ABSTRACT
Worker Placement, a type of action drafting, is an enormously popular mechanism, or category of related mechanisms. This system of resource allocation is closely connected to its underlying metaphor of placing a pawn, representing a worker, onto a space, representing a production building, to generate a resource. Mechanically, Worker Placement is isomorphic to action drafting. Players select actions in turn order by placing one of their pawns, or workers, into the action space, or building. The term “Worker Placement” has lost some of its cohesion, it is often used as a synonym for a Euro-style game, irrespective of the presence of workers or action drafting. When workers return home is the element of the worker placement mechanism that designers have experimented with. In The Manhattan Project players resolve their actions on worker placement, but must spend a turn retrieving workers.
