Topic of the Week: Worker Placement

Boardgames
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So this is the second and last of the more academic topics for now. This may get a bit ripe before we’re done but we’re all friends and I can count on us to explore the vagaries such that they are illuminating rather than frustrating. We made it through “euro” after all!

Question the first: What is worker placement, exactly? (If you are like me, you may immediately feel like you have the answer but, as you try to write it down, it starts to escape you…)

Question the second: Who does it best? Why does it work well in these games?

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And I’ll just jump in with a thesis. In short, I’ve come to the conclusion that worker placement is an administrative trope more than a mechanism. And this is why it can get confusing what is or is not worker placement, and why it can show up in ways that seem quite unrelated.

In long:

Extended thoughts on WP for the interested or the bored

Here is what I’ve found:

The first game really called worker placement is Keydom, by Richard Breese (Keyflower). Here it works thusly: players take turns placing numbered workers face-down on action spots. Once placements are done, all workers are turned up and whoever has the highest sum takes the action. Some say yes, you’re placing workers to claim actions. Others say this is really a simultaneous-blind-auction with an administrative quirk.

Next came Bus (Splotter). Here, spots are not contested. You have a fixed number of workers (20?) for the entire game. Each round you put some out, and once everyone is done, the actions are resolved in a fixed order. Is this worker placement? Again, you’re placing workers to claim actions. But it also feels a bit like an action-point allocation system with, again, an administrative quirk of placing tokens to track those action points.

Other’s may have come up in between, but next major milestone is Caylus. Here is where worker placement takes on its pure form, defined thusly:

  1. Physical placement of a worker
  2. Action exclusivity
  3. Immediate resolution

These three things define the core of worker placement and are the model carried forward into Agricola, Lords of Waterdeep, Viticulture, and any number of WP descendents.

However, not all. There’s a crapton of games that still do worker placement differently. Manhattan Project Energy Empire and Keyflower are both worker placement but instead of action exclusivity, a worker merely raises the cost of subsequent placements. It’s a soft block.

Lancaster, Argent: The Consortium, Carson City, Sons of Anarchy, and others look more like Keydom. In a round, spots denoting actions are contested by some means, and then at the end of the round all actions are resolved after rights are earned.

Lowlands and Paladins of the West Kingdom are uncontested (though untraditional) “worker placement,” yet they each have personal worker placement boards. These mirror Bus where it’s more of an action point allocation exercise rather than a blocking exercise.

So what is worker placement? By the end of this I agreed with those who said it is not a mechanic. Worker Placement is an administrative overlay on real mechanics, like action drafting (Caylus, Agricola), action point allocation (Bus, Lowlands), or sort of area-control-with-related-actions (Keydom, Lancaster, Argent). The real mechanic is how actions are claimed or allocated.

This was sealed for me when I thought about Puerto Rico, several years older than Caylus. Here there is a small set of actions, they are made available at the start of each round, and each player selects one (which no one else can then select). This action is immediately resolved and then the next player takes their turn. This is effected by sliding a tile a bit on the table. Imagine if, instead, each player had a token (their Honcho?) and they placed that token onto the action they wanted to take, thereby marking their choice and blocking the rest of the players from taking that action this round. Exact same game. Classical worker placement, right? But Puerto Rico, because you slide the tile, is action drafting with lead/follow. Did Caylus “invent” classical worker placement by innovating a token that you place onto the board? That seems a bit shallow.

Puerto Rico is more like Caylus than Caylus is like Paladins of the West Kingdom. And I’ve concluded that’s because Worker Placement isn’t a mechanic, it’s just a shared bookkeeping trope to help players track true action selection mechanics. I do, however, draw the line when the worker placement administrative step is taken without any kind of action allocation - e.g. Carcassonne. Which sometimes gets called worker placement because of the physical act of placing a worker onto a road or city.

At the end of all that, here’s what I think we’re left with for schools of worker placement:

  1. Classical worker placement - action drafting with a worker token. Immediate resolution and action exclusivity.
  2. Soft-block worker placement - still action drafting, but with mechanics to re-use actions (usually an increased cost or expending a one-shot). Keyflower and Energy Empire come to mind first. Games like Viticulture (with it’s grande), Nusfjord (with the duplicating spots), and Parks (campfire) are kind of a 1.5.
  3. Catch-and-release worker placement - another action drafting variant, but each player has one worker and therefore only blocks their most recent action. Le Havre, Beyond the Sun, and I’ll put Raiders of the North Sea here.
  4. Action-point worker placement - in which each player has their own action spots (Paladins, Lowlands) or blocking is mostly non-existent (Bus, Formosa Tea, Architects). Here workers function closer to action points than action drafting.
  5. Skirmish worker placement - in which workers are really just staking a claim on the right to take an action but other mechanisms (auction, high beats low, cards, dice) exist for players to duke it out.
  6. Faux worker placement - in which workers are physically placed but no actions are taken or reserved based on the placement. Carcassonne. Also Pipeline, which looks like Catch-and-release but there is no blocking, so your single worker is just a “last turn” marker.
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The purest form, for me, is basically an action drafting sequence from a different aesthetical angle. You take an action and no one else can take that one until [foo]. So, you can imagine redesigning the production of Agricola where instead of placing workers, you take the action cards. Different aesthetics. Same process.

But obviously that’s cumbersome, so worker placement seems practical.

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As usual I will make my “landmarks” argument. :slight_smile:

Broadly to me a worker placement game is one in which, each round, everyone takes turns selecting one or more actions from a set of options, and the same option can’t be selected twice. (Some options may have multiple selection slots.)

  • Often one of those options will get you an extra selection in future turns.
  • Usually, once all the workers are placed, the actions get resolved in a set order. Sometimes it’s immediately on placement.
  • If placing a worker first just gets you a cheaper action, that’s not in “core” w.p. game territory for me, but I’ll agree that the mechanism involved is still w.p..
  • The more important that is, the more it’s “A Worker Placement Game”. Twilight Imperium is not a worker placement game even though it contains this mechanism; nor is Race for the Galaxy.
  • A common extra feature: one action reclaims your workers for a future round.
  • There may be one or more non-exclusive actions to make sure the players choosing late can still do something useful.

A couple of marginal cases:

  • Revolution, where you’re simultaneously blind bidding on the whole array of actions, then in a set order resolve who’s actually got each one and do its thing.
  • Coldwater Crown, where there are six fishing spots and one reload spot. There are three markers already in place, so four open spots. Each turn you put one down on an empty space, take its action, then pick up a different one and do its action. So anything you do, the next player will be able to do next turn.
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This brings up an interesting question: What is a worker?
Another example: Mint Works. The mint tokens are spent like coins/money, but they are effectively workers and BGG calls it a “light and straightforward worker placement game.”

In these two examples, the currency is workers or workers are the currency.

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For me, a worker placement game requires actions that players can claim which then block off others from using it (though there may be special powers that can bypass that limitation, i.e. - Magister’s Orb Plot Quest reward in Lords of Waterdeep or some spaces that allow multiple workers). This must be a key element of the game, as in the primary method players do anything to affect the game state.

That said, it also does require the aesthetic of actually placing something on those spaces. Claiming cards or tokens can have the same effect as placing a worker on a spot, but doing that is intrinsically opposite to the placement aspect of “worker placement”.

I think anything that falls outside of these parameters just doesn’t qualify in my particular definition.

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This sounds very like Raiders of the North Sea. You only ever have one worker. On your turn you put it on an empty space and do the action, then take one from somewhere else and do that action. Different colour workers allow you to use different spaces.
Which game came first?

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Raiders 2015, Coldwater 2017.

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My favourite worker placement games are the ones where playing a meeple DOESN’T block other players from using the space. The “Grande” worker is frequently seen as an improvement in games like Viticulture, etc.

To me, the defining action is that you have limited workers and when placed on a space they carry out that action. The only problem in Obsession is that you never have enough staff rather than you can’t use a room because someone else did.

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My definition would be: Action Selection where each player has multiple selectors available to them. That action is then usually but not always blocked for other players to choose until a reset occurs.

So Beyond the Sun is NOT worker placement because you only have a single action selector.
Architects:otWK is an edge case where the number of selectors is huge.

  • Rosenberg. Probably because I mostly played his. Nusfjord is a great example as is AffO.
  • Everdell is very classic, too, and especially with Farshore an enjoyable experience.
  • Honorable mention: Dune:Imp and Arnak combining this mechanism with deck building are very fun games.

Important seems to be a good variety of action slots but not so many that you lose track of the possibilities which is why AffO gets better with the expansion which actually reduces choices somewhat (as far as I remember, it’s been a while)

Also important is what kind of game purpose the available actions have and how they interlock. Rosenberg usually concentrates on some resource generation and a few specials that get you closer to the “actual” goal of the game. F.e. in Oranienburger Kanal there are several actions that let you actually build your city buildings and routes. Those are key. The others are support actions that help you generate the resources to take the key actions. I like the clear priorities. The game is tight enough that it is not trivial to take those actions as much as you would want to.

Darwin’s Journey has one very neat idea that I wish someone would steal and put in a good game: workers develop over time and get stronger (additional color seals enable them to take stronger or more varied actions)

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Teotihuacan has a version of this: your workers (dice) gain experience (rotate to a higher-numbered face) when you use them until they eventually “ascend”.

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Same idea. I guess Darwin’s Journey evolved their idea from there… it’s a bit more elaborate than just dice. As I said: it’s neat and a big part of the game. Just the rest is so convoluted.

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I really enjoy how Bus does worker placement, which I like how it was executed in OG Dominant Species. You place a worker but the action is not executed yet. Once all the workers are placed, the actions are executed from left to right and top to bottom.

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This is why it’s so interesting. @comaestro says Paladins, Lowlands, and Raiders of the North Sea aren’t worker placement, but Beyond the Sun is. @yashima says Beyond the Sun is not worker placement but Architects is. @SteveB_uk says Architects is the best sort.

Of course, no one’s wrong. It’s just interesting how the lines can fall differently in these continuous spectrums.

I just go back to, the actual mechanics are action drafting, action point allocation, auction, area control, etc, and placing a token is an effective and flexible game state tracker that ends up linking these otherwise disparate things :slight_smile:

My own favorite examples of worker placement:
Agricola: I have to thank @lalunaverde for articulating this a while back. The problem with Viticulture, and many other WP games, is that there is one right path, and one best way to pursue it. Within this paradigm, classic WP doesn’t play well. Denial is harsh and leaves people pursuing something suboptimal. Which is why designers cheapen it with grandes or campfires or secondary placement spots. The genius of Agricola is how it pairs pure WP denial with point salad. Not only is everything worth doing, but the game enforces it. The first of anything is 2 points (first cow moves from -1 to +1) while incremental cows, or anything, are worth just 1/2 or 1. Also, each category is capped, you don’t score for more than 4 vegetables - again forcing you to diversify. This folds into WP so nicely because when you are denied, there is by definition something else worth doing. Wood gone? Forget animals, we’re plowing. You plowed? Well, I need to play this occupation eventually, I’ll do it now.

Agricola is a GPS that is constantly droning “recalculating…” and it’s craft is that there is always another route. Once I learned that, it wasn’t stressful any more.

Waterdeep: Another pure wp entry. I think I just talked about this, but the transparent math of the game (4 coins = 2 orange = 1 white, etc) and the fixed turns put the equation of how many, and which, quests you can complete right at your fingertips. Which means the horsetrading of how much this quest’s reward can accelerate you, or how much your opponent’s placement costs you, is also at your fingertips. And that makes it exciting. Corruption and new buildings, which accelerate the math with a cost, and the Undermountain cards, which take Waterdeep’s bare-bones mechanics and keep turning them in interesting directions, just make it better.

Raiders of the North Sea: I don’t like this game. But the put one / take one mechanic, along with the three levels of workers, is really smart. I love the shifting options and also the new way it makes players interact, combining denial with opportunity. Take that good action but now you’ve made a gold worker available… I’d love to see more of this with a better game on top of it.

Gugong would not be worker placement (it’s card placement, completely different…) but it’s similar. Each card you place has the location action, the card action, what opportunity are you making or taking from the table, what card are you picking up for next round… so it’s a bit like Raiders insofar as there are a half-dozen strings attached to each placement.

Bruxelles / Federation / Formosa Tea: These games use positioning of workers, in addition to action spots, in interesting ways. Bruxelles has your actions but workers are also engaged in various levels of area control. Federation has double-sided workers in addition to the area control, so you take your action but pair it with different auxiliary actions. Formosa Tea has field workers advance workers in another area - both your and others’ - which is this great shared incentive (or obstruction). Plus, if you advance your tea master to the end of its tea track you can take an action by picking it up, thereby extending your round with an extra worker. Beautiful.

Paladins of the West Kingdom: I like this for the action-point style of worker placement. Things are expensive, and you have to track color mix. So there isn’t competition over placement spots but it gives you a great puzzle in your own area. Pair that with the ability to invest in discounts and tailor your engine through the game with kickbacks or lower action-point costs, and it’s just satisfying.

Carson City: Probably my favorite of the fighty placement games. I like that, if you lose a fight, you get your worker back. Obviously, you wanted the space it was fighting over, but it’s nice that losing a fight puts you in a stronger position for the next fight or the next round.

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It’s sad how sometimes games we don’t like include a singular implementation of one concept that is really cool.

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Worker placement for action selection is what I most think of as worker placement. Spots don’t necessarily have to be competitive, but something should be. One of my favorite games is Shakespeare. You recruit actors and crafters (cards) that have action spaces on them. So once a card is yours, that action is yours and no one else can use it. The action spaces do things like let you take costume and set pieces and those come from a limited, competitive pool of resources each round.

I know Ive played at least one game where you put workers out to claim spots but don’t do the action yet then, once all workers are placed for a round, you take them off to do the action. It is just a slight twist on worker placement for action selection because you place in the order of things you most want to do or expect competition for doing then remove in the order you actually want to do them. It is seriously annoying me that I can’t right now come up with the game that does that. Anyone able to help me out?

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Bus, Dominant Species, Carson City, Lancaster, Keydom, Argent, Sons of Anarchy, Vault of Dragons, Wise Guys, Kanban EV… all of those have placement first and action resolution at the end. But I think most (or all?) of those resolve spots in a set order rather than letting you determine your own order independent of placement.

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Yeah. I swear there’s something where you take off in an order of your choice rather than say going around the spots on the board in a specific sequence. Maybe I’m just making it up.

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Tzolkin? The order of which worker to remove and execute the action is pretty important

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I think Yedo does this.

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