August is upon us and so the month of occupations, as we had dubbed it, is begun.
This is quite a clever pairing I think, two games about architects of a sort. I've been wanting to start getting the West Kingdom series to the table and this offered the perfect opportunity. Floor Plan isn't new to us but was an excellent game to pair with Architects thematically.
We've played Shipwrights and Raiders of the North Sea and enjoyed both, but Architects is our first foray into the West Kingdom series. It did feel familiar though, as the iconography and components are all the same. This is a worker placement game. You have 20 workers you can place out, one per turn, to perform many typical actions like gathering resources and building buildings. Several of the worker placement spots are interesting though. There isn't nearly as much blocking in Architects. Instead, worker placement spots become stronger as you place more workers there. However, there is also a take that mechanism that allows other players to capture your workers and jail them for money, providing the double bonus of negating the work you've done to improve the worker placement spot for yourself and enriching themselves. Additionally, there is a virtue track to manage. High virtue grants point during end-game scoring but can lock you out of visiting useful areas like the Black Market. Low virtue costs points during end-game scoring but reduces the tax cost of all worker placement spots. Then there are apprentices and buildings that can provide benefits in-game and/or during end-game scoring. You can also earn points by participating in building the cathedral, which will limit your opportunities to build your own buildings but provides rewards and points. There are a lot of choices to consider and many ways to earn points. This is definitely a game that will reward repeated plays, as you learn all the buildings and apprentices available to you and how to combo them together.
Floor Plan is a straightforward roll-and-write. You're trying to design a house that meets as many of the goals on your three cards as you can. You roll two dice and either draw a room represented by the number on one of the dice or draw the two features represented by the numbers. You play until you're out of turns or can't legally place something. There's nothing special or unique about it, but we do enjoy and-writes from time to time and the creative team worked hard to provide a diverse group of individuals on the goal cards which, even now in the board game space isn't very common so we were happy to support that.
