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I've never played a worker placement game.
- ChristopherMD
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Which is your least hated one?
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My current favorite is Notre Dame. You play cards in your hand to place workers, but beforehand you pass cards to your left and receive cards from your right, so you can directly affect the choices of your opponents. Beyond card passing however, the game isn't very interactive.
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fuck these games!
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- Michael Barnes
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I'm not sure why I don't really like worker placement at all...but I don't. I think it's dumb, completely artificial, and the absolute epitome of gamey. The only game I've played where I thought it was OK was TRIBUNE, and that only because it kind of made thematic sense and it's in the service of a fairly light card game.
When you get down to brass tacks, CARCASSONNE is probably the primordial worker placement game and I think what we're seeing is folks trying to translate that kind of mechanic into larger, more involved games. But it's a light mechanic that strips down a lot of decision making to barest essentials and that's what makes it such a crap mechanic for bigger/heavier games.
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Carcassonne is my lest hated worker placement game, then. Not that I've played very many of them. The only other one I can think of that I've played is Keythedral. Wasn't a big fan of the game.
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I can see the point about worker placement being a very gamey mechanic. It is abstract in a very eurogame way. The games are all pure efficiency puzzles. The other players take spots you want which lowers your efficiency. I like this kind of micromanagement of resources. I think Caylus and Agricola are great but I can see why others wouldn't.
Starcraft has workers but isn't a worker placement game. The workers you place can't be blocked by other players; they are just a representation of the amount you can build. I also don't think Notre Dame is a worker placement game that game doesn't have anything analagous to workers. Same with Carcassonne, it doesn't have any blocking of spaces other people could take.
An early placement game that I have heard ATers say favourable things about but I haven't played is Way Out West.
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- Mr Skeletor
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wanker placement more like.
fuck these games!
I'm proud of you my son.
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I can understand where the confusion is coming from. If you look at most of big hyped Euro games of the last couple of years, most of them have been using a worker placement / drafting mechanism. Drafting has replaced auctions as the number one way to get stuff. A few years back some of the games like Ticket to Ride used a very simple drafting mechanism. Than Caylus came along and added worker placement to the drafting mechanism. Pillars of the Earth, Leonardo, Cuba, Age of Empires, Agricola, Stone Age, Tribune, Year of the Dragon and a number of other games now use the worker placement. I look at work placement as kind of a draft place holder. It helps with sequencing events in game but in reality your still a drafting stuff. Worker placement is kind of like Miami Dolphins putting a Dolphins hat on Jake Long after they draft him.
What separates a good draft mechanism vs. a poor draft mechanism?
1. There should be a real significant spread in value of what you are drafting. The reasons people actually have NBA and NFL draft parties are because they are excited about picking up the next Shaq, Kobi or Lebron. If all the players were about the same nobody would care. That's what makes Ticket to Ride boring. Somebody takes the red card I wanted. No big deal I'll take the white card.
2. What you're drafting has to be exciting. Do you think anyone would sit around and watch somebody draft wood vs. stone or a blue card vs. a red card.
3. There has to be fear and greed in every draft. By that I mean you have to balance out drafting what you lust after vs. what you really need.
4. You have to be able to screw somebody. There should also be the option of screwing somebody vs. taking what you might need for yourself. Drafting a plow in Agricola is pretty stupid and boring but at least you can screw somebody by stealling the plow before they draft the plow.
5. The draft should be used to support a fun, exciting or interesting game. For many of the Eurogames if you look beyond the drafting mechanism their isn't much of a game going on.
6. A draft should never be used to build up some kind of economic engine.
7. A draft should support player interaction
Unfortunately, most of the Eurogames miss many of the key points I’ve listed. Tribune is problably the best of the worker placement / drafting games. I think sports games like slapshot and Collectable Card Games do a much better job with drafting than Euro games. I wish there were Ameritrash or wargame that used drafting. Wallace has used some drafting with some success in Railroad Tycoon and Struggle of Empires.
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- ChristopherMD
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What separates a good draft mechanism vs. a poor draft mechanism?
1. There should be a real significant spread in value of what you are drafting. The reasons people actually have NBA and NFL draft parties are because they are excited about picking up the next Shaq, Kobi or Lebron. If all the players were about the same nobody would care. That's what makes Ticket to Ride boring. Somebody takes the red card I wanted. No big deal I'll take the white card.
2. What you're drafting has to be exciting. Do you think anyone would sit around and watch somebody draft wood vs. stone or a blue card vs. a red card.
3. There has to be fear and greed in every draft. By that I mean you have to balance out drafting what you lust after vs. what you really need.
4. You have to be able to screw somebody. There should also be the option of screwing somebody vs. taking what you might need for yourself. Drafting a plow in Agricola is pretty stupid and boring but at least you can screw somebody by stealling the plow before they draft the plow.
5. The draft should be used to support a fun, exciting or interesting game. For many of the Eurogames if you look beyond the drafting mechanism their isn't much of a game going on.
6. A draft should never be used to build up some kind of economic engine.
7. A draft should support player interaction
Maybe that's why I don't mind Stone Age so much. It does better at points 1,3,4 and 6 than other worker placement games that I have played. It utterly fails at 5.
In fact I think all worker placement games fail at point 5. The "draft" is the entire game. It's like spending all of recess choosing up sides, then the bell rings and you have to go in before anyone even gets to kick the ball.
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