I love that you challenge other designers to iterate your ideas and openly acknowledge that you get inspired too. It show how the hobby from its best side when creative people are not competitive in the protective way. A challenge for you: combine the wake up track/variable turn order with place or take! I love worker placement games and particularly the ones with dynamic turn order. But I have yet to see one that got rid of the rounds/phases. No idea how this could work out, but something with a worker spot to modify the turn order I guess. Then turns are taken in a loop of the order. The interesting part being that going first, or last, may not mean a thing when spots are not vacated at the same time. What it would do is add an element of trying to sneak your way to a specific player sequence where the player in front of you have to open up the spots you need. Making the sequence more important than who goes first or last (design idea: circular player order track on the board). It could work very well if instead of a reset you had to take one and place one (move one). This way your strategy could be challenged if another player gets in your slipstream and you have to decide if you want to allow it or give up optimal turns to foils their plan. It may be too heavy if it was added to an engine builder game, so might work better in a set collection game. It cannot be a simple point salad as there has to be situations where you really want to make a specific move, but also really do not want to leave a specific opening for your opponent.
I am actually experimenting with that kind of Turn-order thing though I have to say it's not a worker placement game but you have cards with actions to chose from those cards will move you meeple which is on a "turn-order-track" either up or down or keep it at the same place, so the meeple get shuffled throughout the round and when the round is over there is a new order for the next round. Another Idea was assigning times to certain actions but it felt kind of stale and that someone using too oft an action with a lot of time he'd get too far ahaed and the way the game works doesn't allow for another player to go several times in a row like in Patchwork, which is why I decided on this method. ^^
I think it’s fantastic that you’re actually encouraging other people to borrow your ideas and try to make new things with them. Your commitment to improving the hobby continually impresses me.
Another one that I really liked: Chartstone: being able to place your worker in a place already occupied by another player's meeple, gaining that benefit yourself while also giving the other player a benefit. So, no blocker - instead, benefiting both players. This creates a much different feel in the worker placement.
What I thought of as the really elegant mechanism for Scythe was the Upgrade action (and to a degree the worker production and the buildings). Take the upgrade action, take a cube from up top, which reveals a new bonus (you can move 3 units instead of 2, gain 3 power instead of 2) and place it below which covers a cost (Build only costs 3 wood). So simple, but the result of your upgrade is right there on your board.
Also I love how in the rule book of scythe it specifically tells you that the original factions special ability break the core rules of the game as a reminder that you cant normally do those things
Similar to BtC, Tigris and Euphrates has player competing to have the highest lowest score. It's a brilliant way to make sure players are focusing on all aspects of the game.
The bottom action in Scythe is extremely satisfying. It makes the game so immersive when you are planning 2-3 turns ahead to try and get things to line up perfectly. The enlistment mechanism is also a favourite, keeping an eye on what your neighbours are up to for a bonus.
My first intro to your games was scythe. I was relatively new t these medium/heavy weight games so actually having a player board was a new thing. I’ve educated myself a lot since and built up a nice library. However, the double action mechanism ‘and’ the multi routes to victory were the main stand out aspects that I loved with scythe. It also felt like every decision meant something...and you’re right, being able to do 2 actions just felt great!
Two other civ games with "player-affected round endings": 1) The Golden Ages, where you can say "I am done with this age" by flipping your capitol piece to its coin side. The game continues until the rest of the players are done too, but each time your turns come you get a coin (which are hard to get otherwise). 2) Historia: Each turn you play a card, and the round lasts until at least one player plays their Revolution card. That ends the round for all players, but the player(s) who played Revolution get(s) to pick up a bonus card of those played to use in the next round.
To me the most interesting thing in Scythe is the way that you chose your actions, and have to take a different one each turn. It's an interesting puzzle and forces you to plan a bit ahead. Considering the double engine building in wingspan, I believe Deus did that pretty well too.
I think Jamey and Stonemaier games is one of the best interweavers of game mechanisms in the industry. There is an obvious passion for mechanisms and how they work together in the midst of an overall game. I, myself am fascinated by game mechanics and how they are cleverly combined to make an amazing gaming experience!! Jamey....PLEASE keep up the ground breaking work, and challenging others in the industry to push the threshold.
A great game with competitive partnership sort of mechanic is Brass Birmingham. You can utilize the resources that others produce and even score points from their progress
Great video. Architects of the west kingdom and Raiders of the north sea are two worker placement games by the same designer that have eliminated rounds.
@@jameystegmaier yes, I love architects. I also love the bump mechanism on Euphoria for the decision space it gives. I've delayed actions I want to take so I don't bump my opponent's worker.
In aeons end legacy you’re placing stickers on enemies to “evolve” them and then when they have the max amount of stickers you pull an evolved version of the minion out of a deck and replace it. It’s a little similar to your charterstone mechanism. Yours takes the sticker off and keeps shuffling the cards, aeons end adds stickers and keeps shuffling them through the deck. Pretty cool!
I really agree with the Scythe upper and lower actions. It does increase the satisfaction when you get to the point where you are taking a bunch of turns doing both. And the resources on the board. I also enjoy the wake up track on Viticulture and would love to see that more. And I definitely am loving the tracks in Tapestry. Really great way to try different strategies and increasing the variety of results from each game. The play of that game has pretty much limitless possibilities with 16 civilizations, differences in the maps, and 48 different positions on the tracks. I don’t know how the math comes out I think it comes out to a bazillion different possibilities!
Scythe is my favorite game for many reasons, but something I've never seen in another game is the recruit ongoing bonus. It is rewarding and really keeps you engaged in the game while others take their turns and makes you weigh the options late game when every single thing could cause your opponent to slide ahead.
Great video Mr. Stegmaier! It was nice to hear your thoughts about Stonemaier games as they're usually excluded. SInce you've made it to 9 releases, I hope we get to see your Top 10 Stonemaier games after the release of the next one! Games that had similar mechanisms to the Stonemaier games (I haven't read the other comments so please forgive me if I repeat anything!) For Scythe, I got a few similar vibes in the game Lords of Hellas. The action selection was a bit different and didn't utilize the top and bottom of the board, but it did have a "you can't use the same action twice in a row mechanism." If I remember correctly though, you can only use each of the actions once until you do something to wipe the choices clean again. Anyways, it reminded me of Scythe more in that there are multiple win conditions, (I have friends who refuse to fight each other in Scythe, and have played Lords of Hellas with them where they never engaged in pvp combat) there are things you can build and put on the board that if another player takes over that spot, they take over the benefit. The place a worker or take a worker thing is in Architects of the West Kingdom, you have to place a worker on a spot in order to retrieve your workers back from a number of locations, but you can do this before other players round them up to put them in jail. It lacks the bump mechanism from Euphoria however. For bumping pieces to take an action, which then gives the bumped player a benefit, Dice Forge comes to mind. If a player takes your space, your pawn returns to you but you get to roll your dice. You can freely move your pawn so it doesn't save you from losing a turn, but it does get you extra resources and possibly victory points from the die roll. For the "working with someone but still being competitive" Nemesis comes to mind for me. You can work together to wipe out aliens and help keep each other alive, but you each have a specific goal you have to accomplish in order to win the game. So you're encouraged to work together, but often times won't win together and that's if you survive at all. Nocturion almost reminds me of the Wingspan mechanism, you have 4 cages that you can keep beasts in that get you points as soon as they play them and can have effects in other areas of the game, (due to what icon they have on them) but they can also be exhausted (or some discarded) to use an action they have printed on the card. But some of them are reactions to what other players do which can make things quite interesting. Anyways that's all I got! I don't know that any of these were exactly the same, but I feel like that's probably the point. I can't imagine most designers would want to copy a mechanism exactly, they'd want to put their own spin on it? At least I would think so. Anyways, great video! Like everyone who doesn't have it yet, I'm looking forward to playing Tapestry!
Purposely helping competitors to gain a benefit yourself (like in My Little Scythe) also happens in the much more complex Panamax. In that game you may decide to "push" competitors' boats through the Panama Canal because you need your boats to go through the Canal yourself.
There's a classic game that has an amazing partner changing mechanism: Bunco. Bunco's version only works with 8+ players in tables of 4, so it hasn't really been used elsewhere, even though it's fairly old. You are seated across from your partner, and when the round ends (real time mechanic), all winners stay at their table, and all losing teams rotate tables, but one of the winners changes seats, so that everyone is now playing against their previous partner and has a new partner. I'd love to see ways to make this kind of thing work with other player counts. If you know of any other games that use this or similar approaches, please respond and let me know!
I'm using a similar mechanism as the partnership mechanic in Between Two Cities in my prototype of Age of Atlantis, where you control two nations, each together with another player. Thank you very much for that idea, btw!
Euphoria is one of my personal favorites and I love the bumping mechanic. Dice Forge has something similar, even though it's not worker placement per se: to purchase a card, you have to place your pawn on a spot, then you choose which of the two-or three, for the more expensive-cards you'd like. If I've purchased one of these cards, and now you would like to, you can bump me off the spot, but I get a free reroll of my dice. This is such a fun mechanism because not only keeps players engaged with extra rolls, but no one is ever precluded from buying what they want or need. Also the costs of the cards are different for each spot; I may have purchased a upgrade for one moon shard, but you bumped me to purchase a different one.
One of my favourite mechanics was from the Avalon Hill version of Civilization. The disaster cards built into the trading mechanic made balancing the benefit of trade vs the risk of disasters a constant juggle.
Black Angel also has a self-timed 'reset' (sequence B) similar to Tapestry. There aren't a fixed number of resets for each player but the total number of resets done by all players acts as a timer for the game. Really enjoy this mechanism and looking forward to trying out Tapestry's version of it.
I've used the "morning track" idea in my new game Yukon Airways. I've iterated on it such that it's combined with dice drafting, but the basic idea of taking a weaker bonus lets you act earlier in the next turn remains. So your decision is based on the dice you want, the bonus you want, and how early in the turn you think you need to go. I still haven't played Fresco, but I was directly inspired by Tuscany, so thank you!! (boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283294/yukon-airways)
It's implemented differently, but Carcassonne has the "big meeple" which literally counts as 2 workers, letting you use that to either attempt to take over someone else's construction or protect one of your own. I loved when this mechanic was introduced; it added a whole new depth to the game. Another one that comes to mind in terms of top and bottom actions or matching actions is Underwater Cities. If the card you use to activate a space is the same color as the space, then you also get the benefit printed on the card, otherwise you just get the action on the board space.
The Grande also is in my game Rio 1808, a dice placement game. When a player have a 6, it works as a Grande and can be placed in any space, occupied or not.
Resources not being owned by players is done in a really interesting way in Roads & Boats which dates to 1999 - You own nothing that isn't printed in your colour (Transportation units, and walls). If you build a mine, and that mine produces gold, and an opponent happens to be able to get to that gold before you do, they can carry that gold away. Production also happens if it can happen, which and means that anything considered production will happen even if no player is around to oversee it, including the consumption of e.g. wood in a paper mill to create paper (And in the case of research or production of transportation units, that results in the resources being used by the game and disappearing entirely). Making for a game almost entirely about logistics. As for your other question - The seasons in Viticulture is something I'd love to see done in more games, due to how it changes how you have to plan your turns from the usual Worker Placement 'everything is open at once' - the need to work out how many workers you want in later seasons to and if you want more now than that allows it makes for a somewhat different feel to the decision than how that same situation plays out in other WP games - I think Fields of Arle uses a season mechanism as well, but I don't recall hearing of any other games aside these two that use it.
Other game that will have resources on the map and will be on Kickstarter soon is Brazil from José Mendes... I play tested it and it is great, and has some of Scythe in it.
I also love the wake up track and rounds in viticulture. I love planning ahead with limited information and hoping I can wake up early enough to take a certain action or alternatively waking up later to get a better benefit but have a weaker year to then set me up for a killer year the year after. Jamey I know from your videos that you’ve moved a bit away from rounds to just having player turns in order, and while I’m looking forward to trying it out in tapestry I really hope that you revisit rounds and more complicated player order because for me that is part of the beauty of viticulture.
I just bought a Electropolis (just released) from the Taiwanese publisher Homosapiens Lab that uses the priority/benefit track like Viticulture. It is much simpler but you can choose to draft fewer tiles but draft first or you can draft more tiles but draft last. It is a great mechanic and they did it well.
A game that has a version of the place a worker on an action spot that is already taken is Coal Baron. If someone, even yourself, took that action, you can place workers there and kick them off that spot. If you want to use an action spot that someone just used, for the first time, you replace their 1 worker with 2, then replace the 2 workers with 3, and so on. In a 2 player game, you get 18 workers. City of Iron uses something like the wake up track, I think. It's been a while since I've played it and I'm too lazy to look up the rules, right now. It might be more of an auction, instead of a reward for taking a lower initiative position.
I've mentioned this before - Simurgh is a roundless worker placement game like Euphoria in which you either place 1 worker or take back as many workers as you want. There is an area of the board (think Waterdeep buildings) where players may place tiles which have new action spaces (4 spaces) that any one can use that tend to be much more powerful. There is only space for 6 tiles (in a 4p game). However, a player can remove a tile that is on the board and replace it with one from their hand by spending a resource. Any workers on the tile being replaced are returned to their owners. So it's a bumping that is almost all positive (I get the tile I want on the board, you get your worker back for free). Of course, a negative can be if someone was planning to use the removed tile the next turn. Also, the removal of these tiles is one of the clocks for the end game trigger. I just played Dinosaur Island for the first time, and in reading up on the rules I came across the text somewhere that it has "Scythe-like double layered player boards". I understand why those aren't used more often, but still, everyone loves them, don't they? So nice to slot a cube down into a notch like that. (I Kickstarted the coming Terraforming Mars expansion, and the fact that it will include player boards with slots for cubes was a major selling point.) I have not tried Tapestry yet, but from the description it seems to share with Between Two Castles this incredibly simple turn - in Between, it's just place 2 tiles, one in each Castle. Of course you can then get a combo (the 3 tile or 5 tile bonus), and the selection of the tile has complex layers to it, but I'm fascinated by games that can do so much with essentially a single action type. Which is funny, because I'm also fascinated by games with complicated choices (like Trajan or Scythe).
I haven’t played (yet) between two cities or between to castles. But As far as “Competitive Competition” goes, the only game I’ve played with that was today and it was “Camel Up” it’s a small part and only in a 6+ player game. But when you are partnered with someone, you are cheering on the same camel. I even thought today it was an interesting moment where I high-fived my opponent when we each had a blue ticket and the blue camel came in first. Not quite the same thing but it was fun.
I've been taking that partnered competition model from "Between Two..." and adapting it to other tile-laying games. We tried it last weekend, on Micropolis, making it "Between Two Anthills" and it works great, except an already short game is even shorter.
As far as the grande worker goes, there is a mechanic in Abomination where certain actions are available only to the "scientist" but throughout the game there is potential to upgrade your "assistant" workers.
I like the rounds mechanism in Manhattan Project: Energy Empire. There are six rounds and the end of each affects all players. But in between those rounds, each player decides when it is time to regenerate and get all the workers back.
Awesome! The mechanism isn't actually that resources are *produced* on the board--rather, it's that the resources each player controls are kept on the board, making them vulnerable/available to other players if you're not careful.
@@jameystegmaier Ah right. Well then I think Glen More (2) is the best example I can think of where the production on your own area is actually meaningful mechanic wise.
Goblins, Inc. has a fun competitive partnership aspect, with new partners every round. And in Die Hanse, you control a ship with each partner, so you have half of two different ships. I think you can move either of them against your partner's will, but it's best to cooperate.
Abandon Planet has a clever cooperative competition mechanic. No one player can hold enough resources to leave the planet, so they have to collaborate with another player. But every player can potentially collaborate with only a different pair of other players. So I may be able to collaborate with Players A and D, but Player A can only collaborate with me or Player C. The last several rounds are super tense and fun, as everyone is jockeying for position with the right partner, meaning they're stabbing their other potential partner in the back, creating an enemy who might try to sabotage you.
Yet most players resent the fact that the Vagabond can get away with the items AND win some points doing so, while they're left with a card that they probably don't need :)
15:30 Not sure if this is what you're talking about, but in Isle of Trains, you constantly are giving things to other players that definitely help them, but you do it for yourself. It's a tricky balance of being greedy for the benefits, but not wanting to help your opponents.
Grande worker is in the Lords of Waterdeep (in fact I believe there are too many of them). First you have a building that basically is a wildcard location plus you have a quest and an intrigue card that give you that ability as well. I think that ability bends the rules of worker placement (duh) and is a little overpowered. Having a worker instead of commonly shared building makes the rule of “single worker single spot” even “looser”.
Lords of Waterdeep has a type of worker all players have from the beginning of the game that can be placed on an action where all action spaces are full? I don't remember that at all from my many plays of the game.
Jamey Stegmaier Fair enough, not from the beginning and not in every game. I am just saying there’s a contingent mechanism for circumventing the strictness of sole worker placement rule. You can probably cycle through quests until you securely get it.
Can you link your video of "positive player interaction" in your description? Havent found it yet...but will keep searching. Trading and Negotiating in the elysium quadrant kind of does this, but Innovation also does this, but I did not know that was an element of my little scythe, looking forward to playing it.
Found the link, had to scroll through and being dyslexic that was difficult. Dont know why the exact thing didnt come up on youtube or google search 🤔 ruclips.net/video/TLl2EXbOnjw/видео.html
I know I am as little late to this video, but I have a question. I love the idea of competitive partnerships and the winner being the person who cooperated to their own benefit the best. Does anyone know of a game that mixes that competitive partnerships with trick-taking?
Absolutely! There are a bunch of trick-taking games that use the partnership mechanism (though typically they result in the partnership winning, not an individual player). Tatsu and Yokai Septet come to mind.
@@jameystegmaier thanks for the suggestions! Colour me impressed by a reply within 10min on a 3 year old video. Love your content from the perspective of a new designer. Very insightful and informative.
Why don’t you design a game that has all or most of your favourite mechanisms in? That would be awesome although balancing might be tough. I’m sure it’ll be good as all stonemair are.
@@TorIverWilhelmsen I think a new company would need to try anything and everything to get momentum. I could see "back this project at $50, sending a verification code to each customer and on the expansion get $10 off limited level" even if 2 or 3 slipped through the cracks it wouldn't be a big deal, at least I wouldn't think so
I love that you challenge other designers to iterate your ideas and openly acknowledge that you get inspired too. It show how the hobby from its best side when creative people are not competitive in the protective way.
A challenge for you: combine the wake up track/variable turn order with place or take!
I love worker placement games and particularly the ones with dynamic turn order. But I have yet to see one that got rid of the rounds/phases. No idea how this could work out, but something with a worker spot to modify the turn order I guess. Then turns are taken in a loop of the order. The interesting part being that going first, or last, may not mean a thing when spots are not vacated at the same time. What it would do is add an element of trying to sneak your way to a specific player sequence where the player in front of you have to open up the spots you need. Making the sequence more important than who goes first or last (design idea: circular player order track on the board).
It could work very well if instead of a reset you had to take one and place one (move one). This way your strategy could be challenged if another player gets in your slipstream and you have to decide if you want to allow it or give up optimal turns to foils their plan. It may be too heavy if it was added to an engine builder game, so might work better in a set collection game. It cannot be a simple point salad as there has to be situations where you really want to make a specific move, but also really do not want to leave a specific opening for your opponent.
I am actually experimenting with that kind of Turn-order thing though I have to say it's not a worker placement game but you have cards with actions to chose from those cards will move you meeple which is on a "turn-order-track" either up or down or keep it at the same place, so the meeple get shuffled throughout the round and when the round is over there is a new order for the next round.
Another Idea was assigning times to certain actions but it felt kind of stale and that someone using too oft an action with a lot of time he'd get too far ahaed and the way the game works doesn't allow for another player to go several times in a row like in Patchwork, which is why I decided on this method. ^^
I think it’s fantastic that you’re actually encouraging other people to borrow your ideas and try to make new things with them. Your commitment to improving the hobby continually impresses me.
Another one that I really liked:
Chartstone: being able to place your worker in a place already occupied by another player's meeple, gaining that benefit yourself while also giving the other player a benefit. So, no blocker - instead, benefiting both players. This creates a much different feel in the worker placement.
I haven't played Euphoria - so I guess that's in that game as well. Cool!
What I thought of as the really elegant mechanism for Scythe was the Upgrade action (and to a degree the worker production and the buildings). Take the upgrade action, take a cube from up top, which reveals a new bonus (you can move 3 units instead of 2, gain 3 power instead of 2) and place it below which covers a cost (Build only costs 3 wood). So simple, but the result of your upgrade is right there on your board.
Also I love how in the rule book of scythe it specifically tells you that the original factions special ability break the core rules of the game as a reminder that you cant normally do those things
Similar to BtC, Tigris and Euphrates has player competing to have the highest lowest score. It's a brilliant way to make sure players are focusing on all aspects of the game.
I think Ingenious uses this system too (a very different kind of game).
07:23 Gloomhaven was my first foray into this top and bottom action idea and now I love it.
Charterstone's sticker cards are wonderful, one of my favourite parts of that fantastic game. 👍
The bottom action in Scythe is extremely satisfying. It makes the game so immersive when you are planning 2-3 turns ahead to try and get things to line up perfectly. The enlistment mechanism is also a favourite, keeping an eye on what your neighbours are up to for a bonus.
When partnerships were mentioned in competitive games I couldn't help but thinking in La Boca
My first intro to your games was scythe. I was relatively new t these medium/heavy weight games so actually having a player board was a new thing. I’ve educated myself a lot since and built up a nice library. However, the double action mechanism ‘and’ the multi routes to victory were the main stand out aspects that I loved with scythe. It also felt like every decision meant something...and you’re right, being able to do 2 actions just felt great!
Two other civ games with "player-affected round endings":
1) The Golden Ages, where you can say "I am done with this age" by flipping your capitol piece to its coin side. The game continues until the rest of the players are done too, but each time your turns come you get a coin (which are hard to get otherwise).
2) Historia: Each turn you play a card, and the round lasts until at least one player plays their Revolution card. That ends the round for all players, but the player(s) who played Revolution get(s) to pick up a bonus card of those played to use in the next round.
To me the most interesting thing in Scythe is the way that you chose your actions, and have to take a different one each turn. It's an interesting puzzle and forces you to plan a bit ahead.
Considering the double engine building in wingspan, I believe Deus did that pretty well too.
I think Jamey and Stonemaier games is one of the best interweavers of game mechanisms in the industry. There is an obvious passion for mechanisms and how they work together in the midst of an overall game. I, myself am fascinated by game mechanics and how they are cleverly combined to make an amazing gaming experience!! Jamey....PLEASE keep up the ground breaking work, and challenging others in the industry to push the threshold.
Thanks Jarad! :)
A great game with competitive partnership sort of mechanic is Brass Birmingham. You can utilize the resources that others produce and even score points from their progress
Great video.
Architects of the west kingdom and Raiders of the north sea are two worker placement games by the same designer that have eliminated rounds.
Indeed they are! I really enjoy both of them (Architects is one of my favorites).
@@jameystegmaier yes, I love architects.
I also love the bump mechanism on Euphoria for the decision space it gives. I've delayed actions I want to take so I don't bump my opponent's worker.
In aeons end legacy you’re placing stickers on enemies to “evolve” them and then when they have the max amount of stickers you pull an evolved version of the minion out of a deck and replace it. It’s a little similar to your charterstone mechanism. Yours takes the sticker off and keeps shuffling the cards, aeons end adds stickers and keeps shuffling them through the deck. Pretty cool!
These mechanics are all the reasons I love your games.
I really agree with the Scythe upper and lower actions. It does increase the satisfaction when you get to the point where you are taking a bunch of turns doing both. And the resources on the board. I also enjoy the wake up track on Viticulture and would love to see that more. And I definitely am loving the tracks in Tapestry. Really great way to try different strategies and increasing the variety of results from each game. The play of that game has pretty much limitless possibilities with 16 civilizations, differences in the maps, and 48 different positions on the tracks. I don’t know how the math comes out I think it comes out to a bazillion different possibilities!
Scythe is my favorite game for many reasons, but something I've never seen in another game is the recruit ongoing bonus. It is rewarding and really keeps you engaged in the game while others take their turns and makes you weigh the options late game when every single thing could cause your opponent to slide ahead.
Great video Mr. Stegmaier! It was nice to hear your thoughts about Stonemaier games as they're usually excluded. SInce you've made it to 9 releases, I hope we get to see your Top 10 Stonemaier games after the release of the next one!
Games that had similar mechanisms to the Stonemaier games (I haven't read the other comments so please forgive me if I repeat anything!) For Scythe, I got a few similar vibes in the game Lords of Hellas. The action selection was a bit different and didn't utilize the top and bottom of the board, but it did have a "you can't use the same action twice in a row mechanism." If I remember correctly though, you can only use each of the actions once until you do something to wipe the choices clean again. Anyways, it reminded me of Scythe more in that there are multiple win conditions, (I have friends who refuse to fight each other in Scythe, and have played Lords of Hellas with them where they never engaged in pvp combat) there are things you can build and put on the board that if another player takes over that spot, they take over the benefit.
The place a worker or take a worker thing is in Architects of the West Kingdom, you have to place a worker on a spot in order to retrieve your workers back from a number of locations, but you can do this before other players round them up to put them in jail. It lacks the bump mechanism from Euphoria however.
For bumping pieces to take an action, which then gives the bumped player a benefit, Dice Forge comes to mind. If a player takes your space, your pawn returns to you but you get to roll your dice. You can freely move your pawn so it doesn't save you from losing a turn, but it does get you extra resources and possibly victory points from the die roll.
For the "working with someone but still being competitive" Nemesis comes to mind for me. You can work together to wipe out aliens and help keep each other alive, but you each have a specific goal you have to accomplish in order to win the game. So you're encouraged to work together, but often times won't win together and that's if you survive at all.
Nocturion almost reminds me of the Wingspan mechanism, you have 4 cages that you can keep beasts in that get you points as soon as they play them and can have effects in other areas of the game, (due to what icon they have on them) but they can also be exhausted (or some discarded) to use an action they have printed on the card. But some of them are reactions to what other players do which can make things quite interesting.
Anyways that's all I got! I don't know that any of these were exactly the same, but I feel like that's probably the point. I can't imagine most designers would want to copy a mechanism exactly, they'd want to put their own spin on it? At least I would think so. Anyways, great video! Like everyone who doesn't have it yet, I'm looking forward to playing Tapestry!
Purposely helping competitors to gain a benefit yourself (like in My Little Scythe) also happens in the much more complex Panamax. In that game you may decide to "push" competitors' boats through the Panama Canal because you need your boats to go through the Canal yourself.
There's a classic game that has an amazing partner changing mechanism: Bunco. Bunco's version only works with 8+ players in tables of 4, so it hasn't really been used elsewhere, even though it's fairly old. You are seated across from your partner, and when the round ends (real time mechanic), all winners stay at their table, and all losing teams rotate tables, but one of the winners changes seats, so that everyone is now playing against their previous partner and has a new partner. I'd love to see ways to make this kind of thing work with other player counts. If you know of any other games that use this or similar approaches, please respond and let me know!
I'm using a similar mechanism as the partnership mechanic in Between Two Cities in my prototype of Age of Atlantis, where you control two nations, each together with another player. Thank you very much for that idea, btw!
Euphoria is one of my personal favorites and I love the bumping mechanic. Dice Forge has something similar, even though it's not worker placement per se: to purchase a card, you have to place your pawn on a spot, then you choose which of the two-or three, for the more expensive-cards you'd like. If I've purchased one of these cards, and now you would like to, you can bump me off the spot, but I get a free reroll of my dice. This is such a fun mechanism because not only keeps players engaged with extra rolls, but no one is ever precluded from buying what they want or need. Also the costs of the cards are different for each spot; I may have purchased a upgrade for one moon shard, but you bumped me to purchase a different one.
One of my favourite mechanics was from the Avalon Hill version of Civilization. The disaster cards built into the trading mechanic made balancing the benefit of trade vs the risk of disasters a constant juggle.
Black Angel also has a self-timed 'reset' (sequence B) similar to Tapestry. There aren't a fixed number of resets for each player but the total number of resets done by all players acts as a timer for the game. Really enjoy this mechanism and looking forward to trying out Tapestry's version of it.
I've used the "morning track" idea in my new game Yukon Airways. I've iterated on it such that it's combined with dice drafting, but the basic idea of taking a weaker bonus lets you act earlier in the next turn remains. So your decision is based on the dice you want, the bonus you want, and how early in the turn you think you need to go. I still haven't played Fresco, but I was directly inspired by Tuscany, so thank you!!
(boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283294/yukon-airways)
That sounds awesome, Al!
It's implemented differently, but Carcassonne has the "big meeple" which literally counts as 2 workers, letting you use that to either attempt to take over someone else's construction or protect one of your own. I loved when this mechanic was introduced; it added a whole new depth to the game.
Another one that comes to mind in terms of top and bottom actions or matching actions is Underwater Cities. If the card you use to activate a space is the same color as the space, then you also get the benefit printed on the card, otherwise you just get the action on the board space.
The Grande also is in my game Rio 1808, a dice placement game. When a player have a 6, it works as a Grande and can be placed in any space, occupied or not.
Resources not being owned by players is done in a really interesting way in Roads & Boats which dates to 1999 - You own nothing that isn't printed in your colour (Transportation units, and walls). If you build a mine, and that mine produces gold, and an opponent happens to be able to get to that gold before you do, they can carry that gold away. Production also happens if it can happen, which and means that anything considered production will happen even if no player is around to oversee it, including the consumption of e.g. wood in a paper mill to create paper (And in the case of research or production of transportation units, that results in the resources being used by the game and disappearing entirely). Making for a game almost entirely about logistics.
As for your other question - The seasons in Viticulture is something I'd love to see done in more games, due to how it changes how you have to plan your turns from the usual Worker Placement 'everything is open at once' - the need to work out how many workers you want in later seasons to and if you want more now than that allows it makes for a somewhat different feel to the decision than how that same situation plays out in other WP games - I think Fields of Arle uses a season mechanism as well, but I don't recall hearing of any other games aside these two that use it.
Other game that will have resources on the map and will be on Kickstarter soon is Brazil from José Mendes... I play tested it and it is great, and has some of Scythe in it.
I also love the wake up track and rounds in viticulture. I love planning ahead with limited information and hoping I can wake up early enough to take a certain action or alternatively waking up later to get a better benefit but have a weaker year to then set me up for a killer year the year after.
Jamey I know from your videos that you’ve moved a bit away from rounds to just having player turns in order, and while I’m looking forward to trying it out in tapestry I really hope that you revisit rounds and more complicated player order because for me that is part of the beauty of viticulture.
I have the Grande worker mechanism in Banker of the Gods for artifacts. I will give thanks in the rulebook :)
I just bought a Electropolis (just released) from the Taiwanese publisher Homosapiens Lab that uses the priority/benefit track like Viticulture. It is much simpler but you can choose to draft fewer tiles but draft first or you can draft more tiles but draft last. It is a great mechanic and they did it well.
That's really clever!
A game that has a version of the place a worker on an action spot that is already taken is Coal Baron. If someone, even yourself, took that action, you can place workers there and kick them off that spot. If you want to use an action spot that someone just used, for the first time, you replace their 1 worker with 2, then replace the 2 workers with 3, and so on. In a 2 player game, you get 18 workers.
City of Iron uses something like the wake up track, I think. It's been a while since I've played it and I'm too lazy to look up the rules, right now. It might be more of an auction, instead of a reward for taking a lower initiative position.
I've mentioned this before - Simurgh is a roundless worker placement game like Euphoria in which you either place 1 worker or take back as many workers as you want. There is an area of the board (think Waterdeep buildings) where players may place tiles which have new action spaces (4 spaces) that any one can use that tend to be much more powerful. There is only space for 6 tiles (in a 4p game). However, a player can remove a tile that is on the board and replace it with one from their hand by spending a resource. Any workers on the tile being replaced are returned to their owners. So it's a bumping that is almost all positive (I get the tile I want on the board, you get your worker back for free). Of course, a negative can be if someone was planning to use the removed tile the next turn. Also, the removal of these tiles is one of the clocks for the end game trigger.
I just played Dinosaur Island for the first time, and in reading up on the rules I came across the text somewhere that it has "Scythe-like double layered player boards". I understand why those aren't used more often, but still, everyone loves them, don't they? So nice to slot a cube down into a notch like that. (I Kickstarted the coming Terraforming Mars expansion, and the fact that it will include player boards with slots for cubes was a major selling point.)
I have not tried Tapestry yet, but from the description it seems to share with Between Two Castles this incredibly simple turn - in Between, it's just place 2 tiles, one in each Castle. Of course you can then get a combo (the 3 tile or 5 tile bonus), and the selection of the tile has complex layers to it, but I'm fascinated by games that can do so much with essentially a single action type. Which is funny, because I'm also fascinated by games with complicated choices (like Trajan or Scythe).
I love Simurgh. Too bad it is out of print.
I haven’t played (yet) between two cities or between to castles. But As far as “Competitive Competition” goes, the only game I’ve played with that was today and it was “Camel Up” it’s a small part and only in a 6+ player game. But when you are partnered with someone, you are cheering on the same camel. I even thought today it was an interesting moment where I high-fived my opponent when we each had a blue ticket and the blue camel came in first. Not quite the same thing but it was fun.
I've been taking that partnered competition model from "Between Two..." and adapting it to other tile-laying games. We tried it last weekend, on Micropolis, making it "Between Two Anthills" and it works great, except an already short game is even shorter.
As far as the grande worker goes, there is a mechanic in Abomination where certain actions are available only to the "scientist" but throughout the game there is potential to upgrade your "assistant" workers.
Thanks Jamey!! Great video... I am going to check out Fresco now.
I like the rounds mechanism in Manhattan Project: Energy Empire. There are six rounds and the end of each affects all players. But in between those rounds, each player decides when it is time to regenerate and get all the workers back.
As for resources being produced on the board itself, Keyflower was the first game that came to my mind.
Awesome! The mechanism isn't actually that resources are *produced* on the board--rather, it's that the resources each player controls are kept on the board, making them vulnerable/available to other players if you're not careful.
@@jameystegmaier Ah right. Well then I think Glen More (2) is the best example I can think of where the production on your own area is actually meaningful mechanic wise.
Goblins, Inc. has a fun competitive partnership aspect, with new partners every round. And in Die Hanse, you control a ship with each partner, so you have half of two different ships. I think you can move either of them against your partner's will, but it's best to cooperate.
Asking for Troobils uses worker bumping as well and is a pretty fun game that I use to introduce many mechanisms to new players.
Abandon Planet has a clever cooperative competition mechanic. No one player can hold enough resources to leave the planet, so they have to collaborate with another player. But every player can potentially collaborate with only a different pair of other players. So I may be able to collaborate with Players A and D, but Player A can only collaborate with me or Player C. The last several rounds are super tense and fun, as everyone is jockeying for position with the right partner, meaning they're stabbing their other potential partner in the back, creating an enemy who might try to sabotage you.
This is a great sit-down show
How to Serve Man from another St. Louis publisher uses the larger worker mechanic. It's great in tighter worker placement games.
Root, the vagabond gives cards for items other player's can't use. A friendship mechanic.
Yet most players resent the fact that the Vagabond can get away with the items AND win some points doing so, while they're left with a card that they probably don't need :)
15:30 Not sure if this is what you're talking about, but in Isle of Trains, you constantly are giving things to other players that definitely help them, but you do it for yourself. It's a tricky balance of being greedy for the benefits, but not wanting to help your opponents.
Hansa Teutonica has a great bump mechanism. Makes you really want to get bumped 😄
A main feature of Splotter's Roads and Boats (1999) is that unaccompanied resources on the map are ownerless.
Ah a video similar to what I asked you in the past! Yay!!
Grande worker is in the Lords of Waterdeep (in fact I believe there are too many of them). First you have a building that basically is a wildcard location plus you have a quest and an intrigue card that give you that ability as well. I think that ability bends the rules of worker placement (duh) and is a little overpowered. Having a worker instead of commonly shared building makes the rule of “single worker single spot” even “looser”.
Lords of Waterdeep has a type of worker all players have from the beginning of the game that can be placed on an action where all action spaces are full? I don't remember that at all from my many plays of the game.
Jamey Stegmaier Fair enough, not from the beginning and not in every game. I am just saying there’s a contingent mechanism for circumventing the strictness of sole worker placement rule. You can probably cycle through quests until you securely get it.
Can you link your video of "positive player interaction" in your description? Havent found it yet...but will keep searching. Trading and Negotiating in the elysium quadrant kind of does this, but Innovation also does this, but I did not know that was an element of my little scythe, looking forward to playing it.
Sure! I just searched my channel for the word "positive" and this appeared: ruclips.net/video/TLl2EXbOnjw/видео.html
Found the link, had to scroll through and being dyslexic that was difficult. Dont know why the exact thing didnt come up on youtube or google search 🤔 ruclips.net/video/TLl2EXbOnjw/видео.html
I personally really like the absence of rounds in the worker placement game Architects of the West Kingdom. 😁
Key Flower keeps resources on the board and they must be transported to the using tile.
I know I am as little late to this video, but I have a question. I love the idea of competitive partnerships and the winner being the person who cooperated to their own benefit the best. Does anyone know of a game that mixes that competitive partnerships with trick-taking?
Absolutely! There are a bunch of trick-taking games that use the partnership mechanism (though typically they result in the partnership winning, not an individual player). Tatsu and Yokai Septet come to mind.
@@jameystegmaier thanks for the suggestions! Colour me impressed by a reply within 10min on a 3 year old video. Love your content from the perspective of a new designer. Very insightful and informative.
Why don’t you design a game that has all or most of your favourite mechanisms in? That would be awesome although balancing might be tough. I’m sure it’ll be good as all stonemair are.
Maybe I am.... :)
Grande worker similar to bumping from Abomination. Another way of taking an action that someone else got.
Isn't Roads & Boats almost entirely about ownerless resources on a map?
That was the game that sprung to my mind regarding non owned resources.
In Teotihuacan you can bump an opponent from a worship space.
La boca has the partnership component.
8:19 : what is Jamey saying? “It feels good inside”, or: “It feels good in Scythe” ;-)
You own campaign trail? Wow!
I have to ask. Is that a map of Wales on the wall?
It is! I went there 10 years ago.
@@jameystegmaier no way! If you weren't my hero already, you are now. Me and my wife grew up in Wales!
@@brettparker9847 Awesome! I loved visiting there.
Jamey KS question...have you heard of any KS offering a discount on future expansions?
Chip theory games offered levels that net you their future game/a without even knowing what they'll be.
I don't think Kickstarter allows you to offer future discounts, but as Chris mentioned, some companies have offered future products for free.
There are KS projects that offer discounts in new campaigns to backers of previous campaigns, sort of the same - but reversed, so okay for KS.
@@TorIverWilhelmsen I think a new company would need to try anything and everything to get momentum. I could see "back this project at $50, sending a verification code to each customer and on the expansion get $10 off limited level" even if 2 or 3 slipped through the cracks it wouldn't be a big deal, at least I wouldn't think so
Please reprint Tuscany EE.
We reprint it year-round--it's in stock on our webstore now (and on sale!): stonemaier-games.myshopify.com/products/tuscany-1
@@jameystegmaier thanks. I just checked last week and it said out of stock.