As race expansion spoilers pop up, young lifeforms' thoughts turn towards malevolence, sweet malevolence. I'm tempted to buy the 2nd printing just to have a lighter set. And a spare. Oh yes, a spare.
Anyway, since Luke H just left a comment in an alternate thread, only to have it's comment period expire, I figured I'd answer it here.
Luke wrote:
Have you considered games with mechanics that are functionally equivalent to worker-placement, but don't have actual worker tokens? The two that always come to mind are In the Shadow of the Emperor and Im Auftrag des Königs. The former has a money system on top of the actions, but just think of that as different number of workers and different costs of actions in number of workers. Actions taken are not available for others, with 1 exception. Seems equivalent to me. The latter uses a very straightforward drafting of 3 actions. The only difference would be physically taking the card vs. putting a marker on the card. Are there any other games like this, with drafting actions?
I only played ITSoE once (3 years ago). I haven't played Auftrag. I guess that doesn't count as "answering", so I'll throw open the question to the floor. Along with any malevolent thoughts you may wish to share.
1) I'll want to keep the simpler base game set available for teaching. Especially for my six year old to learn over the next year or two.
2) I'd like to own the lighter artwork.
3) I'm probably going to skip the card sleeves this time, because shuffling is already at my limit of tolerance with just the first set, and I'll want all the cards to be at the same level of wear.
So yes, it sounds as if both are Worker Placement games. Both also came out a year before Caylus did. Nice catch by Luke.
I think you are remembering slightly wrong. In Emperor, there are actions that you buy/draft, in turn order. One of them is moving/placing knights, but the knights serve other purposes. They are not the "workers" at all. Check the cards here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/260256 You draft/buy these. That's the "worker placement" part, imho. Drafting action cards is the same as "wp" in my mind. Can anyone think of other games that do this? There has to be more, right?