild recruits and their abilities.

All seasons have three months. Each month players:
1) Place demand coins
2) Draw cards and payback favors
3) Determine cards to put into play and pay for them
4) Calculate and receive goods

After three months have been played:
1) Compete for demand
2) Recruit guild member using a limited snake draft
3) Start the next season

After the end of the fourth season, the game is over and final reputation is tallied.

There are two key concepts in Plunderbund. The first is the supply and demand mechanism. The game starts with the placement of demand at open merchants. The demand generated is correlated with the products being offered by the guilds. In the early game, demand is mostly based on the appeal and ingenuity of the products. Later, as with any market, quality and price become more important. Each demand coin expresses a customer’s preference. Some customers want the best appeal, some want the best ingenuity, some want the best quality, and some want the lowest price.

Your goal is to win more demand coins than other guilds by having the best network of rogues and the best product. The rogues are your sales team. The more rogues you have in place, the more deals you can win and the more your guild reputation soars. Over the course of the game you will build out your ability to compete for demand.

To win a merchant’s demand coin, you must have an “Agent” on that merchant. If you have the only agent on a merchant, you are nearly certain to win. If another guild’s agent is on that merchant, then you must compete. The winner is the player who is leading in that product attribute. So, if the customer has expressed an interest in high quality then the guild with the best quality has a chance to win.

You can only win a demand coin if you can supply a good. Goods are earned (stolen, fenced, you name it) at the end of each month. The number of goods you generate each month is based on your investment in your supply chain (which lowers price) and quality. For each competition you win, you decide whether you want to take that specific demand coin or pass. If you pass, the demand coin either stays on the board or is won by a rival guild. Suffice it to say, you need goods to have a chance win Plunderbund.

The second key concept is the favor economy. Instead of paying money to get things done for your guild, you take favors. These favors are used to put your guild members to work (each card has a favor cost ranging from zero to four). These favor cards go in your discard pile. Fortunately, paying back a favor is easy. As soon as you draw the favor card into your play area, from your draw pile, it is immediately considered payed back. In this way, favors are an opportunity cost. If you end the game with favors that are not paid back, they are deducted from your end of game score. Favor management is an essential part of Plunderbund.

If you understand these key concepts, then you are ready to build your guild reputation and win Plunderbund.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Deck Building
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.83

Planet B

| T3d-1978
Planet B

Planet B

At some point in the not-so-distant future, we humans had to look for a new place to live. Just when we thought we’d have to settle for Mars, we suddenly discovered a new planet, one we lovingly christened “Planet B”. It was a second chance for humanity, and of course we were determined to do everything right this time because as everyone knows, we humans learn very well from our mistakes…

In Planet B, you slip into the role of corrupt governors. You make crooked deals with corporations to advance your own interests. You build your city, let the population work for you, rise in the favor of political factions, or control the news. Of course, all of this comes at a price — and by the time you’re vying for the presidency, you’ll want potential voters to be on your side. In the end, as always, only one thing counts: Who has managed to pocket the most government money?

Game Mechanics:

  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.28

Orleans Invasion / Trade & Intrigue

| T3d-1978
Orleans Invasion / Trade & Intrigue

Orleans Invasion / Trade & Intrigue

Orléans: Trade & Intrigue is the second large expansion for the award-winning game Orléans.

This expansion adds new place tiles and four new modules:

  • Orders: a new set of cards, each depicting goods and a city – collect the goods and turn them in at the city for victory points
  • New Events: a completely new set of 34 Hour Glass Tiles from which 18 are semi-randomly chosen for each game
  • New Beneficial Deeds: a replacement Beneficial Deeds board providing completely new rewards for sending away your Followers
  • Intrigue: a replacement Beneficial Deeds board allowing you to attack and hinder your opponents or even steal from them

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.39

Near and Far

| T3d-1978
Near and Far

Near and Far

Four wanderers search for the Last Ruin, a city that legends say contains an artifact that will grant the greatest desires of the heart. A lost love, redemption, acceptance, a family rejoined– these are the fires that fuel the wanderers’ journeys, but can they overcome their own greed and inner demons on the way?

In Near and Far, you and up to three friends explore many different maps in a search for the Last Ruin, recruiting adventurers, hunting for treasure, and competing to be the most storied traveler. You must collect food and equipment at town for long journeys to mysterious locales, making sure not to forget enough weapons to fight off bandits, living statues, and rusty robots! Sometimes in your travels you’ll run into something unique and one of your friends will read what happens to you from a book of stories, giving you a choice of how to react, creating a new and memorable tale each time you play.

Near and Far is a sequel to Above and Below and includes a book of encounters. This time players read over ten game sessions to reach the end of the story. Each chapter is played on a completely new map with unique art and adventures.

Answer the call of the ruins and begin your journey.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Storytelling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.87

My Father’s Work

| T3d-1978
My Father's Work

My Father's Work

The walls were lined with iron shelves, each metal slat overfilled with glass jars containing formaldehyde and grotesque curiosities within. Pristine brass tools and refined metals of a quality I had never before laid eyes upon were strewn across sturdy slabs of rock and wood, their edges sharp with use. However, my eyes were soon drawn to a sturdy writing desk, its mahogany eaves inlaid with thin strips of copper, the center of which contained a well-worn leather-bound book. My father’s journal — passed down to me and representing years of knowledge and countless experiments. And inside that weathered tome, atop the pearly parchment oxidized yellow at its frayed edges, were the deliberate quill marks of a crazed genius outlining the ambitious project he could never complete in one lifetime — his masterwork.

Without realizing it, my hands were shaking as I clutched the book to my chest. At once, I felt an ownership and anxiety for the scientific sketches scrawled so eloquently on those frayed sheets. It was at that moment that I began my obsession: I would restore this laboratory to its former brilliance and dedicate my life to completing my father’s work!

In My Father’s Work, players are competing mad scientists entrusted with a page from their father’s journal and a large estate in which to perform their devious experiments. Players earn points by completing experiments, aiding the town in its endeavors, upgrading their macabre estates, and hopefully completing their father’s masterwork.

But they have to balance study and active experimentation because at the end of each generation, all of their experiments and resources are lost to time until their child begins again with only the “Journaled Knowledge and Estate” they have willed to them — and since the game is played over the course of three generations, it is inevitable that the players will rouse the townsfolk to form angry mobs or spiral into insanity from the ethically dubious works they have created. The player with the most points at the end of three generations wins and becomes the most revered, feared, ingenious scientist the world has ever known!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Storytelling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.20