Worker placement

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Worker placement on German workers' position , is a game mechanic in board games , in which players have a limited number of actions per train and perform this on a limited number of characters. Worker placement did not become known as a mechanic until the 2000s. The Caylus game made it more popular internationally. Since then it has been one of the most popular game mechanics in board games and numerous well-known games are based on worker placement as a basic mechanic or in combination with other mechanics. Internationally, worker placement has also established itself as a typical feature of the Eurogames, which focus on a more indirect and abstract interaction between the players.

description

The basic idea of ​​a worker placement game is that the other players can perform a limited number of actions per turn one after the other and have a corresponding number of pieces or pieces for this . These can be used on defined fields of the playing field that can be used by all players, whereby the number of these fields and the number of figures on these fields is also limited and usually only one playing figure can occupy one of these fields per round. In this way, individual fields can be blocked by players and the players have to react to the moves of the other players. In some games, such as Robbers of the North Sea , further actions are triggered by removing pawns from a point.

Accordingly, worker placement is only used in turn-based games in which the other players play one after the other. The order of play is of particular importance due to the blocking option, since a player who starts earlier can occupy an action that is also of interest to later players. It can vary in the rounds, for example by passing on a starting player marker. In many games, it or the role of the starting player can also be defined by using a worker.

Most games with worker placement mechanics start with the same basic conditions for all players, who then use different strategies. Occasionally there are also games with differences between the individual players that already exist at the beginning of the game, which are defined by cards or faction characteristics distributed at the beginning and which require different strategies of the players in the game. By using the game pieces, additional resources can be gained in many games, which in turn enable more complex moves. As a rule, victory points are generated directly or indirectly by the individual actions of the playing pieces in the game, the number of which leads to victory at the end of the game.

history

origin

As a precursor of worker placement mechanism that is choice of roles ( role selection ) indicated, where players take the game different roles and can choose this. Historically, simple role selection mechanisms can be traced back to the historical game Hnefatafl , but the first representative of modern role selection games is the card game Traitors by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle from 1998. In this game, players can choose a character from a limited selection of cards at the beginning of each round and thus select individual properties for the game for this round, which are no longer available to other players. Based on traitors , other games were developed, including Citadels as one of the best-known representatives (first published in German as Ohne Furcht und Adel ), in which the role selection mechanism was adopted almost identically. There were further developments in the choice of roles in Puerto Rico (2002) and its card game offshoot San Juan (2004), both by Andreas Seyfarth , in which the role chosen by the active player is accepted by all players.

The first game to use a clear worker placement mechanism is generally considered to be the game Keydom by Richard Breese , which appeared in 1998 and was reissued in 2000 in the form of Morgenland . However, the mechanism only became more popular with the game Caylus by William Attia , which was published by Ystari Games in 2005 . The game was awarded the special prize “Complex Game” by the Game of the Year jury in 2006 and received the German Game Award, along with other prizes . Earlier, there were games sporadically who used a similar mechanism, including about bus by Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga in publishing Splotter Spellen . But also games like Tikal (1999) or Carcassonne (2000) already show characteristics of the later worker placement games due to their character management, without being counted in them.

Further development

Agricola
Stone Age Junior , children's version of the Stone Age game

Starting with Caylus , numerous new games came onto the market that use the worker placement mechanism and in some cases combined it with other game mechanics.The best-known and most successful games of this type in Germany included Agricola by Uwe Rosenberg from 2007 and Stone Age by Bernd Brunnhofer (under the pseudonym "Michael Tummelhofer") in 2009. Uwe Rosenberg in particular also developed numerous other games based on worker placement, usually combining this mechanism with resource management for various raw materials and other game mechanics.

The international game database BoardGameGeek currently (August 2018) lists more than 1800 games with a worker placement mechanism.

variants

Worker placement was combined with a few other mechanics so that different variants could develop. For example, the game Tzolk'in - The Maya Calendar (2012) uses worker placement in combination with a timer in the form of cogwheels, which in turn have a direct influence on the possible actions of those used through the time they spend on the wheels Have pawns.

Based on the worker placement mechanics, there were also direct derivations such as dice placement as a combination of the game of dice with worker placement, in which dice are used instead of pawns. Since these are usually thrown beforehand, the dice values ​​play a special role in these cases. Games with this mechanism include Kingsburg (2007), Troyes (2010), In the footsteps of Marco Polo (2015) and The War of the Buttons (2018).

In the context of legacy games , in which a board game develops over several game rounds and changes continuously, Charterstone (2017) and Rise of Queensdale (2018) also saw the development of the first worker placement games in which the legacy aspect is integrated .

Well-known worker placement games

Internationally, by 2018, more than 1800 games with a worker placement mechanic had appeared and there are numerous authors who focus on these games. The most popular worker placement games include:

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f “Role Selection / Worker Placement.” In: Stewart Woods: Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland, 2012; Pp. 95-96. ISBN 978-0-7864-6797-6 , ( Google Books )
  2. ^ Matt Pavlovich: Mechanic Archetypes - Worker Placement. Games Precipice, December 7, 2015; accessed on August 29, 2018
  3. ↑ a b Derek Turner: Worker Placement Games: An Introduction , Of Dice and Men April 7, 2017; accessed on August 30, 2018
  4. ^ Worker Placement , description in the BoardGameGeek game database ; accessed on August 28, 2018
  5. ↑ Sam Desatoff: Labor and Love: A Look at Worker Placement Games. unwinnable.com, February 2, 2017; accessed on August 28, 2018

literature

  • "Role Selection / Worker Placement." In: Stewart Woods: Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games. McFarland, 2012; Pp. 95-96. ISBN 978-0-7864-6797-6 , ( Google Books )

Web links