Worker Placement Games

We have loads of different types of games. One of my favorite types of gameschooling is Worker Placement Games. I love the strategy of this, and how you don’t necessarily have to mess with the other players’ games. I admit, I’m a big fan of the Eurogames that aren’t super interactive with each other, you’re not actively messing with the other players.

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What is a worker placement game?

Each player has a set of workers, and on their turn they place them. Depending on the type of worker placement game you are placing all of your workers on each turn, or you place one a turn and the worker placement is controlled by other factors.

I love to think through where to put my workers and re-evaluate based upon how the other players place their workers.

We have quite a few of these, and so I’m going to split this into two categories, those I’ve already written about, and those I’ve played but not written about.

Worker Placement Games I’ve reviewed

I was looking over all of these and realized some of these worker placement games I don’t like quite as much because of other factors in the game, so I’ll make sure to explain that.

• Small World– This is worker placement because on each turn you are placing your armies and deciding where you want them to be, but it is also area control and there is a lot of “I stole this territory from you,” that I dislike. It is not my favorite, but my boys really enjoy it.
• Ex Libris– I love this game so much, I’m not good at it, but I love it. I love the book pun names, the different themes for the helpers, so much fun.
• Soul of the Empire– This is an area control game as well, but at the same time it doesn’t feel as aggressive as other area control games do. I also like that each group has a different win condition.
• Fool’s Gold– I love how the interactive part of this does not feel like you are attacking the other players, because it’s not you are stealing someone’s land, it’s you placed there or drew the card first.
• Fresco– Of the different worker placement games here, I think this is the one we’ve played the most often. There are many different components for how to gain points, and there is so much strategy that goes into every step of this game.

These are the games I’ve written reviews and my tips and tricks for. The bottom two are probably my favorites, and Fool’s Gold probably takes the least amount of time to play, and is the least complex.

Worker Placement Games I haven’t reviewed

These I’ve played and we own, but I never wrote a post specifically about it, and I might someday write about it. I’ll be linking to Amazon for these.

• Carcassone– This is both a worker placement and a tile laying game. You are building the city of Carcassone and get points for cities, roads, and fields played. We played this a lot in our early years of marriage. It’s simple enough young kids can play it, but complex enough that adults enjoy it. There are loads of expansions that add in new rules, and some are fun, and some we didn’t enjoy
• Flamecraft– I backed this on Kickstarter and have not gotten a chance to play it enough to have a solid feel for how it plays, but I like the idea of cute dragons working in a town to bake bread and more actions
• Scythe– This is all the things, it’s worker placement as you place your workers in different areas, but it’s also resource management as you try to build up things, AND it’s area control. This is one of those big huge games that is really popular with a certain type of player. I got it for Superman thinking he would enjoy it, and I was right, but he is sad I don’t really want to play with him.
• I know I have more, but for now I’m going to schedule this and then I’ll add in the others once I’ve gone upstairs and checked out our game shelf.