I'm doing things a little bit out of order this week in doing the featured games for next week before the recap for the following week. The recap will come! I promise! But I wanted to get this out first as we're really trying to pump up next Friday's FND (August 29).
It is the Friday before Labor Day and so we're hoping that means most of us are back from vacations and trips over the summer and are ready to relax and enjoy some time with friends and family. If you do not have plans for that Friday I highly encourage you to come on out, bring some friends and/or family, and play some games with us.
As always we'll have most of our personal library at FND but in particular we'll be featuring a handful of games. So.... Let's get to them!
Featured Party Game: Ultimate Werewolf
So we technically featured this at the previous FND and it really doesn't fit the theme of the rest of the games, but because of some Goblins attacking a caravan we weren't able to play a game of Werewolf with everybody at FND. While Werewolf is fun with 8 or 9 people, it is significantly more fun with 16-20 people. I'm expecting us to have at least that many next Friday and as such we will be scheduling again a session of Werewolf starting at 10:00 PM. We'll be encouraging people to plan what games they play so we can finish up around that time and get a big game or two in. I don't want to have to feature it again ;-)Featured Strategy Games: Worker Placement
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super excited to do worker placement games on Labor Day weekend. I've kind of been planning it for months in my head because it seemed like such a perfect theme. So what is worker placement? It is a very popular mechanic in which players each have 'workers' (usually some kind of pawn) that they place on a board with limited number of action spaces. Most of the time, once another player uses his worker at a location nobody else can. It encourages players to be strategic, but also requires you to be tactical. Maybe what you were going to do just got taken unexpectedly - now what? Or perhaps something else just became very opportunistic - do you hold to your guns and follow through with your plans or change things up spur of the moment?
Many of Boardgamegeek's top 100 games are worker placement games so there will definitely be some that we own and are great that we don't list. I'm going to list a handful ranging from light to heavy, and then include a list of other available worker placement games at the end.
Light - Lords of Waterdeep (BGG Rank #27)Lords of Waterdeep is Dungeons and Dragons themed but don't let that scare you if that's not your thing - its pretty generic. It could by Skyrim themed or Game of Thrones themed and it would be almost the same exact game. In this game each players takes control of a different powerful faction in the fantasy town of Waterdeep. You are strategically using your agents to hire adventurers (mages, clerics, etc.), build buildings, and achieve quests in order to game the most fame and power in town (measured, of course, in victory points).
It is a very simple and very fun worker placement game that is also quite accessible. If you're into gaming and haven't played this yet - give it a go, it's very satisfying. If you've never played any kind of game like this, Waterdeep is one of the best places to start.
Light - Stone Age (BGG Rank #43)
Stone Age has been around for quite some time (ironically). It is usually thought of as the premier gateway game into worker placement. I think Lords of Waterdeep may have that title now as it is just a touch simpler, but Stone Age is still pretty straightforward, involves worker placement, and is very fun. Each player has a tribe of cavemen and you use them to do various things - gather resources, make more gavemen, develop tools, build huts, and collect special cards. The cards and huts each give you points throughout the game and there are multiple ways to win and strategize. You could have a huge, farming village or a smaller, more technologically savvy village.
This is another one that all gamers should play at least once
and if you're new to the hobby then it is a good stepping stone into more complex games.
Light - Fresco (BGG Rank #156)
Fresco is a very interesting little game where each player is a painter trying to finish the ceiling of a chapel. You use your workers in interesting ways to collect paint, finish parts of the ceiling, do portraits to collect more money, and more. It's a really fun game and is actually probably the easiest of all the ones so far on this list.
Medium - Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island (BGG Rank #13)This is one of the best games to come out in the past year (my personal favorite at least). It is exactly what it sounds like - a game based on the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. More specifically everybody plays cooperatively as various members of a team that's been shipwrecked. Using worker placement you determine what your character does each day to try and keep the group alive or solve whatever scenario you are doing. This can be building tools, gathering food, exploring the island, etc. This game is definitely challenging for new players and veterans. Like I said, I love this game and it is definitely worth checking out if you haven't.
Medium - T'zolkin: The Mayan Calendar (BGG Rank #15)
This game was one of the most popular games of 2012 and for good reason. It is very enjoyable and has some very unique mechanics. On the board is a series of gears that turn as everybody's turn progresses. On your turn you either place one or more of your workers on a gear or pick one or more up. You pay a cost when you place them. When you pick them up you get whatever action they happen to be next to after several gears turn. This leads to a lot of interesting decisions.
Medium-Heavy - Dungeon Petz (BGG Rank #95)This is one of the newest games in our collection and it is one we've really come to enjoy. I'm classifying it as Medium-Heavy simply because there's a lot going. No individual aspect of it is complicated, there's just a lot of little things to keep track of that make it more of a gamer's game. In it each players is an owner of a pet store! Instead of cute puppies, however, you raise monsters. Some
of them you raise for shows and exhibitions, others to sell various nefarious people who need them for different things. Sometimes its an old witch who just wants a companion. Sometimes its an evil mastermind that wants a vicious killer. You need to raise your pets to best accommodate these people.
The theme is pretty amusing and the game is really fun while also being quite challenging in its strategy.
Medium-Heavy - Agricola/Caverna/Le Havre/Ora et Labora (BGG Rank #3/#7/#12/#36 respectively)We couldn't have Worker Placement day and not feature at least one game by Uwe Rosenburg. He is the mastermind behind Agricola, which has resided in the top 3 of Boardgamegeek since I've been involved in the hobby. He has three games in BGG's top 15, four in the top 40. While they're all at least a bit similar in feel, most of them (with Agricola/Caverna being the exception as Caverna is really a sequel to Agricola) are quite different games. Agricola features you playing farmers in the 14th century. Caverna is simple, but now your Dwarf cave farmers/adventurers. In Le Havre you are part of a shipping company trading and converting goods. In Ora et Labora you are monks developing your land and producing goods.
They're all thoroughly enjoyable and some of my favorites. We will have all four available for play.
Other Games:
Bora Bora, Alien Frontiers, Kingsburg, Archipelago, Dominant Species (possibly)
As you can see we will have a ton of games that fit our theme this week! If there's any in particular you really want to play let me know in the comments and we'll be sure to save time to get that game in. And as I said earlier we'll have plenty more games that aren't worker placement games that you are of course welcome to play!
Hoping to see many many many of you out!!
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