We need to get this one back to the table. We played it twice and really liked it, but then its sat ever since. I’m not sure why, just too many games maybe.
1. Dune Imperium 2. Viticulture 3. Architects of the West Kingdom 4. Stone Age 5. Empires : Age of Discovery Great list and one of my favorite mechanics - there is player interaction but not too cutthroat as other mechanics
It was fun to hear from Justin and about some games he loves👍 He is an incredibly polite person too! Dune Imperium is one of my favorites. Some not as well known or unusual implementations that I like are Ancient World, Xi'an, Targi, After the Empire, and Gugong. Great video 👏
Great video Jamie, Worker Placement is my favourite mechanic in board games I love having to plan out my turns in advance and try and balance blocking other or going for my own gain. Here is my top 5: 1. Tzolk'In - I love the time aspect of benefit of workers, and being forced to push or pull a worker every turn means you sometimes have to do a non-optimal turn just so your worker can keep going round the dial. 2. Anachrony - Having to determine at the start of your round how many mech suits to enable to use worker placement slots requires a lot of fore planning and then someone can still steal the space you want. Timing is really important every round. 3. Viticulture EE -the grande worker (or big boy as my friends call it) adds a great dimension to the worker placement, and having to decide which action space to save it for it lots of fun. 4. Keyflower - the different colour meeples makes an interesting battle to remember how many everyone has, and also playing them in someone elses tableu allows them to keep them is a fun mechanic that means you want to try and get a good tile that everyone wants to play on. 5. Stone Age - I like using workers to get more and more resources, and the battle to get the special space is tight
I was honored to be selected to do this with you sir. Thank you again and it was an absolute delight to speak to you about one of my passions in life :)
What great lists! LOWD is the quintessential worked placement game and Dune has some neat mechanics along with a strong theme. So glad viti got on the list. With hte tuscany expansion it is one of my families favorites.
Not only is Caylus 1303 a great worker placement game in its own right, but it serves as a great example of how to remake and update a classic design. Caylus (the original from 2005) didn't invent the worker placement genre, but it is one of the more influential titles within the genre, with designers like Xavier Georges citing it as an influence on their own worker placement designs.
Absolutely, Caylus is hugely influential! The biggest influence it's had on me is the idea of building something together with other players (including action spaces) in a competitive game.
Great video and fantastic choices. I’m with Jamie for my number 1, just love Dune Imperium. Other good ones are Viticulture and Nusfjord- these get a lot of love from us too
I love worker placement games. My top two games of all time are Caylus and Dominant Species. Caylus was one of the first few modern board games I ever played and launched my love of the hobby
I love worker placement. One of my top mechanisms of all time! 1. Pillars of the Earth was one of my first and I still love it while mixing it up with the Expansion and Sequels. 2. Wendake (Native Americans during the 7 years' war), great in theme. 3. Key flow ( a little less confrontational than Keyflower) 4. Viticulture; I really liked this but can't get to the table with my group (yet). Honorable mentions: Aricola, Everdell, Architects of the West Kingdom I use worker placement in some of my designs, yet to be published.
Some of my favorite worker placement games are Everdell, Dice Hospital, and Lost Ruins of Arnak. I've only played Lords of Waterdeep once a few years ago and would love to play it again.
Great video, Jamey! Justin seems like a great all around gamer. Worker placement and deck building are my favorite mechanisms so not only this video was a blast, seeing DI there made me smile! Have you played Bus by Splotter? Despite being a Splotter game, it’s very accessible with simple to follow route building game with perfect information so there’s nothing that you can’t explain to new players based on the state of the board. The “workers” act more like an action selection system, but there’s blocking and priorities involved, are also your timer. You can place as many workers as you want each round, but you never get them back (or increase the number of workers) and once they’re out you can no longer perform actions - so you have to plan carefully how many workers you’re willing to spend each round. Lovely game.
@@jameystegmaier I’ve watched so many of your “favorite mechanism” videos somehow I missed this one, which is one of my all time favorite games. Great video, thanking for sharing your thoughts on it!
Always love hearing different opinions on games and trying to find new favourites. Flamecraft is an amazing shout too for a variety of reasons. I’m super excited to try out Virtual Revolution from Hachette and the new printing of Ex Libris from Renegade. My current top 5 worker placements: 1) Raiders of the North Sea (with both expansions) 2) Obsession 3) Dune: Imperium (with or without expansions) 4) Viticulture EE 5) Euphoria
I love Lords of Waterdeep, but I won’t play it without the expansion. The base game is great, but I got the expansion and have now incorporated it as a part of the base game. I think the corruption track is an awesome addition that is very simple to comprehend yet adds a lot of variety and strategy. I also love Century Golem edition. I love the idea of action spaces costing a varying number of workers. I also love that you can go to the same action space as an opponent if you are willing to pay a little extra and let the opponent get a slight benefit by getting their workers back.
Worker placement is by far my favorite! And my favorite WP would have to be On Mars. I'm a sucker for heavy/thematic euros. Viticulture was actually one of the first non Catan games that got me into the hobby and was my first worker placement. It will definitely always hold a special place for that reason. Viticulture also had a big influence when we were designing the worker placement for Galactic Cruise. My first iteration was basically "how do I make this just like Viticulture" haha it's of course changed drastically over the last few years, but had it's roots in the vineyards for sure. Really hope you get the chance to try it out some time as a fan of worker placement!
I know its an older one, but I love manhattan project. The original one. The building your own tableau of spaces really makes it sing for me. Also Dwellings of Eldervale. Similarly I love pulling the workers back and placing them on my own tableau for benefits.
Great lists! I adore "Dune Imperium" and its expansions; it's such a smooth, satisfying game experience with excellent tracks and interesting options that always leaves me wanting "one more play session." My current favorite 5: "Dune Imperium" (expansions deepen it), "A Feast for Odin" (w/ "Norwegians"), "Everdell", and "Maquis"🎲
Thanks for another Interesting video. I think worker placement games are the games that I most frequently move on from my collection because I always compare them to games I already own and like more. I love Everdell, Dune Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Viticulture and Dwellings of Eldervale. I really want to try Barrage, Lords of Waterdeep and Honeybuzz. Thanks again.
Great vid. My list would be (in no specific order): Caylus 1303; Beyond the Sun; Viticulture; Architects of the WK and Underwater Cities which has Workers in a form of submarine tiles. Honorable mentions: Obsession; Dune:Imperium; Arnak; Expeditions would be a WP of sorts?? As you placing your Mech worker on tiles plus your workers on cards! Actually if we consider Expeditions a WP, would be up to in the very top of the list!!!!
Thanks Marco! I would agree that Expeditions includes worker placement, largely with the mechs selecting locations to gather (blocking others from their location), but also with the worker meeples placed on your cards.
Worker Placement is my favorite mechanism. My top two would have to Agricola, which was one of the first worker placement games I played, and Lords of Waterdeep. I've only played Dune Imperium once, but I loved it and just picked it up with the expansions, so I am looking forward to playing that a few more times.
Are there any other games that you can think of with a similar mechanism to Lords of Waterdeep where you can add a new worker space (buildings) that everyone can use but the owner gets a benefit when others use it? I love that!
@@JamieFitzgerald Absolutely! My recent release, Expeditions, does that, and here's a list of other games that do it: th-cam.com/video/8JBZC74_tP0/w-d-xo.html
I would have to arrange some of my games in categories :D. I would say: 1. (one of the "action programming games") Dominant Species / Bus / Caylus / Empires: Age of Discovery / Lancaster (love them all, pick one ;)) 2. (one of the "feed your people" games) Agricola / Tzolk'in 3. (one of the "multifaceted" games) Bruxelles 1893 / Keyflower / Keyper 4. Ora et Labora 5. Viticulture
According to my last PubMeeple ranking, my top 5 are: 1. The Voyages of Marco Polo 2. Marco Polo II 3. Beyond the Sun 4. Lords of Waterdeep 5. Lost Ruins of Arnak Honorable: Stone Age, The Artemis Project, Tawantinsuyu. I love Paladins of the West Kingdom, but I don't consider that a worker placement game. (The King's Favor cards do work that way, but they account for a very small percentage of actions.)
@@jameystegmaier You will like it; at the very least you will like it as a designer, because it does some clever things. In a 4 or 5 player game, the turn angst is really excellent in the ways that worker placement games provide - do I go there now, with this power, or wait, and use this power elsewhere?
My issue is that my top 5 worker placement games would literally have four Uwe games on it with Dune Imperium in there for good measure. While I could talk about several Uwe games the one that stands out the most is Agricola for the immense depth and replayability thanks to the card system. And while it's well-known for the card system I think people underrate just how innovative some of the ideas and mechanisms in Agricola are...many of which Uwe continued to iterate and use in subsequent designs. Things such as the resource accumulation space system, the way in which you need to devote a meaningful amount of resources and number of actions to earn more family members then also periodically feed them means it's not as simple as getting as many workers as quickly as possible, how action spaces are added each round in a pseudo-random fashion, the rewarding feeling of building up your own farm and house throughout the game, making round start player an interesting part of the game since there's tension as to whether it's worth it to take start player given it's not as good of an action space but may significantly reward you in future rounds, the inclusion of animals and the breeding system, and so many more.
Hey Jamey, quick question and this doesn’t pertain to this video but I was curious on code name: Hive. Seems very close to coming out, is that the expedition rubber mat, or is that something else? Different game/expansion/rolling realms promo, etc? I preordered the rubber mat and I also (late to the game I know) ordered rolling realms along with the Expeditions promo (how could I not with expeditions getting lots of our play time. my spouse and I have played 3 games of it and only played “Caesar seize Rome in 20 minutes” a couple times in between when we didn’t have time to play a longer game.) and also ordered Feast for Odin promo. Very excited about the game. My spouse and I have a good collection of games but something we didn’t have was a roll and write game. and thought we love Stonemaier games so much we should get your roll and write game too. Very intrigued by the options and variability of playing random 3 realms and only activating 2 of the 3 being that you only have 2 dice on any given turn. Gotta ask also is there a dune imperium promo in the works any time soon? Like I said we’re late to the game but very excited for our copy of rolling realms to come with the shipment of the expeditions mat (takes up almost our whole square table which is perfect as it will turn our table in to a perfect game mat for any and all games.) we love having a game we can quickly grab and play together on a weeknight after work and dinner and have just enough spare time to get a quick game in. Sorry for the long message. Thanks Jamey! And I agree with the Dune imperium pick at #1.
I appreciate your curiosity! Codename Hive is not the Expeditions playmat. Thank you for trying out Rolling Realms! I don't want to spoil future promos, but I can say that not all publishers have said yes to my requests to publish realms inspired by my favorite games (a decision I fully respect). :)
Draftosaurus from ankama is a fun worker placment as well. While the game is, as the name implies, a draft game the way you place your workers based around a dice roll that limits what spaces you can use is a fun twist. My game group likes to play it as a warm up game or a first game of the night.
I love Draftosaurus! For me, I wouldn't classify it as worker placement, as I'm not using workers to select actions that could be occupied by other players. I'd call it set collection plus drafting.
Dune imperium and Tzolk’in are my two favorite worker placement games as well Maybe I need to try Russian railroads then. Flame craft and Honey Buzz also appeal to me that I haven’t played.
Honeybuzz is such an underrated game. The recall worker action is such a hard decision and makes the game great. I'm glad it's getting some love.
We need to get this one back to the table. We played it twice and really liked it, but then its sat ever since. I’m not sure why, just too many games maybe.
1. Dune Imperium
2. Viticulture
3. Architects of the West Kingdom
4. Stone Age
5. Empires : Age of Discovery
Great list and one of my favorite mechanics - there is player interaction but not too cutthroat as other mechanics
Great list!
It was fun to hear from Justin and about some games he loves👍 He is an incredibly polite person too! Dune Imperium is one of my favorites. Some not as well known or unusual implementations that I like are Ancient World, Xi'an, Targi, After the Empire, and Gugong. Great video 👏
Thanks for sharing some under-the-radar games; I hadn't thought about Gugong as worker placement, but I think you're right to classify it that way. :)
Great video Jamie, Worker Placement is my favourite mechanic in board games I love having to plan out my turns in advance and try and balance blocking other or going for my own gain. Here is my top 5:
1. Tzolk'In - I love the time aspect of benefit of workers, and being forced to push or pull a worker every turn means you sometimes have to do a non-optimal turn just so your worker can keep going round the dial.
2. Anachrony - Having to determine at the start of your round how many mech suits to enable to use worker placement slots requires a lot of fore planning and then someone can still steal the space you want. Timing is really important every round.
3. Viticulture EE -the grande worker (or big boy as my friends call it) adds a great dimension to the worker placement, and having to decide which action space to save it for it lots of fun.
4. Keyflower - the different colour meeples makes an interesting battle to remember how many everyone has, and also playing them in someone elses tableu allows them to keep them is a fun mechanic that means you want to try and get a good tile that everyone wants to play on.
5. Stone Age - I like using workers to get more and more resources, and the battle to get the special space is tight
I appreciate you sharing your list and why you love these games! I need to try Keyflower again--it's been a long time.
I was honored to be selected to do this with you sir. Thank you again and it was an absolute delight to speak to you about one of my passions in life :)
Thank you so much for taking the time to create your list and share it with me!
What great lists! LOWD is the quintessential worked placement game and Dune has some neat mechanics along with a strong theme. So glad viti got on the list. With hte tuscany expansion it is one of my families favorites.
Not only is Caylus 1303 a great worker placement game in its own right, but it serves as a great example of how to remake and update a classic design.
Caylus (the original from 2005) didn't invent the worker placement genre, but it is one of the more influential titles within the genre, with designers like Xavier Georges citing it as an influence on their own worker placement designs.
Absolutely, Caylus is hugely influential! The biggest influence it's had on me is the idea of building something together with other players (including action spaces) in a competitive game.
Great video and fantastic choices. I’m with Jamie for my number 1, just love Dune Imperium. Other good ones are Viticulture and Nusfjord- these get a lot of love from us too
I love worker placement games. My top two games of all time are Caylus and Dominant Species. Caylus was one of the first few modern board games I ever played and launched my love of the hobby
I love worker placement. One of my top mechanisms of all time!
1. Pillars of the Earth was one of my first and I still love it while mixing it up with the Expansion and Sequels.
2. Wendake (Native Americans during the 7 years' war), great in theme.
3. Key flow ( a little less confrontational than Keyflower)
4. Viticulture; I really liked this but can't get to the table with my group (yet).
Honorable mentions: Aricola, Everdell, Architects of the West Kingdom
I use worker placement in some of my designs, yet to be published.
Thanks for sharing your list!
Some of my favorite worker placement games are Everdell, Dice Hospital, and Lost Ruins of Arnak. I've only played Lords of Waterdeep once a few years ago and would love to play it again.
I need to try Dice Hospital!
Great video, Jamey! Justin seems like a great all around gamer. Worker placement and deck building are my favorite mechanisms so not only this video was a blast, seeing DI there made me smile!
Have you played Bus by Splotter? Despite being a Splotter game, it’s very accessible with simple to follow route building game with perfect information so there’s nothing that you can’t explain to new players based on the state of the board.
The “workers” act more like an action selection system, but there’s blocking and priorities involved, are also your timer. You can place as many workers as you want each round, but you never get them back (or increase the number of workers) and once they’re out you can no longer perform actions - so you have to plan carefully how many workers you’re willing to spend each round. Lovely game.
I have indeed had the pleasure of playing Bus, but it's been a while. Here's my video on it: th-cam.com/video/tJyxmtl72yo/w-d-xo.html
Hi this is Justin. Thank you for the kind reply ☺️
@@Tanks.With.Teeth.Malloy awesome! I’ll add you on IG and good luck with the podcast!
@@jameystegmaier I’ve watched so many of your “favorite mechanism” videos somehow I missed this one, which is one of my all time favorite games. Great video, thanking for sharing your thoughts on it!
Always love hearing different opinions on games and trying to find new favourites. Flamecraft is an amazing shout too for a variety of reasons.
I’m super excited to try out Virtual Revolution from Hachette and the new printing of Ex Libris from Renegade.
My current top 5 worker placements:
1) Raiders of the North Sea (with both expansions)
2) Obsession
3) Dune: Imperium (with or without expansions)
4) Viticulture EE
5) Euphoria
Thanks for sharing your list! I'm honored a few of our games are there. :)
I love Lords of Waterdeep, but I won’t play it without the expansion. The base game is great, but I got the expansion and have now incorporated it as a part of the base game. I think the corruption track is an awesome addition that is very simple to comprehend yet adds a lot of variety and strategy.
I also love Century Golem edition. I love the idea of action spaces costing a varying number of workers. I also love that you can go to the same action space as an opponent if you are willing to pay a little extra and let the opponent get a slight benefit by getting their workers back.
Neta Tanka. Cool worker placement with linking actions which never gets talked about. Probably not my favorite, but definitely up there for me.
Worker placement is by far my favorite! And my favorite WP would have to be On Mars. I'm a sucker for heavy/thematic euros. Viticulture was actually one of the first non Catan games that got me into the hobby and was my first worker placement. It will definitely always hold a special place for that reason. Viticulture also had a big influence when we were designing the worker placement for Galactic Cruise. My first iteration was basically "how do I make this just like Viticulture" haha it's of course changed drastically over the last few years, but had it's roots in the vineyards for sure. Really hope you get the chance to try it out some time as a fan of worker placement!
Thanks for sharing! I'm now even more excited to play Galactic Cruise. :)
@@jameystegmaier That's awesome! Can't wait to hear what you think!
I know its an older one, but I love manhattan project. The original one. The building your own tableau of spaces really makes it sing for me.
Also Dwellings of Eldervale. Similarly I love pulling the workers back and placing them on my own tableau for benefits.
I love that aspect of Dwellings, especially since you can upgrade what you receive when you pull back workers.
Great lists! I adore "Dune Imperium" and its expansions; it's such a smooth, satisfying game experience with excellent tracks and interesting options that always leaves me wanting "one more play session." My current favorite 5: "Dune Imperium" (expansions deepen it), "A Feast for Odin" (w/ "Norwegians"), "Everdell", and "Maquis"🎲
I definitely feel the same way about Dune Imperium (and I like your other picks too, though I haven't played Maquis).
Manhattan Project is still one of my favorite worker placement games.
Thanks for another Interesting video. I think worker placement games are the games that I most frequently move on from my collection because I always compare them to games I already own and like more. I love Everdell, Dune Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Viticulture and Dwellings of Eldervale. I really want to try Barrage, Lords of Waterdeep and Honeybuzz. Thanks again.
Yeah, that's a tricky thing about having some games you already love that do such a great job with a specific mechanism. :)
Great vid.
My list would be (in no specific order): Caylus 1303; Beyond the Sun; Viticulture; Architects of the WK and Underwater Cities which has Workers in a form of submarine tiles.
Honorable mentions: Obsession; Dune:Imperium; Arnak; Expeditions would be a WP of sorts?? As you placing your Mech worker on tiles plus your workers on cards! Actually if we consider Expeditions a WP, would be up to in the very top of the list!!!!
Thanks Marco! I would agree that Expeditions includes worker placement, largely with the mechs selecting locations to gather (blocking others from their location), but also with the worker meeples placed on your cards.
Never forget Pillars of the Earth.
Worker Placement is my favorite mechanism. My top two would have to Agricola, which was one of the first worker placement games I played, and Lords of Waterdeep. I've only played Dune Imperium once, but I loved it and just picked it up with the expansions, so I am looking forward to playing that a few more times.
I greatly enjoy both Agricola and Lords of Waterdeep too. :)
Are there any other games that you can think of with a similar mechanism to Lords of Waterdeep where you can add a new worker space (buildings) that everyone can use but the owner gets a benefit when others use it? I love that!
@@JamieFitzgerald Absolutely! My recent release, Expeditions, does that, and here's a list of other games that do it: th-cam.com/video/8JBZC74_tP0/w-d-xo.html
@@jameystegmaier Thanks! I’ll watch that now!
I would have to arrange some of my games in categories :D. I would say:
1. (one of the "action programming games") Dominant Species / Bus / Caylus / Empires: Age of Discovery / Lancaster (love them all, pick one ;))
2. (one of the "feed your people" games) Agricola / Tzolk'in
3. (one of the "multifaceted" games) Bruxelles 1893 / Keyflower / Keyper
4. Ora et Labora
5. Viticulture
I like these categories!
According to my last PubMeeple ranking, my top 5 are:
1. The Voyages of Marco Polo
2. Marco Polo II
3. Beyond the Sun
4. Lords of Waterdeep
5. Lost Ruins of Arnak
Honorable: Stone Age, The Artemis Project, Tawantinsuyu.
I love Paladins of the West Kingdom, but I don't consider that a worker placement game. (The King's Favor cards do work that way, but they account for a very small percentage of actions.)
Thanks for sharing your top 5! Those are great games, and I'm curious to try The Artemis Project.
@@jameystegmaier You will like it; at the very least you will like it as a designer, because it does some clever things. In a 4 or 5 player game, the turn angst is really excellent in the ways that worker placement games provide - do I go there now, with this power, or wait, and use this power elsewhere?
Just new to worker placement. We have Everdell and Parks and love them both. I’d love some suggestions as to what should be next!
I'd recommend any of the games we discussed in this video! :)
My issue is that my top 5 worker placement games would literally have four Uwe games on it with Dune Imperium in there for good measure. While I could talk about several Uwe games the one that stands out the most is Agricola for the immense depth and replayability thanks to the card system. And while it's well-known for the card system I think people underrate just how innovative some of the ideas and mechanisms in Agricola are...many of which Uwe continued to iterate and use in subsequent designs.
Things such as the resource accumulation space system, the way in which you need to devote a meaningful amount of resources and number of actions to earn more family members then also periodically feed them means it's not as simple as getting as many workers as quickly as possible, how action spaces are added each round in a pseudo-random fashion, the rewarding feeling of building up your own farm and house throughout the game, making round start player an interesting part of the game since there's tension as to whether it's worth it to take start player given it's not as good of an action space but may significantly reward you in future rounds, the inclusion of animals and the breeding system, and so many more.
This is such a great summary of Agricola mechanisms! Makes me want to get it back to the table. :)
Hey Jamey, quick question and this doesn’t pertain to this video but I was curious on code name: Hive. Seems very close to coming out, is that the expedition rubber mat, or is that something else? Different game/expansion/rolling realms promo, etc? I preordered the rubber mat and I also (late to the game I know) ordered rolling realms along with the Expeditions promo (how could I not with expeditions getting lots of our play time. my spouse and I have played 3 games of it and only played “Caesar seize Rome in 20 minutes” a couple times in between when we didn’t have time to play a longer game.) and also ordered Feast for Odin promo. Very excited about the game. My spouse and I have a good collection of games but something we didn’t have was a roll and write game. and thought we love Stonemaier games so much we should get your roll and write game too. Very intrigued by the options and variability of playing random 3 realms and only activating 2 of the 3 being that you only have 2 dice on any given turn. Gotta ask also is there a dune imperium promo in the works any time soon? Like I said we’re late to the game but very excited for our copy of rolling realms to come with the shipment of the expeditions mat (takes up almost our whole square table which is perfect as it will turn our table in to a perfect game mat for any and all games.) we love having a game we can quickly grab and play together on a weeknight after work and dinner and have just enough spare time to get a quick game in. Sorry for the long message. Thanks Jamey! And I agree with the Dune imperium pick at #1.
I appreciate your curiosity! Codename Hive is not the Expeditions playmat. Thank you for trying out Rolling Realms! I don't want to spoil future promos, but I can say that not all publishers have said yes to my requests to publish realms inspired by my favorite games (a decision I fully respect). :)
Draftosaurus from ankama is a fun worker placment as well. While the game is, as the name implies, a draft game the way you place your workers based around a dice roll that limits what spaces you can use is a fun twist. My game group likes to play it as a warm up game or a first game of the night.
I love Draftosaurus! For me, I wouldn't classify it as worker placement, as I'm not using workers to select actions that could be occupied by other players. I'd call it set collection plus drafting.
Dune Imperium
Raiders of the North Sea
Champions of Midgard
The Godfather: Corleone's Empire
Everdell
Thanks for sharing your list!
Dune imperium and Tzolk’in are my two favorite worker placement games as well
Maybe I need to try Russian railroads then. Flame craft and Honey Buzz also appeal to me that I haven’t played.
Russian Railroads is on Board Game Arena if you want to try it there!
Man no Anachrony? If you haven’t played it yet you definitely should!
I've played Anachrony; here's my video on it: th-cam.com/video/-aEJGSeXGpE/w-d-xo.html