7 Best Worker Placement Games That You Should Know Update 04/2024

Best Worker Placement Games

Worker-placement board games are very strategic and require players to come up with complicated strategies to get the most out of every move. When you play this game, you’ll need to think ahead and figure out the best ways to get resources and points. You also need to be quick enough to change your plans if another player interferes. Skill, tactical genius, and intuition all come into play when you place your little figures, whether you’re putting together a team of warriors or just trying to win a game of football or baseball.

The players often have to think about the trade-offs between investing in making the next turn better and taking actions that make their score better. Some spaces that were fought over early in the game become almost worthless as the game nears its end, while others that are only used for scoring become very valuable. It can be very important to know when to change your focus, and this can lead to victory.

Lords of Waterdeep

Lords of Waterdeep

The city state of Waterdeep is one of the most well-known places in the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeon & Dragons. It is a bustling place of commerce that draws adventurers who want to get ready for the notorious dungeon Undermountain. Players take on the role of one of the masked Lords of Waterdeep in this board game set in the city. Each Lord has a unique skill that is shown on a card that they keep until the end of the game.

There is a strong RPG theme in this game, which makes it easy for RPG players to get into. The rules of the game are very clear on the game board and on the cards. Lords send their agents to places around Waterdeep to get gold, hire different types of adventurers, and find quests for the heroes to do. When you have the right group, like the four fighters, a cleric, and a wizard needed to fight off seawraiths, you’ll finish the quest and get a certain number of victory points. You might also get more adventurers, gold, or a permanent boost that lets you get more resources or points in the future.

Each time you build a building, the person who owns it will get some of the money. You can make better action tiles that anyone can use. Each lord gets extra points at the end of the game if he or she meets certain goals, like completing certain types of quests or building buildings. This will help you figure out what the lord will do next. Lords of Waterdeep is one of the more interactive worker-placement games out there. Players get intrigue cards that they can use to steal resources or even make another player go on a certain quest. Add the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion if you want to play even dirtier. It lets players move their plans forward more quickly at the cost of corruption, but it’s worth it.

Agricola

Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley are both video games about farming. Players of Agricola, Uwe Rosenberg’s game about running a 17th-century farm, will find many things they know from these games in the game. You start with a two-room house and a lot of land that hasn’t been worked. You’ll make your homestead better by having your farmers do things like plough fields, plant seeds, gather construction materials, and build structures for you.

When the game is over, you’ll lose points for each plot of land that isn’t used and for not having at least one crop or animal of each type. In this game, each worker is another member of your family who you’ll have to house and feed. Many worker-placement games say more is better when it comes to increasing the number of workers you have. Expansion must be done with care, and it must be done slowly. If you have extra food, you can also spend some time studying for a job that can make things more efficient.

Agricola, like real farming, is a game that needs planning and patience. In order to have many sheep, you’ll need a big enough pen for both the sheep you have now and their babies. Pigs and pumpkins will also need to be kept in mind. Make sure you spend at least some time improving your farm with tools like a loom or butter press that will help you get the most out of your resources and earn points.

Caylus 1303

Caylus 1303

Parks and Recreation made fun of Eurogames in a storyline where a nerdy character came up with his own version: The Cones of Dunshire. In spite of being an over-the-top parody, Caylus 1303 is a 15-year-old board game that was updated last year. Cones of Dunshire’s use of baroque roles and moving around a board is very similar to Caylus.

People play the game, which is set in mediaeval France, to earn a lot of respect by helping to build a castle. So they’ll need to get resources, hire workers and build buildings that look like hotel tokens on the board, like they do in Monopoly. When someone else plays with your buildings, you get prestige points for it.

In Caylus 1303, there is a lot more direct competition between players than there is in most worker placement games. It’s a game where players try to get control of the position of the provost, which determines which workers can be used. You can also take other people’s role cards, which give you special abilities like getting more prestige from building.

You have to pay extra money if another player doesn’t have enough workers or doesn’t want to make any more moves, so they pass. That means that if another player has more resources than you, your efficiency can be slowed down. The new rules have made the game shorter and added more random elements, but it’s still a very complicated and social game.

Champions of Midgard

Players take on the role of a Viking leader who must fight trolls, draugr, and other mythical monsters to bring glory to their people in Champions of Midgard. It’s fast-paced and easy to learn. They have their own dice pool and many have rules about what kind of person can fight them. Workers placed in different places on the board allow you to collect dice of specific types, which increases your chances of success. You also need to make sure that your warriors are well-trained in axes, swords, and spears so they can fight any enemy that comes their way.

There’s still a lot of strategy in the game, even though dice make it more based on luck. You can think of ways to keep your people well-fed and build things, and you can get runes that will help you win. When players work together to fight off a menacing troll, they run the risk of taking blame in the form of negative points if they don’t do enough to stop it from happening.

Viticulture

Viticulture

Some people think that viticulture is the best mix of taste and mechanics in the genre. The game almost feels like a management simulation because it is so realistic and detailed. It shows how hard it is to run a small winery.

If you grow grapes and put them in a wine cellar for a few rounds, you get points. You can then sell the grapes for money. The best way to make sure you can meet your production goals is to plant a variety of grapes, install an irrigation system and trellis, and expand your cellar so that you can make better and more unique wines.

You can also earn points or get money by attracting people like a wedding party or a wine critic. The right time to play these cards can make your winery more of a tourist attraction by building a cottage and letting people taste wine. Everyone should have a bottle of wine on hand to get everyone in the mood for the game. There are a lot of ways to win.

Stone Age

If you like games like Agricola or A Feast for Odin because they have great settings, you might want to check out Stone Age. In this game, you go even further back in time. You end up in the Stone Age. People who care about their community had to work together, trade, and grow in order to have a better chance of surviving in a harsh world.

In this game, you and your friends will compete for food. You will assign members of your tribe to do different things to help your people. You’ll hunt for food, of course, but you’ll also look for and trade for new things. If you don’t have enough food in the third phase of the game, you could lose a lot of points.

Le Havre

Le Havre

Le Havre is a game about making money through trade. Goods are given to the players, and they can choose to give them away, upgrade them, or use them to get more money in the future. As you play the game, you’ll feed their workers and start to see more money come back to you. At the end, you’ll add up the value of all your different things, and the player with the most money wins!

Le Havre is a simple game that is hard to play well. The idea is simple enough, but you’ll have to be careful with your strategy to make sure you always have enough money and resources to take care of your workers. To get ahead, don’t always try to make up for lost ground, so budget your goods well!