Board Games 101: What is a Worker Placement Game?

Professor Ryan teaches the "worker placement" board game mechanic in its most basic form, and recommends some games the exemplify and innovate on the idea.

View the full course syllabus here:

Fund an endowment:

.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo.

Email Ryan: nightsaroundatable [at] gmail (dot) com

[renees]

Great video to introduce worker placement!

Some of my current favorite worker placement games are: Viticulture, Dinosaur Island, Lords of Waterdeep, Champions of Midgard, & Rajas of the Ganges

[quibily]

Your ever-evolving example game and dissection was really insightful and interesting for me to listen to even though most of the games I’ve played so far have been worker placement. I didn’t need to watch this to learn anything, but I’m still glad I did.

[MickRissling]

I like worker placement quite a bit, but I really like different takes on it:

Trickerion: adding action points to worker placement.
Anachrony: Put a worker in a worker to put on a space. Meta-worker placement. *drool*
Euphoria: using dice as workers (also found in Bora Bora IIRC) and the bump mechanic (also in Charterstone and The Gallerist) to get your workers back
On Mars: just started playing recently but using workers to activate and/or boost actions is neat, and needing to plan which side of the map you are on to open different actions is great

[reneeharris]

My favorite worker placement games are:
Caverna
Barrage
Carson City
Fields of Arle
Viticulture
Keyper
Raiders of the North Sea
Architects of the West Kingdom
Trickerion
Stone Age
Underwater Cities.

[MarloEkberg]

My absolute favorite is Century: A New World. Mainly because it is so easy to teach to new players but still offers choices for more experienced players.

Some other good ones that I'll never say "no" to are Endeavor, Everdell and Scythe. I guess one can't say that they are solely worker placement games, but they do utilize that mechanic.

[Kazemahou]

Scythe. Scythe is basically a worker placement game. You place workers, and they can harvest resources. It is the single largest mechanic in the game - dealing with workers is a primary mechanic. Every other thing you do in Scythe is fundamentally dependant on the resources you harvest from those carefully placed workers. Without the workers, you can do nothing. Additionally, the more workers you have to place, the greater the cost to actually have the workers perform their work... but the more resources you can acquire. It is a neat trade-off.

[SteveRowe]

I'm here because I am designing a worker placement game and I wanted to collect ideas on how to not make it be "first player wins". Giving each player different winning conditions really helps, so that each player has incentive to place at different places than their opponents. I'm also using a limitation of how far a worker can be moved from the last place they were placed.

[arabboardgames]

Love the way you made the concept so simple.

[susannaheisenbraun]

I’ve gone bonkers for board games in the past 4 and a half months, and my family has kindly encouraged my new hobby as a balance to being a new homeschooling mom with two elementary-age kids (major COVID life changes require major new hobbies, or something like that). Your channel is just the ticket for all sorts of questions I’m having — one of many excellent channels, as I’m sure you’d agree — but this 101 series is particularly relevant to me at this moment, and I’m looking forward to more. So far the WP I’ve played and enjoyed are Viticulture EE, Lords of Waterdeep, New Bedford and, just today, A Feast for Odin. It’s a great mechanic that I hope to learn a lot more about in the years to come.

[KBrandes]

Great video Ryan! even though I am very familiar with the worker placement mechanism, it was very interesting to have it broken down into simple terms.
We love:
Caverna
Keyflower
Scythe
Raiders of the North Sea

[AlexandreOliveiraMCZ]

Great vídeo sir, as per usual. My favorite worker placement game is anyone that hits the table. ;)

[DMExplains]

Top WP games:
1. Agricola
2. Viticulture EE
3. Fields of Arle
4. Le Havre
5. Nusfjord

[the_luggage]

My favourite worker placement games are (in order):
A Feast for Odin
Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island
Caverna
PARKS
Agricola
Holmes: Sherlock & Mycroft
Stone Age
Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small

[carlatate]

Worker placement is not a favourite but my fave wp game is Viticulture Tuscany EE with the Rhine expansion.

[ronnoron]

Hi great. Idea, I’m confused with the board game dojo kun, rules, the 2nd edition…could you make a dumbed down detailed version of the rules for the game? Thanks

[supachigga]

My #1 worker placement game is definitely Dogs of War

[smllyct]

Viticulture EE, Champions of Midgard, Rajas of the Ganges, Ex Libris.

[NCTarheel]

My favorites are:
Targi
Everdell
Village

[anders]

We need some love for Anachrony in here! :O.

[maxikozie]

So is Carcassonne a worker placement game?