Idle Meeples Are The Devil'S Tool

There are a ridiculous number of worker placement games out there, so it's unusual when one comes along that has something innovative about it.

Most worker placement games follow the same basic pattern: players are given a number of workers (usually four or five) and take turns placing them on spots on the board that give the player game advantages or resources. Once every player has placed all their workers, the board is cleared, the workers are reclaimed, and a new round of placement begins.

Architects of the West Kingdom, designed by Shem Phillips (of Raiders of the North Sea fame) does things a little differently. While unmistakably a worker placement game, with a lot of the same game elements (placing workers to achieve game effects), Architects does away with the round structure, instead making reclaiming workers one of the available actions in the game.

It may seem like a small thing, but its a huge shift in the way worker placement games are played. In addition to the normal concerns of gathering resources and spending them to put building cards into play, players must now look at their available pool of workers, and when it's the best time to either reclaim their workers from the board, or from the prison space where they can sometimes end up.

The prison space helps the players cultivate a sense of urgency. Various game effects will send your workers to prison, and at certain points during the game, whoever has the most imprisoned workers has to take a debt card, which causes point loss if it isn't paid off by the end of the game.

This brings us to the other interesting thing about Architects: the idea of virtue. The game board includes a virtue track that players will move up and down on, depending on their actions during the game. Being low on the virtue track has certain advantages (such as not having to pay taxes, which makes a lot of the in-game purchases cheaper), but also causes a loss of points at the end of the game. So manipulating your position on the track to your best advantages adds another strategic layer of the game.

It's a terrific game with a lot going on in spite of the relatively simple rules, with several different paths to victory and quite a bit more interaction between players than you normally see in games of this type.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Shem Phillips knocks it out of the park again. Anyone who likes worker placement games should love this one.

• Architects of the West Kingdom official website
• Architects of the West Kingdom on BoardGameGeek