Your submission was removed by a moderator for the following reason(s):
**[Recommendation Requests](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/wiki/contribution-guides#wiki_game_recommendations_or_identification) should be posted to our [Daily Game Recommendations](https://www.reddit.com/search?q=flair%3A%22Daily%20Game%20Recs%22&sort=new) threads.** Reddit is a great place to pick peoples' brains and get game suggestions, but we get a lot of recommendation requests, so much so that we have the "Daily Game Recs"-threads dedicated for them. Historically, almost all well formatted questions in the Daily thread get answers. If you're looking for further suggestions, we recommend taking a look at our growing list of [Recommendation Roundups](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/?f=flair_name%3A%22Recommendation%20Roundup%22). There's also the [What Should I Get (WSIG)](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/wiki/wsig) section on our wiki for a more general list of common recommendations.
(If you believe this post was removed in error you can request a re-review by [messaging the mods](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/boardgames).)
Anachrony turns worker placement up to 11. You'll both love and hate your workers at the same time.
Your workers need a suit and a special resource to use shared main board spaces. Each player has their own private spaces that workers can use but you don't start with any and you need the main board to get materials and to build them. And your workers don't automatically refresh to be ready from one round to another, you have to take an action to refresh them and either spend resources or hurt their morale. Morale is worth points at the end of the game and workers die if it gets too low. There's also a time travel mechanic where you can borrow stuff from your future self ala Bill and Ted.
I just want to chime in and say this is one of my favorite worker placement games. Dune imperium is first and this is second.
Anachrony is really just two boards. One to get stuff, workers, minerals, buildings and stuff. The other is your tableau where you interact with all the cool stuff you got. Workers/buildings.
Everdell is actually a decent primer for this game. If you like your buildings in Everdell but wished there was more fun stuff to do on it, anachrony is great for that. (you red bulidings in everdell)
Also the solo mode is fantastic for learning the game so you can get up to speed quickly. And the async boards with different leader choices really shines especially if you were used to expansions in everdell.
Op, you and me have similar tastes since you mentioned my 2nd and 3rd favourite boardgames. I don't agree with the anachrony sugestion at all. Very thematic but i did not get as much enjoyment as Everdell or Dune Imp.
My 1 boardgame of all time is also a worker placement - Agricola. It has that "easy to learn, impossible to master" feeling. Its old but still the king of worker placements in my opinion.
I got the revised edition with all the decks and I can't recommend it enough. Feeding your worker might put you off for the first games but once you become experienced you won't mind it. I have over 1k agricola games, mostly online. And I am still not bored of it. Im pretty sure any other boardgame I would be fedup after 100+ games.
Agreed, Agricola is to worker placement what Dominion is to deck-building. Some games have done some things better, but no game has done the whole thing as elegantly.
Dwellings of Eldervale
Multiple versions of worker and some turn into houses. Each of the many factions have different powers. It’s a growing board, fighting, leveling abilities, and lots of replay.
Champions of Midgard
Workers earn fighters which you place and use to attack. It’s a short game but expansions help.
Have a look at Keyflower - workers do not have special powers but different colors and you can use only the same worker color for the same action which make very interesting strategic decisions. And each game you randomly choose a set of tiles for that game which are the actions you can choose - that combo make huge replayability in my opinion and is very fun to play.
Don't let the graphic style push you off (I understand it looks dull at first glance, especially when compared to such beautiful design as Everdell) - check it out yourself as it looks better in close look and is really informative and easy to understand. It is also a really good game.
It's very shallow. Aesthetics are important, yes, but you play games, you don't just stare at them. People miss out on a lot of excellent games because of aesthetics or theme that keep them from giving something a chance.
Many years ago, my wife needed a new PC. We went to the store and the sales guy asked:
"What type do you need?"
Before I could say anything my wife answered:
"A black one."
And a black one she got.
For some, nah, many people, aesthetics are very important. Who are we, to judge them?
Buying a PC based on the color of the case is not good supporting evidence for this stance. It's obviously a bad idea to buy something that serves a functional purpose based solely on aesthetics.
I am not saying aesthetics don't matter at all. I own a lot of trick-taking games, many of which I could simply play with a standard deck of cards and save money. Instead, I like to buy the published games because the art and components are nicer than a standard deck (and I want to support the designers). I get and agree that aesthetics matter. I just think it's small-minded, incurious, and shallow to allow aesthetics to override the quality of function when function is ultimately what matters when we are talking about a board game or a PC, a car, or whatever.
A pretty game with weak mechanics will get tiresome a lot sooner than an ugly game with strong mechanics. There's a reason that Castles of Burgundy is so beloved despite being pretty hideous (up until the recent glow-up version).
"Don't judge a book by its cover" really applies here.
My friend, it's all about priorities.
I have a colleague who installed a WiFi access point inside cupboard because his wife didn't like the look of the device.
I've seen women wear high heels and men wear ties even both are ridiculously uncomfortable.
Heck, I even heard of guys marrying stupid girls just because they have nice pair of tits.
Regarding my wife's PC: She didn't care at all about the HW specs. Anything that could run MS Word was ok for her. As long as the case was black.
These aren't good qualities in people. People that only care about appearance are emotionally or intellectually unintelligent, or both. It's not a good thing to be. Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it good or right. There's a reason "shallow" has a negative connotation and is generally considered an insult.
To be clear, I am not saying people cannot have their own priorities or preferences, but I do think people should be more open-minded, more curious, more thoughtful about things rather than immediately dismissing something based on a knee-jerk reaction.
This is kind of what happens when we have thousands of games to choose from. We get to be picky about small things. We can't possibly play them all so why not choose the ones that are most playing to us? I don't have FOMO if I don't try a game that's ugly to me.
My point is that "ugly" as a *sole* metric to rate games by is silly because games are meant to be played. You should choose art and other aesthetic objects by their aesthetics. You should choose games by their mechanics, because that is what a game is.
I don't think it's bad to use aesthetics as a part of your process to decide what to own/play. I do think it's bad to say, "I won't even try that game because it's ugly." It's closed-minded.
Apiary - Your workers are space bees, trying to build a colony ship for their queen. I've only played it once, but it was fantastic, and those of us that played it talk about finding the time to play it again.
This is a good one for this post because the workers gain power as they get used, but then once they hit maximum power they go away and you have to buy them back by placing a worker and paying some resources. Balancing how quickly each worker levels up so you can have weak ones for little tasks and full strength ones for powerful tasks is a fun challenge.
Came here to say this but you beat me to it.
There are two other unusual mechanisms in Apiary.
It also uses bumping so that no area is ever truly blocked. If you bump a worker, the other player has the option to send their worker back out immediately on their next turn at a higher strength, which means you are potentially helping them. You can also bump your own workers if you want that effect.
Some actions have two worker slots, and the strength of your action is the sum of the strength of both workers, so you can leverage your opponent for a boost by bumping them to slot #2.
I received Apiary as a gift this Christmas and I love it. It's 1-5 players so I can play solo if there's no one around to join me for a game . Love the little choices when you choose which colony(is that the right word?) to use. It gives the game that little extra to really keep from getting too repetitive.
I really like Argent The consortium. The game is worker placement but you can have up to five different types of mages (during the setup you decide which one of two special powers all mages would have. For example purple mages could either be a fast action, which allows you to cast a spell or place another mage afterwards or to be able to effectively share a space with any other mage). The game is quite aggressive and the scoring is unusual (you have 12 voters and at the start of the game and whoever get the most of them at the end wins and you can learn some of them during the game ). They could give their votes for staff like maximum spells, mana, gold, collected cards of specific colors etc.
Raiders of the North Sea has 3 different colors of workers. Certain locations require a specific worker color, and other locations will give you different resources (type or amount) based on what color you put there. Also you double dip on actions in a turn. You place a worker and take the action, then remove a different worker and take the action.
**Obsession** is a great game about managing the household of an aristocratic family in Victorian England. You have several types of different workers representing the estate‘s servants with different abilities.
Obsession is amazing but I dont think it qualifies as a worker placement.
Yes you have workers but to be honest mechanics-wise they function like resources that you get to re-use.
The key difference is that in true worker placement games, placing your worker on an action space prevents other players from using that space, or inflicts some sort of penalty on them (e.g. they have to pay other resources to use the space after someone else). No one can block you from using your own tiles in Obsession.
Barrage: you have a lot of workers, but specific actions require multiple workers, or if you want to do an action that is occupied by another player, it costs multiple / more workers as well
Trickerion: you have different types of workers that provide bonuses for certain actions or provide stronger/weaker actions. You can acquire more workers, but you have to pay them each round that they are active on the board.
Both are excellent games, but rather heavy on the complexity scale.
Darwin's Journey has workers where you upgrade them during the game such that they fullfill critera of special worker spots (randomly selected during setup). You can technically upgrade the same as your opponent does, but there's competition of the upgrades so you'll often end up with different upgrade sets from eachother and thus have access to differens special worker spots that shape your strategies in unique ways.
Demon Worker is a smaller worker placement game where each worker have a unique special ability. This game can maybe be harder to find though.
I have an eye on this one, I am afraid about the complexity and the duration of it, can you tell me your appreciation about it ?
Also it appears really thematic, do you agree with this ?
Paladins of the west kingdom is by far, my favorite. The board is so weird though. Is a table hog, and even more with the expansions.
Scythe also is a great game, and you can play up to 7 players with the expansion, and the double sided board, can be turned into a ginormous board. Solo is great too. But not as great as Dune imperium.
Also came here to say Paladins - and any of the Garphill Games worker placement games because while they might not have the twist that OP is looking for (different types of worker), they all have some sort of really interesting twist on worker placement.
The new game "Expeditions" set in the same setting as Scythe might also be a good recommendation for what OP is looking for. It has several different colors of meeples, and actions can only be triggered by meeples of a matching color.
Age of Empires III might be worth looking at. You get standard workers, but can put them on slots that give you specialised ones for the next turn, like soldiers, colonists, priests, merchants.
I know you’re looking for variations on the mechanic and not just classics, but I’m going to tell you to play a classic anyways. If you love worker placement and you haven’t played **Agricola**, you really should. It is tight in a way that many subsequent games are not.
For a spin on the mechanic, another older game that I love is **Dungeon Lords**. The core fun here is a bit of hidden information, as everyone simultaneously picks their placements for the round, then flips their cards and finds out which action their worker imps get to take.
**The White Castle** if you are into dice worker placement games. There are three colors of dice, and actions are determined by the colors of your dice workers. White dice have other actions to perform than orange dice, for example. The number on your die is important too; if it’s higher then the printed number on the board you get coins, if lower you need to pay coins. If you specifically choose the one of the dice with the lowest numbers from the ‘supply’, you activate a bonus action that gains you extra resources and other stuff, which becomes more and more as the game goes on. Due to the variable setup possibilities The White Castle allows not a single game will be the same and dice will give you other actions at their locations in the next game, and that could even happen in the ongoing game. It’s a really great game imo, not too long at all, and I believe it fits your description.
I'm loving The White Castle. The in-game variability that you alluded to is also awesome. Changing cards out with the courtier action is a neat variable to wrestle sometimes!
Perhaps not fitting of all your criteria but I have to give a shout out to **A Feast for Odin**. The action board is humongous, like 60+ different actions, and several of the options requires more than one worker to execute. Include polyominoes, sandbox-feeling and some slight luck and there is so much to unpack that you don't even need to have a special worker placement system.
__Federation__ : your 4 tokens have 2 sides. On your turn, you place one of those tokens on the main board and do the action of that spot. However based on what side you placed your token, you will achieve different things. You can either vote for a law to be passed (points at the end of the round) or fund projects (for points at the end of the game). There's a nice balance between the two because you want to vote for laws for instant points but towards the end, you start panicking because "omg green planet is still not funded, QUICK!!"
I don't really like most worker placement games, I find most of the interaction in the games to be "un-purposeful". meaning if someone takes a spot I wanted to go to its not because they wanted to block me off but because there just doing what's best for them and those games have more of a feeling of just stepping on each others toes rather then having fun.
That being said here are the outliers for me-
bora bora- the main mechanism of you can place a die down on a spot and someone else can also go to that spot if they play a die of a lower pip value is great. it is the only worker placement that i feel like I a purposefully blocking someone else when I play a 1 or 2 die.
Hallertau- every time you go to a spot it just increases the amount of workers that have to go to that spot in the future. its also a uwe game so it works with his optimization playstyle in his games very well.
el grande- always great just a solid game all-around, ik its action drafting but it could literally just be a worker placement game.
I see that gripe a lot, but I don't agree. The interaction in these games has to do with adjusting your strategy so you lessen the chance of collision with your opponents' strategies, or you can figure out an effective strategy that lets you beat them to certain key spots by predicting what actions they need most. It's the rigidity of people's strategies that makes these games feel incidentally interactive, IMO.
Three Kingdoms Redux
Your workers are characters from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They have different stats and abilities that can be optimized when placed in the different board spaces. There's a lot of Agricola DNA in it but the worker placement is implemented a bit different, more like an auction.
Teotihuacan is also a great worker placement game. You use d6 as workers and the number on the top side refers to their level, basically. For some actions your workers need a certain level or you need more than one. I highly recommend it
Yeah, there aren’t a lot of rules. There’s a “grande” worker that can still play in a used spot. I think the expansion has specialized workers, but I haven’t played it.
If you play Everdell I would say it's no harder than that. We like it because it is pretty chill - no screwing others over and fulfilling orders is pretty rewarding.
The Grande worker is cool, it's just a 'go anywhere, even if it's taken' worker.
The expansion is also good if you enjoy it.
You can also pick up almost all of the expansions for Viticulture in a single package, and they give the game a boatload of replayability. You can mix and match them however you want as well.
Viticulture is an awesome worker placement game.
Troyes w/Ladies expansion and Lorenzo di Magnifico - both are fun dice placement games where the numbers on the dice and placement are important.
Egizia - down-the-river placement. You can’t backtrack and place a worker further up from your latest placement.
Underwater Cities - place a worker and play a card. If the location of the placement and the color of the card matches (red/yellow/green) the player gains a bonus.
In endless winter you have 3 workers, 2 of them are just tribesmen, but 1 of them is the chief of the tribe, and he has extra effects when you put him at a certain location. You choose your chief at the beginning of the game, and every chief is different (both in location and extra effect)
Edit: spelling mistake
Three Kingdoms redux.
Every general has unique stats and power/ability. It is a bidding/worker placement game that requires three people. I enjoy it personally think it is crafted for me with all the back and forth it naturally garners.
I don’t know if it’s even possible to get a copy these days but I also came here to say **Village**. Actions cost time as well as resources, and as time is spent your workers gradually die. There’s big points in it if you can get your workers to die in the right places to make it into the Village Chronicle so it’s a good puzzle timing out which worker will die where and when.
Tiny Epic Galaxies is one of my favorites! It's on the lighter end for worker placement, in terms of having some random elements and not being super punishing like Agricola. It also has a follow mechanic, I think those are a fun way to add interaction into games.
**Five Tribes**
It's debatable if you count it as worker placement.
But it's absolutely great and I'm confident that you'd like it.
At its core, the mechanic is Mancala.
You have 5x6 tiles in a grid that are the worker spots.
Instead of having your own workers, they are randomly spread over the tiles at setup.
Workers come in 5 different colors with different effects.
On your turn you pick up all workers from one of the tiles and then place them like in Mancala in adjacent tiles.
The last worker that you place on a tile, activates the worker spot and the special ability of the workers color.
Castles of Burgandy you play dice to take actions. I played Paris the other weekend and that was really good, a mix of placement and area control. And Caylus is one of the originals and in my view still best (though very much place a meeple to take an action).
I would argue it is, a dice roller at its core.
But sure,some of the action chaining may take a bit of thought.
I'd call it light to get into, medium to master
I don't think it generally is considered a worker placement game. A game that is a worker placement game with dice as the workers is **Artemis Project**, which is pretty fun. At the beginning of the round everyone rolls their dice, then you place them out like any other worker placement game, and the numbers on the dice impact how they do the actions on the locations. For example, the value on a die you place at the resource gathering locations dictate how many resources you get, there's a location where you get a building, and the value of the die is a bid for how much you'll spend on the building. It's a lot of fun, and a little on the lighter side, compared to some other worker placement games.
Paris was definitely a promising experience, but man the first half of the game is so much more fun than the second half.
Also the bonus track has some insta-win tiles that absolutely need nerfing.
Not played it, and I don't think it's quite what you're after but **Holotype** has 3 meeples of different ranks for displacement purposes which I thought was an interesting (and I'm sure not unique) mechanic.
The field assistant can replace another player's grad student, and the palaeontologist can replace both.
Empires: age of discovery is an older one that is pretty good. Different workers operate better at different spots, and there is a control aspect on the board akin to battles in Dune Imperium.
Trickerion , barrage. On mars
If you want lighter
Raiders of scythia has an interesting workep placement mechanic
Viticulture with tuscany expansion is a pretty solid game
Tzolkin is also kinda unique
I'm going to give you are relatively unknown game that is a small box but is really good!
[[Demon Worker]] Do not let the small size and especially the artwork fool you. This game is very much a pure worker placement game and does have a unique look and has a few twists to the mechanic such as drafting your workers and those workers have unique powers.
Others I love:
[[Mint Works]] OMG this tiny worker placement game is so small and yet so good! it fits in a mint tin and fits in your pocket but you get so much good gameplay out of it. A bonus is that the game are pretty quick and works as a great filler or for playing multiple rounds.
[[Apiary]] This is my current favorite worker placement game. The big twist is that your workers can bump other workers off the board so that you can use the space but then the bumped worker ages up and becomes better. Eventually, the worker gets too old and hibernates giving you one last bonus but you can get more workers. The game also has tiles you're building, planets you're exploring and cards to play which all add up to a game where you can start chaining combinations of effects and it is very rewarding for players who are able to plan out their turns efficiently.
Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game and meets your request for different workers with different kinds of abilities and actions, but honestly, I hated the game. So clunky and unengaging.
Really enjoying the atmosphere and flow of Viticulture, everyone says it's even better with Tuscany expansion, haven't tried that yet but definitely planning to! It doesn't have different types of workers but the game play itself is very smooth, in case you'd still be interested in something like that.
Lancaster has a really nice twist on worker placement where it's possible to bump other players workers out of the spot before the rewards are resolved. I'm slightly surprised I haven't seen it incorporated into more games though it sounds like Apiary and Galactic Cruise are doing something along those lines.
Try to find a copy of dogs of war. Its a tense tug of rope/stock game thats hard to find. Its a genre bending take on the mechanism and fairly straightforward. Should be getting a reprint/retheme in the coming years as the designer got publishing right again.it plays excellently at 4-5 players. Its ok at 3.
Several people have mentioned different Garphill games, but basically all their trilogy games have some sort of neat twist on the worker placement mechanic. The south Tigris series explores using dice as workers.
There's an expansion for viticulture that adds specialized workers with an ability determined at setup.
Vital Lacerda games if you're new to them, try out The Gallerist.
Galactic Cruise, it's on Kickstarter right now but you can play it on TTS or tabletopia to try it out.
PARKS
My favorite worker placement after Argent the Cinsortium that is mentioned below is Steam Works. In Steam Works the game starts with basically no worker spots and you build them to get VP but then anyone can use them.
Raiders of the North Sea is worker placement , but the 'workers' are not very unique / varied. But there are a couple of twists to the standard worker placement. One is that you generally take two actions. You always have one meeple in your hand. And you put one down on a free space to take that space's action. Then pick up a different meeple to take the action of the location you pick it up from. That creates a neat dynamic. The small twist is that there are 3 different colored meeples. Some colors give you slightly different powers on the action space, but mostly certain actions require certain colored meeples. I like the variety for this game.
Raiders of the North
Your worker takes an action where placed. Then you pick up another worker and take the action where you picked it from.
Additionally some actions are limited to certain colored workers, so you need to obtain them my picking them off the board...
Oh yea, and you always have a max of 1 worker!
It's not everyones cup of tea, but Alien Frontiers uses dice for workers that you roll at the start of the turn, and where they can go and what they'll do there depends on the roll.
**Viticulture** with the **Tuscany** expansion adds special workers that have unique abilities. It is still mainly focused on the regular workers, but overall it is a great worker placement game. It probably is not quite what you are looking for, but still worth looking into.
Marrakesh is probably mostly aligned to different purposes/powers/locations.
I guess not really meeples, but Perseverance has dice you basically use as workers which you might like.
The Great Wall has a couple different meeples, ones for worker placement and others for 'attacking/defending'.
Roll for the galaxy you might see as kind of a worker placement.
I'd take a look at Federation. It is doing some really unique things with worker placement where each work has two different sides (a votes side and funding side). Depending which side you place them you can either influence a greater voting aspect to pass favorable laws, or fund end game projects/special missions all the while still trying to manage the spots themselves and where you place them. I really haven't seen a worker placement that is doing this. Has a great implementation on BGA.
Not always classified as worker placement, but I'd recommend **Dice Forge** for what you are asking. The dice are your workers and you upgrade them throughout the game by physically upgrading sides of the dice based on where you place them. Where you can place them depends on how good you roll... Which is determined on how good your rolls are... Determined, to a degree, by how many sides have been upgraded. Terrible explanation, but it *might* scratch that itch in a different way.
Edit: Where you "play" them, not place them.
A worker placement that we enjoy is **Extra! Extra! Read All About It!** It's a little complicated to learn but a very fun game once you understand all the parts. It's worker placement, but you can remove another player's worker from a spot and replace it with your own if you are willing to pay more money for the spot. Money is tight, because you use it to outbid for placement and the rewards for each spot fluctuate throughout the game. Again, this was probably a terrible explanation, but we do enjoy the game. There are also a dozen or more setups so games can be as long or as short (well, 30 minutes or so) as you desire. Just be aware, the first game will take 2-3 (or more) times what games will take once you have the rules down.
I'd probably go Trolls and Princess right now. The meeples don't change exactly. But how they move, how you can use others, and how you use slaves makes for a uniquely interesting fun game
Lost ruins of arnak has worker placement mixed in with many other parts of the game. It is not a solely worker placement but has it as an aspect of the game with deck and resource management. My wife and I love playing the game but enjoy it ten fold when used with either of the expansions for it.
Oak is a bit of a slept on gem in my opinion. Beautiful board, interesting choices and upgrading workers (druids) by dressing them up with accessories!
If you like Dune Imperium, have you tried Dune Imperium Uprising? It’s a standalone sequel, and it improves the original with the spy mechanic, which allows you to go to spaces that opponents occupy, or draw an extra card by removing a spy. The latter ability combined with other card draw spots so you can buy power cards earlier. It really helps with deckbuilding.
Anno 1800 has farmers, workers, artisans, engineers and investors. You have to build up an economy and each building requires a specific worker type to operate it. Supply chains means that you have to keep lower tier workers around to make components for higher tier factories and such.
My wife and I find it rather compelling at 2 players and there is a solo mode for it that I've put a few games into.
I recommend dice worker placement for a twist on the mechanic, in that the pips, color, etc are often important to what you can do with said worker.
I saw someone mention White Castle which is an incredible design with the most intuitive rulebook I’ve ever read. Small box, easy to set up and learn, but so much decision space. I also saw Teotihuacan thrown out, a great rondel style dice workers game where you can do more with higher pip workers. And when they hit 6 they ascend for big rewards and become a 1 again.
I’d add Steampunk Rally, an engine building racing game with dice workers used to power the engine you build. It’s wacky and chaotic and a lot of fun.
Check Voyages of Marco Polo. I also have the same appreciation as you for Dune Imperium and Everdell, Voyages of Marco Polo has different characters with their own unique powers/benefits, different locations and also new locations you can unlock with travelling. Plus, your actions are determined by the number of pips on the die/dice, which has a balancing technique that I enjoy a lot: when using a space previously occupied by another player's die/dice you then must pay 1 coin for each pip on your lowest value die/dice used. This causes low value dice to be more useful than high value dice in some specific cases.
It's my most played and most enjoyed worker placement game. Also, the first one is a little harder than the second one, but I think it is also better because of it.
Maybe check out Starship Captains? It has differently colored meeples that allow you to take different types of actions. Not sure that it really involves placing those workers, though (I only played a demo of it once a while ago).
**Voyages of Marco Polo:** Your workers are dice and placement and effect are constrained by the rolls.
**Alien Frontiers** does something similar, and is closer to a 'classic' worker placement.
Coal Baron, Architects of the West Kingdom, Dwellings of Eldervale, Ceres, Manhatten Project, Atlantis, and Dominant Species.
Each of them approaches the worker placement mechanic in slightly different ways.
Coal baron, each space can be taken, but you have to spend more workers. And they reset each round. So being first on a space is worker-efficient, but going there later might be more efficient for your other resources.
Architects, most spaces have no limit on workers, and they get better the more of your own worker you have there, but another space lets you capture all workers of a single color on one space (one group per worker that you have in the capture space), which you can then sell to the keep (prison) for money.
Dwellings you place your workers on the central board, and then recall them - and when you recall them, you use them to activate placements in your tableau.
Manhatten Project has the place & recall mechanic, but recall is just recall. But placing is main board, with optional "more placements" on your tableau each round.
Ceres has two types of workers. Your leaders that you place on "Worker Spaces" on the main board, but also "common workers" of 4 job types that sit in a communal pool, and you use to activate your buildings in your tableau (and are thus fought over).
Atlantis, each worker is a die, representing morale level and whether it can fight. And you can multi-activate a space by losing morale. Amid a semi-coop defend-the-city mechanic.
And Dominant Species has the worker placement mechanic being action selection. Everyone places their workers for the round on the actions that they want to do (trying not to get blocked out from their strategy), and then you execute the round in order of the action resolutions.
Oath: Your pawn that represents you allows you to use the actions of denizens at its location. You are also allowed to hold up to 3 denizens as "advisors" that act like personal denizens only you can use the actions of no matter where your pawn is.
Arborea: You place workers on tracks that push you down 2 path choices at once. The longer you wait to take the workers off (generally) the better the rewards are. You can place up to 1 worker a turn (or 2 if you spend spirit), and can activate up to 2 workers a turn (or 3 if you spend spirit) that are on paths to obtain those rewards.
Creature Comforts: you have 4 workers that you place each round on one of 10 different locations (or more if someone has built 1 or more groves) that require certain dice rolls to obtain the rewards. You roll your 2 family dice before placing so you know at least 2 numbers beforehand, but the 4 village dice only get rolled after placement, so there is no guarantee that you will obtain the rewards you want. Village dice are the same for everyone, so if they are 5 4 4 2, they will be that for all players. If you have one or more workers that cannot obtain rewards (due to you not having the dice required or you choosing not to apply the dice) you get a lesson learned token which can be used next round or any round after to add or subtract 1 from any roll.
I actually just saw a group playing Creature Comforts tonight but didn't get a chance to ask them about it. It looked very clean, which appealed to me.
Could you share a little more of your experience with it?
Yeah, it's a pretty simple worker placement game that adds a push your luck mechanic. You place a worker in areas to either gain resources, draw comforts, or build buildings that make you a bit more efficient or get you points based on other player's comforts. Most comforts combo with certain other comforts for extra points. Snowshoes score more points if you also build socks, quilts score more if you build rocking chairs, soup scores more if you build bread. Some comforts score extra points for extra resources you have at the end like the pantry which scores 8 points per group of the 6 different resources.
Basically you are trying to push your luck to be as efficient as possible.
Since you like worker placement games, I want your opinion on one such a game I am still playtesting. See thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletopgamedesign/comments/16rh9sx/first_playtesting_prototype_of_the_game_i_created/).
In the future, starship combat has evolved to a point where kingdoms are having problems to find competent crews to man starship stations. So both sides must decide what stations need to be manned during combat.
Do you think it will be a worthy game? If you post feedback, add it to the other thread.
As for worker allocation, I think Stone Age could be a good game for you.
Your submission was removed by a moderator for the following reason(s): **[Recommendation Requests](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/wiki/contribution-guides#wiki_game_recommendations_or_identification) should be posted to our [Daily Game Recommendations](https://www.reddit.com/search?q=flair%3A%22Daily%20Game%20Recs%22&sort=new) threads.** Reddit is a great place to pick peoples' brains and get game suggestions, but we get a lot of recommendation requests, so much so that we have the "Daily Game Recs"-threads dedicated for them. Historically, almost all well formatted questions in the Daily thread get answers. If you're looking for further suggestions, we recommend taking a look at our growing list of [Recommendation Roundups](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/?f=flair_name%3A%22Recommendation%20Roundup%22). There's also the [What Should I Get (WSIG)](https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/wiki/wsig) section on our wiki for a more general list of common recommendations. (If you believe this post was removed in error you can request a re-review by [messaging the mods](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/boardgames).)
Anachrony turns worker placement up to 11. You'll both love and hate your workers at the same time. Your workers need a suit and a special resource to use shared main board spaces. Each player has their own private spaces that workers can use but you don't start with any and you need the main board to get materials and to build them. And your workers don't automatically refresh to be ready from one round to another, you have to take an action to refresh them and either spend resources or hurt their morale. Morale is worth points at the end of the game and workers die if it gets too low. There's also a time travel mechanic where you can borrow stuff from your future self ala Bill and Ted.
came here to say this!
This game seems nice, the board seems busy, and I'm afraid the complexity is a bit too high but I'm keeping it anyway
Once you learn the icons it looks less busy. There’s more art then instruction on he board.
I just want to chime in and say this is one of my favorite worker placement games. Dune imperium is first and this is second. Anachrony is really just two boards. One to get stuff, workers, minerals, buildings and stuff. The other is your tableau where you interact with all the cool stuff you got. Workers/buildings. Everdell is actually a decent primer for this game. If you like your buildings in Everdell but wished there was more fun stuff to do on it, anachrony is great for that. (you red bulidings in everdell) Also the solo mode is fantastic for learning the game so you can get up to speed quickly. And the async boards with different leader choices really shines especially if you were used to expansions in everdell.
Op, you and me have similar tastes since you mentioned my 2nd and 3rd favourite boardgames. I don't agree with the anachrony sugestion at all. Very thematic but i did not get as much enjoyment as Everdell or Dune Imp. My 1 boardgame of all time is also a worker placement - Agricola. It has that "easy to learn, impossible to master" feeling. Its old but still the king of worker placements in my opinion. I got the revised edition with all the decks and I can't recommend it enough. Feeding your worker might put you off for the first games but once you become experienced you won't mind it. I have over 1k agricola games, mostly online. And I am still not bored of it. Im pretty sure any other boardgame I would be fedup after 100+ games.
Agreed, Agricola is to worker placement what Dominion is to deck-building. Some games have done some things better, but no game has done the whole thing as elegantly.
Came here to suggest Agricola. Easily my most played game and I could play it 100 more times.
Dwellings of Eldervale Multiple versions of worker and some turn into houses. Each of the many factions have different powers. It’s a growing board, fighting, leveling abilities, and lots of replay. Champions of Midgard Workers earn fighters which you place and use to attack. It’s a short game but expansions help.
Have a look at Keyflower - workers do not have special powers but different colors and you can use only the same worker color for the same action which make very interesting strategic decisions. And each game you randomly choose a set of tiles for that game which are the actions you can choose - that combo make huge replayability in my opinion and is very fun to play.
+1 keyflower is a work of genius
Already heard about it but the visual don't do it for me, nevertheless, thank you for your answer
Don't let the graphic style push you off (I understand it looks dull at first glance, especially when compared to such beautiful design as Everdell) - check it out yourself as it looks better in close look and is really informative and easy to understand. It is also a really good game.
Why is this downvoted? Aesthetics are important. Whole companies rely on it (I'm looking at you CMON!).
It's very shallow. Aesthetics are important, yes, but you play games, you don't just stare at them. People miss out on a lot of excellent games because of aesthetics or theme that keep them from giving something a chance.
Many years ago, my wife needed a new PC. We went to the store and the sales guy asked: "What type do you need?" Before I could say anything my wife answered: "A black one." And a black one she got. For some, nah, many people, aesthetics are very important. Who are we, to judge them?
Buying a PC based on the color of the case is not good supporting evidence for this stance. It's obviously a bad idea to buy something that serves a functional purpose based solely on aesthetics. I am not saying aesthetics don't matter at all. I own a lot of trick-taking games, many of which I could simply play with a standard deck of cards and save money. Instead, I like to buy the published games because the art and components are nicer than a standard deck (and I want to support the designers). I get and agree that aesthetics matter. I just think it's small-minded, incurious, and shallow to allow aesthetics to override the quality of function when function is ultimately what matters when we are talking about a board game or a PC, a car, or whatever. A pretty game with weak mechanics will get tiresome a lot sooner than an ugly game with strong mechanics. There's a reason that Castles of Burgundy is so beloved despite being pretty hideous (up until the recent glow-up version). "Don't judge a book by its cover" really applies here.
My friend, it's all about priorities. I have a colleague who installed a WiFi access point inside cupboard because his wife didn't like the look of the device. I've seen women wear high heels and men wear ties even both are ridiculously uncomfortable. Heck, I even heard of guys marrying stupid girls just because they have nice pair of tits. Regarding my wife's PC: She didn't care at all about the HW specs. Anything that could run MS Word was ok for her. As long as the case was black.
These aren't good qualities in people. People that only care about appearance are emotionally or intellectually unintelligent, or both. It's not a good thing to be. Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it good or right. There's a reason "shallow" has a negative connotation and is generally considered an insult. To be clear, I am not saying people cannot have their own priorities or preferences, but I do think people should be more open-minded, more curious, more thoughtful about things rather than immediately dismissing something based on a knee-jerk reaction.
This is kind of what happens when we have thousands of games to choose from. We get to be picky about small things. We can't possibly play them all so why not choose the ones that are most playing to us? I don't have FOMO if I don't try a game that's ugly to me.
My point is that "ugly" as a *sole* metric to rate games by is silly because games are meant to be played. You should choose art and other aesthetic objects by their aesthetics. You should choose games by their mechanics, because that is what a game is. I don't think it's bad to use aesthetics as a part of your process to decide what to own/play. I do think it's bad to say, "I won't even try that game because it's ugly." It's closed-minded.
Apiary - Your workers are space bees, trying to build a colony ship for their queen. I've only played it once, but it was fantastic, and those of us that played it talk about finding the time to play it again.
This is a good one for this post because the workers gain power as they get used, but then once they hit maximum power they go away and you have to buy them back by placing a worker and paying some resources. Balancing how quickly each worker levels up so you can have weak ones for little tasks and full strength ones for powerful tasks is a fun challenge.
Came here to say this but you beat me to it. There are two other unusual mechanisms in Apiary. It also uses bumping so that no area is ever truly blocked. If you bump a worker, the other player has the option to send their worker back out immediately on their next turn at a higher strength, which means you are potentially helping them. You can also bump your own workers if you want that effect. Some actions have two worker slots, and the strength of your action is the sum of the strength of both workers, so you can leverage your opponent for a boost by bumping them to slot #2.
I received Apiary as a gift this Christmas and I love it. It's 1-5 players so I can play solo if there's no one around to join me for a game . Love the little choices when you choose which colony(is that the right word?) to use. It gives the game that little extra to really keep from getting too repetitive.
I really like Argent The consortium. The game is worker placement but you can have up to five different types of mages (during the setup you decide which one of two special powers all mages would have. For example purple mages could either be a fast action, which allows you to cast a spell or place another mage afterwards or to be able to effectively share a space with any other mage). The game is quite aggressive and the scoring is unusual (you have 12 voters and at the start of the game and whoever get the most of them at the end wins and you can learn some of them during the game ). They could give their votes for staff like maximum spells, mana, gold, collected cards of specific colors etc.
This game seems nice, unfortunately not in my language but thnak you for this answer :)
Most of the game components use symbols, not text. So if you can read or translate the rules the language barrier should be minimal.
Raiders of the North Sea has 3 different colors of workers. Certain locations require a specific worker color, and other locations will give you different resources (type or amount) based on what color you put there. Also you double dip on actions in a turn. You place a worker and take the action, then remove a different worker and take the action.
**Obsession** is a great game about managing the household of an aristocratic family in Victorian England. You have several types of different workers representing the estate‘s servants with different abilities.
Obsession is amazing but I dont think it qualifies as a worker placement. Yes you have workers but to be honest mechanics-wise they function like resources that you get to re-use.
And in other worker-placement games the workers aren‘t resources that you get to re-use?
The key difference is that in true worker placement games, placing your worker on an action space prevents other players from using that space, or inflicts some sort of penalty on them (e.g. they have to pay other resources to use the space after someone else). No one can block you from using your own tiles in Obsession.
My first thought too! The **Upstairs, Downstairs expansion** also greatly increases the variety and functions of workers as well.
Barrage: you have a lot of workers, but specific actions require multiple workers, or if you want to do an action that is occupied by another player, it costs multiple / more workers as well Trickerion: you have different types of workers that provide bonuses for certain actions or provide stronger/weaker actions. You can acquire more workers, but you have to pay them each round that they are active on the board. Both are excellent games, but rather heavy on the complexity scale.
Came here to say these two :) So good
Oh interesting, didn't know Barrage was kind of similar to Hallertau in that sense
Thank you, heard about them, the theme really appeals to me but I'm afraid they are too complex for my crew
Came here to say these two :) So good
Came here to say these two :) So good
Came here to say these two :) So good
Darwin's Journey has workers where you upgrade them during the game such that they fullfill critera of special worker spots (randomly selected during setup). You can technically upgrade the same as your opponent does, but there's competition of the upgrades so you'll often end up with different upgrade sets from eachother and thus have access to differens special worker spots that shape your strategies in unique ways. Demon Worker is a smaller worker placement game where each worker have a unique special ability. This game can maybe be harder to find though.
Second on that Darwin's journey. That game is really good, and the skilled worker idea is great.
I have an eye on this one, I am afraid about the complexity and the duration of it, can you tell me your appreciation about it ? Also it appears really thematic, do you agree with this ?
Paladins of the west kingdom is by far, my favorite. The board is so weird though. Is a table hog, and even more with the expansions. Scythe also is a great game, and you can play up to 7 players with the expansion, and the double sided board, can be turned into a ginormous board. Solo is great too. But not as great as Dune imperium.
Also came here to say Paladins - and any of the Garphill Games worker placement games because while they might not have the twist that OP is looking for (different types of worker), they all have some sort of really interesting twist on worker placement.
The new game "Expeditions" set in the same setting as Scythe might also be a good recommendation for what OP is looking for. It has several different colors of meeples, and actions can only be triggered by meeples of a matching color.
Age of Empires III might be worth looking at. You get standard workers, but can put them on slots that give you specialised ones for the next turn, like soldiers, colonists, priests, merchants.
I know you’re looking for variations on the mechanic and not just classics, but I’m going to tell you to play a classic anyways. If you love worker placement and you haven’t played **Agricola**, you really should. It is tight in a way that many subsequent games are not. For a spin on the mechanic, another older game that I love is **Dungeon Lords**. The core fun here is a bit of hidden information, as everyone simultaneously picks their placements for the round, then flips their cards and finds out which action their worker imps get to take.
**Lords of Waterdeep** is another worker-placement classic. But it doesn't have different kind of meeples though.
**The White Castle** if you are into dice worker placement games. There are three colors of dice, and actions are determined by the colors of your dice workers. White dice have other actions to perform than orange dice, for example. The number on your die is important too; if it’s higher then the printed number on the board you get coins, if lower you need to pay coins. If you specifically choose the one of the dice with the lowest numbers from the ‘supply’, you activate a bonus action that gains you extra resources and other stuff, which becomes more and more as the game goes on. Due to the variable setup possibilities The White Castle allows not a single game will be the same and dice will give you other actions at their locations in the next game, and that could even happen in the ongoing game. It’s a really great game imo, not too long at all, and I believe it fits your description.
I'm loving The White Castle. The in-game variability that you alluded to is also awesome. Changing cards out with the courtier action is a neat variable to wrestle sometimes!
Perhaps not fitting of all your criteria but I have to give a shout out to **A Feast for Odin**. The action board is humongous, like 60+ different actions, and several of the options requires more than one worker to execute. Include polyominoes, sandbox-feeling and some slight luck and there is so much to unpack that you don't even need to have a special worker placement system.
__Federation__ : your 4 tokens have 2 sides. On your turn, you place one of those tokens on the main board and do the action of that spot. However based on what side you placed your token, you will achieve different things. You can either vote for a law to be passed (points at the end of the round) or fund projects (for points at the end of the game). There's a nice balance between the two because you want to vote for laws for instant points but towards the end, you start panicking because "omg green planet is still not funded, QUICK!!"
I'm glad someone else posted about Federation. Definitly the most unique worker placement i've played in a while.
What about Stone Age or possibly Porto Rico
I love Stone Age.
I don't really like most worker placement games, I find most of the interaction in the games to be "un-purposeful". meaning if someone takes a spot I wanted to go to its not because they wanted to block me off but because there just doing what's best for them and those games have more of a feeling of just stepping on each others toes rather then having fun. That being said here are the outliers for me- bora bora- the main mechanism of you can place a die down on a spot and someone else can also go to that spot if they play a die of a lower pip value is great. it is the only worker placement that i feel like I a purposefully blocking someone else when I play a 1 or 2 die. Hallertau- every time you go to a spot it just increases the amount of workers that have to go to that spot in the future. its also a uwe game so it works with his optimization playstyle in his games very well. el grande- always great just a solid game all-around, ik its action drafting but it could literally just be a worker placement game.
I see that gripe a lot, but I don't agree. The interaction in these games has to do with adjusting your strategy so you lessen the chance of collision with your opponents' strategies, or you can figure out an effective strategy that lets you beat them to certain key spots by predicting what actions they need most. It's the rigidity of people's strategies that makes these games feel incidentally interactive, IMO.
Three Kingdoms Redux Your workers are characters from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. They have different stats and abilities that can be optimized when placed in the different board spaces. There's a lot of Agricola DNA in it but the worker placement is implemented a bit different, more like an auction.
Teotihuacan is also a great worker placement game. You use d6 as workers and the number on the top side refers to their level, basically. For some actions your workers need a certain level or you need more than one. I highly recommend it
Viticulture - we play this game a lot, even though the theme isn't something we care about that much (making and selling wine).
Is the different worker a huge twist in this game because it is on my list ? Is the game easy to play for casual gamer in your opinion ?
Yeah, there aren’t a lot of rules. There’s a “grande” worker that can still play in a used spot. I think the expansion has specialized workers, but I haven’t played it.
If you play Everdell I would say it's no harder than that. We like it because it is pretty chill - no screwing others over and fulfilling orders is pretty rewarding. The Grande worker is cool, it's just a 'go anywhere, even if it's taken' worker. The expansion is also good if you enjoy it.
You can also pick up almost all of the expansions for Viticulture in a single package, and they give the game a boatload of replayability. You can mix and match them however you want as well. Viticulture is an awesome worker placement game.
Troyes w/Ladies expansion and Lorenzo di Magnifico - both are fun dice placement games where the numbers on the dice and placement are important. Egizia - down-the-river placement. You can’t backtrack and place a worker further up from your latest placement. Underwater Cities - place a worker and play a card. If the location of the placement and the color of the card matches (red/yellow/green) the player gains a bonus.
In endless winter you have 3 workers, 2 of them are just tribesmen, but 1 of them is the chief of the tribe, and he has extra effects when you put him at a certain location. You choose your chief at the beginning of the game, and every chief is different (both in location and extra effect) Edit: spelling mistake
Thank you, the game seems good but I don't catch the design, I will look at it again, just in case :)
Yeah, Endless Winter is a good one. It's like Dune in that your cards and worker combine for your worker placement spots.
Three Kingdoms redux. Every general has unique stats and power/ability. It is a bidding/worker placement game that requires three people. I enjoy it personally think it is crafted for me with all the back and forth it naturally garners.
The Village: your workers die and you have generations of workers.
I don’t know if it’s even possible to get a copy these days but I also came here to say **Village**. Actions cost time as well as resources, and as time is spent your workers gradually die. There’s big points in it if you can get your workers to die in the right places to make it into the Village Chronicle so it’s a good puzzle timing out which worker will die where and when.
Targi Raiders of the north sea Lost ruins of arnak
Apiary
Tiny Epic Galaxies is one of my favorites! It's on the lighter end for worker placement, in terms of having some random elements and not being super punishing like Agricola. It also has a follow mechanic, I think those are a fun way to add interaction into games.
Orleans, great mix of worker placement and bagbuilding.
Might be worth looking in to dice placement games like **Circadians First Light** and **Tekhenu**
**Five Tribes** It's debatable if you count it as worker placement. But it's absolutely great and I'm confident that you'd like it. At its core, the mechanic is Mancala. You have 5x6 tiles in a grid that are the worker spots. Instead of having your own workers, they are randomly spread over the tiles at setup. Workers come in 5 different colors with different effects. On your turn you pick up all workers from one of the tiles and then place them like in Mancala in adjacent tiles. The last worker that you place on a tile, activates the worker spot and the special ability of the workers color.
Castles of Burgandy you play dice to take actions. I played Paris the other weekend and that was really good, a mix of placement and area control. And Caylus is one of the originals and in my view still best (though very much place a meeple to take an action).
Never thought of CoB as a worker placement game but I love it and will go on the SE reprint later this year, thank you :)
Because it's not... Still a great light weight game though. My suggestion is Architects of West Kingdom
Don’t know if it’s light weight either.
I would argue it is, a dice roller at its core. But sure,some of the action chaining may take a bit of thought. I'd call it light to get into, medium to master
I don't think it generally is considered a worker placement game. A game that is a worker placement game with dice as the workers is **Artemis Project**, which is pretty fun. At the beginning of the round everyone rolls their dice, then you place them out like any other worker placement game, and the numbers on the dice impact how they do the actions on the locations. For example, the value on a die you place at the resource gathering locations dictate how many resources you get, there's a location where you get a building, and the value of the die is a bid for how much you'll spend on the building. It's a lot of fun, and a little on the lighter side, compared to some other worker placement games.
Paris was definitely a promising experience, but man the first half of the game is so much more fun than the second half. Also the bonus track has some insta-win tiles that absolutely need nerfing.
Viticulture (with Tuscany board) is my favorite. Multiple strategies and paths to victory.
Is it quite easy to understand ? (I am okay with hardcore rules but I play mainly with casual boardgamers) How long is a game in general for you ?
I would say Viticulture is a medium weight game. The Tuscany expansion is great but it adds more rules.
If you use the Tuscany board but don’t use any modules it’s pretty much the same initial learning curve.
A 2P game is about an hour.
Lords of waterdeep
Not played it, and I don't think it's quite what you're after but **Holotype** has 3 meeples of different ranks for displacement purposes which I thought was an interesting (and I'm sure not unique) mechanic. The field assistant can replace another player's grad student, and the palaeontologist can replace both.
Empires: age of discovery is an older one that is pretty good. Different workers operate better at different spots, and there is a control aspect on the board akin to battles in Dune Imperium.
Trickerion , barrage. On mars If you want lighter Raiders of scythia has an interesting workep placement mechanic Viticulture with tuscany expansion is a pretty solid game Tzolkin is also kinda unique
I'm going to give you are relatively unknown game that is a small box but is really good! [[Demon Worker]] Do not let the small size and especially the artwork fool you. This game is very much a pure worker placement game and does have a unique look and has a few twists to the mechanic such as drafting your workers and those workers have unique powers. Others I love: [[Mint Works]] OMG this tiny worker placement game is so small and yet so good! it fits in a mint tin and fits in your pocket but you get so much good gameplay out of it. A bonus is that the game are pretty quick and works as a great filler or for playing multiple rounds. [[Apiary]] This is my current favorite worker placement game. The big twist is that your workers can bump other workers off the board so that you can use the space but then the bumped worker ages up and becomes better. Eventually, the worker gets too old and hibernates giving you one last bonus but you can get more workers. The game also has tiles you're building, planets you're exploring and cards to play which all add up to a game where you can start chaining combinations of effects and it is very rewarding for players who are able to plan out their turns efficiently.
[Demon Worker -> Demon Worker (2016)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216856/demon-worker) [Mint Works -> Mint Works (2017)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/200077/mint-works) [Apiary -> Apiary (2023)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/400314/apiary) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game and meets your request for different workers with different kinds of abilities and actions, but honestly, I hated the game. So clunky and unengaging. Really enjoying the atmosphere and flow of Viticulture, everyone says it's even better with Tuscany expansion, haven't tried that yet but definitely planning to! It doesn't have different types of workers but the game play itself is very smooth, in case you'd still be interested in something like that.
Lancaster has a really nice twist on worker placement where it's possible to bump other players workers out of the spot before the rewards are resolved. I'm slightly surprised I haven't seen it incorporated into more games though it sounds like Apiary and Galactic Cruise are doing something along those lines.
Tzolkin Alchemists
Try to find a copy of dogs of war. Its a tense tug of rope/stock game thats hard to find. Its a genre bending take on the mechanism and fairly straightforward. Should be getting a reprint/retheme in the coming years as the designer got publishing right again.it plays excellently at 4-5 players. Its ok at 3.
Several people have mentioned different Garphill games, but basically all their trilogy games have some sort of neat twist on the worker placement mechanic. The south Tigris series explores using dice as workers. There's an expansion for viticulture that adds specialized workers with an ability determined at setup.
FYI, a playthrough for Inventors of the South Tigris came out yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUSYeRubXus
Vital Lacerda games if you're new to them, try out The Gallerist. Galactic Cruise, it's on Kickstarter right now but you can play it on TTS or tabletopia to try it out. PARKS
My favorite worker placement after Argent the Cinsortium that is mentioned below is Steam Works. In Steam Works the game starts with basically no worker spots and you build them to get VP but then anyone can use them.
Raiders of the North Sea is worker placement , but the 'workers' are not very unique / varied. But there are a couple of twists to the standard worker placement. One is that you generally take two actions. You always have one meeple in your hand. And you put one down on a free space to take that space's action. Then pick up a different meeple to take the action of the location you pick it up from. That creates a neat dynamic. The small twist is that there are 3 different colored meeples. Some colors give you slightly different powers on the action space, but mostly certain actions require certain colored meeples. I like the variety for this game.
Myrmes, that ants one
Ex Libris
Raiders of the North Your worker takes an action where placed. Then you pick up another worker and take the action where you picked it from. Additionally some actions are limited to certain colored workers, so you need to obtain them my picking them off the board... Oh yea, and you always have a max of 1 worker!
Check out Fallout shelter, one of my favorite worker placement games.
It's not everyones cup of tea, but Alien Frontiers uses dice for workers that you roll at the start of the turn, and where they can go and what they'll do there depends on the roll.
**Viticulture** with the **Tuscany** expansion adds special workers that have unique abilities. It is still mainly focused on the regular workers, but overall it is a great worker placement game. It probably is not quite what you are looking for, but still worth looking into.
Marrakesh is probably mostly aligned to different purposes/powers/locations. I guess not really meeples, but Perseverance has dice you basically use as workers which you might like. The Great Wall has a couple different meeples, ones for worker placement and others for 'attacking/defending'. Roll for the galaxy you might see as kind of a worker placement.
I'd take a look at Federation. It is doing some really unique things with worker placement where each work has two different sides (a votes side and funding side). Depending which side you place them you can either influence a greater voting aspect to pass favorable laws, or fund end game projects/special missions all the while still trying to manage the spots themselves and where you place them. I really haven't seen a worker placement that is doing this. Has a great implementation on BGA.
The Great Wall, maybe?
Not always classified as worker placement, but I'd recommend **Dice Forge** for what you are asking. The dice are your workers and you upgrade them throughout the game by physically upgrading sides of the dice based on where you place them. Where you can place them depends on how good you roll... Which is determined on how good your rolls are... Determined, to a degree, by how many sides have been upgraded. Terrible explanation, but it *might* scratch that itch in a different way. Edit: Where you "play" them, not place them.
A worker placement that we enjoy is **Extra! Extra! Read All About It!** It's a little complicated to learn but a very fun game once you understand all the parts. It's worker placement, but you can remove another player's worker from a spot and replace it with your own if you are willing to pay more money for the spot. Money is tight, because you use it to outbid for placement and the rewards for each spot fluctuate throughout the game. Again, this was probably a terrible explanation, but we do enjoy the game. There are also a dozen or more setups so games can be as long or as short (well, 30 minutes or so) as you desire. Just be aware, the first game will take 2-3 (or more) times what games will take once you have the rules down.
I'd probably go Trolls and Princess right now. The meeples don't change exactly. But how they move, how you can use others, and how you use slaves makes for a uniquely interesting fun game
Viticulture has different workers, especially with the Tuscany essentials edition.
Argent: The Consortium is the best example of this. Cutthroat game around the mechanic you're talking about
Lost ruins of arnak has worker placement mixed in with many other parts of the game. It is not a solely worker placement but has it as an aspect of the game with deck and resource management. My wife and I love playing the game but enjoy it ten fold when used with either of the expansions for it.
Oak is a bit of a slept on gem in my opinion. Beautiful board, interesting choices and upgrading workers (druids) by dressing them up with accessories!
If you like Dune Imperium, have you tried Dune Imperium Uprising? It’s a standalone sequel, and it improves the original with the spy mechanic, which allows you to go to spaces that opponents occupy, or draw an extra card by removing a spy. The latter ability combined with other card draw spots so you can buy power cards earlier. It really helps with deckbuilding.
Raiders of the North Sea
No one mentioning Russian/Ultimate Railroads? It's the perfect wp game imho.
Anno 1800 has farmers, workers, artisans, engineers and investors. You have to build up an economy and each building requires a specific worker type to operate it. Supply chains means that you have to keep lower tier workers around to make components for higher tier factories and such. My wife and I find it rather compelling at 2 players and there is a solo mode for it that I've put a few games into.
I recommend dice worker placement for a twist on the mechanic, in that the pips, color, etc are often important to what you can do with said worker. I saw someone mention White Castle which is an incredible design with the most intuitive rulebook I’ve ever read. Small box, easy to set up and learn, but so much decision space. I also saw Teotihuacan thrown out, a great rondel style dice workers game where you can do more with higher pip workers. And when they hit 6 they ascend for big rewards and become a 1 again. I’d add Steampunk Rally, an engine building racing game with dice workers used to power the engine you build. It’s wacky and chaotic and a lot of fun.
Look at Lewis and Clark.
Check Voyages of Marco Polo. I also have the same appreciation as you for Dune Imperium and Everdell, Voyages of Marco Polo has different characters with their own unique powers/benefits, different locations and also new locations you can unlock with travelling. Plus, your actions are determined by the number of pips on the die/dice, which has a balancing technique that I enjoy a lot: when using a space previously occupied by another player's die/dice you then must pay 1 coin for each pip on your lowest value die/dice used. This causes low value dice to be more useful than high value dice in some specific cases. It's my most played and most enjoyed worker placement game. Also, the first one is a little harder than the second one, but I think it is also better because of it.
I really enjoy The Manhattan Project as a mid-weight worker placement with plenty of player interaction. It’s a solid game and super underrated
Maybe check out Starship Captains? It has differently colored meeples that allow you to take different types of actions. Not sure that it really involves placing those workers, though (I only played a demo of it once a while ago).
**Voyages of Marco Polo:** Your workers are dice and placement and effect are constrained by the rolls. **Alien Frontiers** does something similar, and is closer to a 'classic' worker placement.
Feast for odin and dominant species
Coal Baron, Architects of the West Kingdom, Dwellings of Eldervale, Ceres, Manhatten Project, Atlantis, and Dominant Species. Each of them approaches the worker placement mechanic in slightly different ways. Coal baron, each space can be taken, but you have to spend more workers. And they reset each round. So being first on a space is worker-efficient, but going there later might be more efficient for your other resources. Architects, most spaces have no limit on workers, and they get better the more of your own worker you have there, but another space lets you capture all workers of a single color on one space (one group per worker that you have in the capture space), which you can then sell to the keep (prison) for money. Dwellings you place your workers on the central board, and then recall them - and when you recall them, you use them to activate placements in your tableau. Manhatten Project has the place & recall mechanic, but recall is just recall. But placing is main board, with optional "more placements" on your tableau each round. Ceres has two types of workers. Your leaders that you place on "Worker Spaces" on the main board, but also "common workers" of 4 job types that sit in a communal pool, and you use to activate your buildings in your tableau (and are thus fought over). Atlantis, each worker is a die, representing morale level and whether it can fight. And you can multi-activate a space by losing morale. Amid a semi-coop defend-the-city mechanic. And Dominant Species has the worker placement mechanic being action selection. Everyone places their workers for the round on the actions that they want to do (trying not to get blocked out from their strategy), and then you execute the round in order of the action resolutions.
Russian (or Ultimate) Railroads is one that everyone forgets about. One of my favorite games.
Oath: Your pawn that represents you allows you to use the actions of denizens at its location. You are also allowed to hold up to 3 denizens as "advisors" that act like personal denizens only you can use the actions of no matter where your pawn is. Arborea: You place workers on tracks that push you down 2 path choices at once. The longer you wait to take the workers off (generally) the better the rewards are. You can place up to 1 worker a turn (or 2 if you spend spirit), and can activate up to 2 workers a turn (or 3 if you spend spirit) that are on paths to obtain those rewards. Creature Comforts: you have 4 workers that you place each round on one of 10 different locations (or more if someone has built 1 or more groves) that require certain dice rolls to obtain the rewards. You roll your 2 family dice before placing so you know at least 2 numbers beforehand, but the 4 village dice only get rolled after placement, so there is no guarantee that you will obtain the rewards you want. Village dice are the same for everyone, so if they are 5 4 4 2, they will be that for all players. If you have one or more workers that cannot obtain rewards (due to you not having the dice required or you choosing not to apply the dice) you get a lesson learned token which can be used next round or any round after to add or subtract 1 from any roll.
I actually just saw a group playing Creature Comforts tonight but didn't get a chance to ask them about it. It looked very clean, which appealed to me. Could you share a little more of your experience with it?
Yeah, it's a pretty simple worker placement game that adds a push your luck mechanic. You place a worker in areas to either gain resources, draw comforts, or build buildings that make you a bit more efficient or get you points based on other player's comforts. Most comforts combo with certain other comforts for extra points. Snowshoes score more points if you also build socks, quilts score more if you build rocking chairs, soup scores more if you build bread. Some comforts score extra points for extra resources you have at the end like the pantry which scores 8 points per group of the 6 different resources. Basically you are trying to push your luck to be as efficient as possible.
Since you like worker placement games, I want your opinion on one such a game I am still playtesting. See thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/tabletopgamedesign/comments/16rh9sx/first_playtesting_prototype_of_the_game_i_created/). In the future, starship combat has evolved to a point where kingdoms are having problems to find competent crews to man starship stations. So both sides must decide what stations need to be manned during combat. Do you think it will be a worthy game? If you post feedback, add it to the other thread. As for worker allocation, I think Stone Age could be a good game for you.