Josh P.
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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I see these questions all the time on this site: What is the best worker-placement game? If I like Stone Age, will I like this? If I like The Pillars of the Earth, will I like that? How does this compare to Agricola?
Well, I can't answer all these questions, but I wanted to do a little compare/contrast along the worker-placement genre and show how some of my favorites stack up to Kingsburg.
I like worker-placement games a lot. I have not played them all, but I certainly intend to. I enjoy the idea of selecting roles, gathering resources, and racing to get the most victory points. They are fun games, but they do have their weaknesses.
Here's some of the common weaknesses:
 Not enough luck: Some worker placement games have a limited selection of cards for each phase and the phases become easy to memorize. Every game of Pillars feels a bit like Chess, because I am planning out moves several turns ahead. I already know what is coming and there is little surprise. Other worker placement games have strategies that become revealed after only a couple plays and the game just becomes a race to see who can get their system working faster. These games generally have little luck to them and they often reward experienced players far too much.
 Fiddly bits: Many worker placement games have lots of cards, cubes, pawns, dice, etc. However, they are nowhere near the level of most wargames and are lots less fiddly than big box Ameritrash games like StarCraft: The Board Game or Descent: Journeys in the Dark. The most fiddly that I have played is Agricola, but Pillars of the Earth is a close second.
 Multiplayer solitaire: Many worker placement games have little interaction between players. You can screw someone out of a coveted spot on the board, but you can't destroy their buildings or make them discard cards. While there are exceptions, these are generally true Euro games, and have very little conflict.
 Runaway leader: Some worker placement games allow someone to collect so many resources or build so much infrastructure early on that catching up is impossible. The winner can be determined mid-game and there just seems like no reason to finish the game. I have often felt this way playing Agricola or Caylus and this causes the last few rounds to really drag.
So how does Kingsburg compare?
 Luck and Replayability: Kingsburg allows you to roll three dice every productive season to determine which of eighteen people you might call on aid from. There are different buildings you can make that will affect your roll, but there is still a large element of luck to it. Stone Age is another worker placement with dice, but I always felt like the addition of more workers and the tools you could obtain reduced the luck too much. In Kingsburg, there are some ways around the luck, but the dice still get their say. However, it is not random chaos. It just feels "right." And it is a welcome change from other worker placement games.
Some of the game is lost with rehearsal. It does not pack the sheer variety of Agricola or even that of Stone Age when you add Stone Age: The New Huts. However, the luck of the dice makes it so that you can replay it a lot without getting bored.
 Setup: Not too bad. Only three resources to keep track of, some clean player sheets for showing what you have built, and a very well-organized board with a scoring track. The year marker seems irrelevant since the game already has a deck showing you what year it is. However, you never feel overwhelmed by all the stuff on the board. The game sets up quicker than most worker placement games and that is why it gets played more often in my house. (It plays quicker than most other games in this genre too.) It has replaced Stone Age as my favorite under-an-hour, worker-placement game for two.
 Interactivity: The interactivity in this game is not as high as I would like, but there are some nice options to screw people over for the spots they need if you are paying attention. Paying attention to what other players roll on their dice allows you to snag the primo spots before your opponents get their turn. So while the dice make this game feel like Ameritrash, it is still a Euro at heart.
 Runaway leader: Not an issue in this game. The game rewards the person who has made the least number of buildings twice a year with some powerful bonuses that allow that person to catch up quick. Furthermore, the low-roller in the game gets to pick their spot on the board first, which works out nicely. Scores among experienced players are often neck-and-neck until the very end. I saw tight scores in Cuba as well, but this was even closer.
Should I get it?
Rather than assign an arbitrary score to this game, let me explain when you might want to play this game.
First of all, Kingsburg plays 2-5 players, so if you have 6 consider Pillars and The Pillars of the Earth Expansion Set. It is a great game, but it does suffer from most of the weaknesses I've pointed out.
If you don't mind a fiddly setup or a long game then I just want to say that Agricola is the current #1 on Boardgamegeek for a reason. It is the best in the pack, but it does take awhile to play and it has a lot of components to deal with.
If you want a quick game and like a bit of luck then Kingsburg and Stone Age should be the ones you are looking at. They are both good games, but I prefer to play Kingsburg over Stone Age.
I have played Caylus and Cuba and I didn't absolutely hate either, but they were just not my thing. I found Caylus too long of a game and I found Cuba to be frustrating in the fact that I always felt poor and unable to do any effective actions. However, if you want to add some bidding to your worker placement game then you might want to give Cuba a try.
I also own Glenn Drover's Empires: The Age of Discovery and Leonardo da Vinci, but have not played them yet.
My current personal favorites (in order):
 Agricola
 Kingsburg
 The Pillars of the Earth
 Stone Age
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Richard Young
Canada
Victoria
BC
Old Ways Are Best!
Check Six!
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My first impression is: apples to oranges? Puerto Rico introduced us to "role selection" or "action selection" which is what I think is happening here. In Puerto Rico, and many of the others, you may not actually "place a worker," rather you snatch a role tile or choose an action, but it all accomplishes essentially the same thing.
As such, you have to open your comparison to a rather wider range of games than you've chosen: Caylus, Puerto Rico, Age of Steam, Galactic Emperor, Twilight Imperium...the list could go on - in fact this might have been a better entry as a Geek List?
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Josh P.
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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I would only consider a game to be a worker-placement game if selecting an action stops someone else from selecting the same action. Puerto Rico is an awkward fit. True, only one person can select an action, but selecting an action allows everyone to take that action, so no one is really screwed out of being able to do that action. Now only the person who selected it gets the privilege and money on the card, but this just does not hold the same feel as getting screwed out of a spot on a board in a worker-placement game. Cuba is also borderline. You can pick the same actions as other players, but you can't all take the same bonuses on the board with your chosen roles. And the person who chooses first gets the better action. These aren't really in the same league as other worker-placement games, but I do see the similarity.
What I tried to do in this review is to compare Kingsburg to other similar games that people might be considering buying instead. I seriously doubt anyone is considering Twilight Imperium (third edition) over Kingsburg, but they may very well be debating between Kingsburg and The Pillars of the Earth. These are much more similar, IMHO.
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Rob White
United States
Richmond
Virginia
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I really enjoy Kingsburg. And it's one of the few games that my 11 year-old daughter will play with the family. For some reason she loves it when she hates shorter games like Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne. She also doesn't like other worker placement games (like Stone Age). Interesting.
For me it's a real close battle for #2, but it's:
Agricola
Stone Age
Kingsburg
For Kingsburg, play the solo computer JAVA app before buying. It totally hooked me. And for Stone Age try the BSW online game (has great visuals and sounds) before buying.
One last thing..... I think that all three games scale down to 2-players well, but I think Kingsburg might do it the best (easy to adjust, feels like "regular" game, and takes a much shorter time to play with two). My wife and I have played many, many games of all three games and we've loved every minute of them.
Don't think you can go wrong with any of the three. {I've never played The Pillars of the Earth, although I loved the book.}
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Joshua Horst
United States
Cedar Rapids
Iowa
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Caylus does not fit into your worker placement game hierarchy?
I did like the review. A thumbs up for this thread!
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Steve Duff
Canada
Ottawa
Ontario
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JoshtheGamer wrote: Caylus does not fit into your worker placement game hierarchy?
That's because it's so far above the rest it's on it's own. 
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Josh P.
United States
Tucson
Arizona
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Both times I have tried to introduce other players to Caylus it has flopped horribly. My fiancée, who loves Stone Age and Kingsburg, said Caylus was way too long and dry. My friend Matt said Caylus was trying to hide a lack of depth with unwanted complexity. While I enjoy all worker placement games, I have kind of given up on this one. It just won't get played in my house and that's okay. There are better games available to keep us occupied.
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George Leach
United Kingdom
Salford
Greater Manchester
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I must admit Caylus finds it difficult to make it to the table when Agricola is still the new kid on the block but if I were to order them it would be to ignore the weight. Caylus and Agricola are similar in play length and weight whereas Stone Age, Pillars of the Earth and Kingsburg are all lighter. Cuba neatly fits between which is one of the reasons I like it. So for me Caylus > Agricola and Stone Age > Kingsburg >>> Pillars of the Earth.
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Bryan Maxwell
United States
Burtchville
Michigan
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Nice to see Kingsburg getting some love. My wife and I love it.
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Just to add my two cents worth to an excellent review. In regards to the comparison of luck in Stone Age and Kingsburg, the difference for me is in whether you deploy your mans before or after rolling the dice.
In Stone Age if you roll low it feels like the dice are just screwing you over, especially since the worth of the huts you can build is directly related to the worth of the resources you put into them, so if you roll low, you get fewer points in the end.
Kingsburg on the other hand has the rolling first, making the result more of a chance to outmaneuver the opposition. The low rolls are also less of an inconvenience as you get to go first.
Still, I'd much rather play Stone Age if I want the whole worker placement empire building experience, Kingsburg is just one step too light to be the full thing. Kingsburg will probably hit the table more often here though, as it is faster to explain and set up and has more back and forth between players.
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V L
United States
Virginia
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Bubslug wrote: My first impression is: apples to oranges? Puerto Rico introduced us to "role selection" or "action selection" which is what I think is happening here. In Puerto Rico, and many of the others, you may not actually "place a worker," rather you snatch a role tile or choose an action, but it all accomplishes essentially the same thing.
As such, you have to open your comparison to a rather wider range of games than you've chosen: Caylus, Puerto Rico, Age of Steam, Galactic Emperor, Twilight Imperium...the list could go on - in fact this might have been a better entry as a Geek List?
Puerto Rico is close worker placement but it's different in that the role you select in PR usually lets everyone perform that role when you use that role. For that reason I consider it a different category. And believe me, there are plenty there too. Glory to Rome for instance.
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Posted Mon Jun 1, 2009 4:16 am
