The Daily Worker Placement

Saturday, September 30, 2023

About

The Daily Worker Placement is based out of one of the meccas of North American gaming: Toronto, Canada. Our vision for the DWP is a site that:
  • has fun playing all kinds of games;
  • only covers new and upcoming games in the context of broader themes around boardgame design and culture;
  • does deep dives into games, designers, genres, and themes, revealing unexpected and meaningful connections ;
  • takes you behind the curtain to reveal the workings of the tabletop industry from the inside;
  • amplifies and advocates for underrepresented perspectives and voices;
  • provides an inclusive, respectful, and safe environment for discussion.
We do not do:
  • paid reviews or previews;
  • previews of crowdfunded games;
  • copypastas of press releases;
  • “sponsored posts”.
If you are a publisher looking for a review of your game and would like to get in touch regarding that, please do so with the understanding that we want our reviews to provide a full, unvarnished look at all aspects of games.

Author

Contributors

Adam M.

Ever since Adam bought his first settlement, he has had an insatiable hunger for victory points. All points, in fact: prestige, fame, success, agenda — it doesn't matter. This ravenous appetite led Adam to rapidly devour the greatest games of the preceding decades as though he were preparing for hibernation. Adam's collection now clocks in at about 350 titles, a number he believes is too high to properly appreciate the complexity that many of those games offer. He enjoys all sorts of games, but leans more easily towards euro and card-based designs. Adam prefers games that feature some random elements with mechanics that allow that randomness to be mitigated. His favourites include Through the Ages, Attika, Hansa Teutonica, Tichu, Netrunner and Time's Up.

Alice C

Alice Connor has been playing board games since she could walk, and wondering about why they're so compelling since the day after that. She wrote a book called _How to Human: An Incomplete Manual for Living in a Messed-Up World_. Alice is also a certified enneagram teacher and a stellar pie-maker. She lives for challenging conversations and has a high tolerance for awkwardness. She lives in Cincinnati with her husband, two kids, a dog, and no cats.

Bailey D

Bailey is a long-time board gamer, short-time writer. She’s been playing board games all her life, “hobby” board games for a decade, and “crusty grognard cardboard war simulators” for the last two or three years. When she’s not obsessing over the next indie 18xx release, she can often be found refreshing online games stores and publishers’ sites for new releases. Her top games include Age of Steam, Power Grid, the COIN Series, and Camel Up.

Billy C.

Billy was taught to love the hobby through lunchtime games in high school and has steadily been playing and learning games since. Through the past several years, he has been working teaching and selling games, frequenting conventions, and is based out of Toronto. He is one half of a new board game podcast Into the Meepleverse, where he chats with co-host Maggie about plenty of different aspects of this wonderful hobby we are all immersed in.

Chris P.

Chistopher flies around the world in a large metal bird, and constantly ensures the satisfaction of it's contents. When he is not tending to the bird's stomach pains, he is controlling the future of fictional beings from a digital screen and a buttonious steering wheel, a set of dice or his own mind. He once served a certain reptile that enjoyed caffeine and milk, and with him, exercised the way of cards and dice.

Daniel M.

Daniel is a sailor, barista and board game aficionado. He grew up on the East coast of Canada and has traveled the country and the world, skiing, boating and sharing his love of games.

David W.

David is the Managing Editor of the DWP. He learned chess at the age of five and has been playing tabletop games ever since. His collection currently consists of about 600 games, which take up way too much space. His game "Odd Lots" won the inaugural TABS Game Design Contest in 2008. He is currently Managing Editor of The Daily Worker Placement. All in all he's pretty smug about his knowledge of games and game design.

David X.

David is a Toronto-based writer and board gamer. He is the creator, presenter and editor of the board gaming podcast Once Upon A Die - "a podcast about solitaire board games, thematic or otherwise." His first novel, The Puppet Master, was published by Trafford Publishing and is available online through all major book retailers. Under his real name, he has also written multiple works for theatre, including the superhero cabaret Mr Millennium: Issue #1, the monologue So What If I Dance? and the musical Out Of The Lens. Follow him on Twitter @uponadiepodcast, check out his website, www.dragonliterature.com, and find the Once Upon A Die guild at www.boardgamegeek.com (guild #2525).

DWP Staff

The DWP staff plays all the games, loves all the games, and welcomes all the gamers--except those who fall under Popper's Intolerance Paradox.

Jason H.

Jason lives in "Greater Saskatchewan", by which he means he is technically not in Canada, but he is close enough to get CBC Radio and 30-below cold snaps. If his writing seems familiar, that might be because you've read a rulebook published by Czech Games Edition. Jason has worked on every CGE board game, and he even helped design the English-language word lists for Codenames and Codenames: Duet. When he's not writing rulebooks, Jason writes novels like Galaxy Trucker: Rocky Road and the Edgewhen fantasy adventure series. You can find out more at JasonAHolt.com.

Jon-Paul D.

Originally from London, Ontario and now based in Nova Scotia, Jon-Paul spent the bulk of his adult life training and working as a professional opera singer both in Canada, and around the world. However, while singing in the back roads of Indiana, JP was lured into a game of Catan, and everything changed! Now a full-blown board game addict, JP spends many an evening converting friends into gaming foes, all while leaving bread crumbs for his two young daughters to find along the way to the house of board gaming bonbons!

Kimberly T.

Kimberly has loved playing games her entire life. As a child, her Christmas list included necessary upgrades for her Game Boy like the combo magnifying glass frame with built-in lights. Her passion for gaming expanded to board games in the early 2000’s and she’s never looked back. She lives and teaches in rural Idaho and regularly finds opportunities to share games with her students and friends. Kimberly loves playing legacy games and would never turn down a game of The Castles of Burgundy, Kanagawa, Ethnos, or Roll for the Galaxy. As well, she's not too bad at demoing games at conventions and has even designed several dog-themed games. When she’s not gaming, you can find her reading books, watching movies, making new vegan meals, or acting in local theatre. Kimberly's YouTube page is Tabletop Tolson and her website is www.tabletoptolson.com.

Kohava M.

When she was a child, Kohava never wanted to play a card game she already knew. Instead, she always made her parents teach her new ones. Today, she still loves the joy of discovering new games, but now she’s also happy to replay old ones. In fact, she’s pretty sure she’s played Settlers of Catan over 100 times. When she’s not diving into a board game, you can find her stuck inside a fantasy novel, doing a math problem, or listening to a podcast on a walk.

Kushal R

Kushal always loved board games growing up as proved by the hundreds of hours spent bickering with family & friends over all-night games of Monopoly and many other similarly mediocre mass-market games. Not knowing that a world of better games existed, this interest went dormant and made way his truest passion & vocation— animation, art and film. Fast forward a good 15 some years to 2014 when Kushal met …you guessed it— Catan and everything changed. The deep love for boardgames came back with a vengeance. Now, as a professional storyteller, filmmaker, IP creator (at Moovix.ca), the connection felt much stronger, more mature and beyond just the thrill of gameplay. Seeing boardgames as yet another medium to tell stories was a mind-blowing revelation. With gorgeous art, thematic components to hold and interact with in your hands and immersive game mechanisms which complement the emotions the stories make you feel…it is the ultimate way for a storyteller to draw an audience into their world! Kushal hopes to explore this possibility first-hand with some ideas already brewing. Kushal loves discovering new games with different themes and will usually play all kinds of games from light party & abstracts to 2-3 hour heavier strategy games— of course, as long as they are aesthetically appealing & inviting (because, priorities).

Daniel L.

Daniel has always been fascinated by boardgames and despite being an only child who rarely played. He had a small collection and played a lot of solo player Hero Quest. Over his early development he cultivated an interest in a number of titles. He hung around in comic shops spending far too much money on magic cards and Warhammer miniatures despite never really getting to play. In his teen years, friend circles got larger and a little game called Settlers of Catan made it's way to North America. He was exposed to it while waiting for people to show up for a game of Vampire the Masquerade. It's play time was perfect, the strategy ideal, the inner calling was heard. Shortly there after he began working at a now defunct board game store called Game Trek. Years later he moved to Toronto and took a place at Snakes and Lattes helping establish their retail business where he is currently a Game Guru and a designer of far too many unplaytested prototype games. When not tabletop gaming; Daniel enjoys cooking, reading comics, playing video games and exploring the city's wide array of pubs and izakayas.

Lindsay M.

Lindsay is a self-confessed board game addict from the UK. Since discovering the exciting world of modern board gaming she has been sharing her love for the hobby through her blog, YouTube channel and Instagram page. Her favourite thing aside from playing games is sitting down with a cup of tea to pop some cardboard and delve into a rulebook. Lindsay is a fan of many genres, but thinks that big heavy euros and sci-fi themes are where the fun is really at. Follow Lindsay at https://shinyhappymeeplesblog.wordpress.com/

Mark J.

Mark provides his editing services to the DWP. He is a writer, teacher, and weekend gamer with his two board-game- obsessed children. He may have the record for most consecutive games of Puerto Rico over the course of one weekend.

Matt M.

Matt has been writing about board games since 2009, having contributed to MTV, Wired, the Escapist, and many other notable sites. Nowadays, Matt enjoys playing games with his daughter, gaming on the competitive X-Wing circuit, and taking in the occasional video game. Twice per year, Matt helps run the Tabletop department at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) East and South. You can follow his musings on Twitter @MattMorganMDP.

Matt R

Growing up in Toronto, Matt was fed a steady diet of gin, rummy, cribbage, along with Monopoly and Balderdash. Over the past 10 years he has worked in journalism, editing, writing and designing pages for a variety of print publications. He spends most of his spare time playing any board game he can get his hands on, whether it's a quick 10-minute filler game or a five-hour epic.

Michael L.

Michael is a strategy game fanatic and collector who spends most of his limited free time playing Magic The Gathering and listening to records of the afro-loner-psyche variety. He is a world traveler and unrequited scholar whose passion for gaming permeates all aspects of his life. Naturally introspective, he is drawn to analytical games that reward creative thinking, resource management, and foresight. When he knows there is little chance to win a war, Michael will intentionally shift gears for the sole purpose of producing as much chaos as is humanly possible.

Mikhail H.

Mikhail H. has loved games of all kinds since stripling times, cutting his milk-teeth playing Super Famicom with the older kids in his Cebu City barangay. He claims to have never fallen victim to the unplugged controller ruse. An elementary-school love affair with the Pokémon Trading Card Game turned into a pack-a-week Magic habit; it was by trading a Grave Titan for a copy of Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominion that he became immersed in the nascent board game boom of the 2010s. He has spent almost a decade making his bones by working as a Game Guru at Toronto’s Snakes & Lattes, with supplementary stints as a host, background actor, and staff writer for The Mysterious Package Company. One of his favourite things is seeing a smile of comprehension flit onto the face of someone that he is explaining rules to, but he also loves cats, ramen, biking around, and delving into esoterica.

Milo M.

Growing up playing the classics like Sorry!, Risk, and Balderdash, Milo always had a love for board games, but it was in high school that this casual pastime morphed into an obsession! After getting into some more modern games, Milo quickly fell in love with the hobby and hasn’t looked back since. They love getting involved in the community through volunteering their time to teach games at the local Boys and Girls Club and sometimes at events with Games on Board. Milo enjoys RPGs, painting miniatures and cooperative games mostly, but will play anything with the right people! They also have a couple of board game prototypes in the works…

Naser C

Banker by day and gamer by night, Naser has been in love with board gaming since his first foray into the hobby. Always up for learning new games as well as replaying his favourite classics, Naser enjoys games ranging from heavy (think Thanksgiving dinner heavy) Euros like On Mars to highly thematic ones like Fury of Dracula, and well, let’s face it, everything else in between. When not playing board games, he enjoys playing video games both on PC and consoles, watching movies, writing, and sharing witty banters with his newborn son.

Nate D.

As a child, Nate played a lot of Upwords and Trivial Pursuit with his family, so it took him a while to realize he actually quite liked boardgames. Five he'll never turn down: Tash-Kalar, Kanban, Navegador, Innovation, Race for the Galaxy. His other major preoccupation is a chihuahua named Bingo; they co-starred in a recent CBC mini-documentary, Big Men, Small Dogs. Nate runs a monthly gaming event in collaboration with BoardAgain Games.

Nicole H.

Nicole had played a lot of backgammon, Life and Monopoly when younger. She started playing hobby games in University after trying out D&D 3rd edition, and then joining her University game club. After a while she gravitated towards board games as a casual gamer. After moving to Toronto in 2009 she started gaming more and met her (former) partner Adam through the hobby and hasn't turned back. It's hard for her to pick a favourite game, but if you really stared her down she might pick Castles of Burgundy. When not gaming, Nicole enjoys cooking/baking, reading comics, watching tv/movies and visiting museums! And cuddling every dog she can.

Patrick K.

Patrick is one of the host and producers of Blue Peg, Pink Peg, a podcast about board games, relationships, and the interaction between the two. Patrick does boring and complicated "grown up" stuff for a living, but for a life he: travels, befriends interesting people, takes on random challenges, tries to cook exotic food, ignores reason, and works really hard on making two adult people that love the world and their place in it.

Renee P.

Renee has loved board and card games ever since she was a kid playing Skip-Bo and Monopoly on snow days. Her tastes have evolved since then, and her favourite games now include almost any tile-laying game, Battlestar Galactica, Hanabi, Quacks of Quedlinburg, and War of the Ring. She is married to Kylie, who owns Games Unlimited in Pittsburgh, and they are raising two game-loving meeples. For her day job, Renee teaches college writing.

Sean J.

Sean is the Founder and Photographer for the DWP. He has been gaming all his life. From Monopoly and Clue at the cottage to Euchre tournaments with the family, tabletop games have taken up a lot of his free time. In his gaming career he has worked for Snakes & Lattes Board Game Cafe, Asmodee, and CMON. He is a contributor to The Dice Tower Podcast and has written for Games Trade Magazine and Meeple Monthly. He lives and works in Toronto.

Stephen S.

Father of two meeples, husband to an incredibly successful local business owner, and believer in magic. Not that split-this-deck-of-cards magic, but the other kind, the one where you get a letter in the mail when you turn 11. Stephen works during the day with his wife at The Paper Place in Toronto, and designs games at night on his couch. If you haven’t crossed paths with him at Fan Expo or GenCon, then you can find him at Snakes & Lattes every third Monday of the month at the Snakes Game Designer Nights he started up almost 5 years ago. He’s also the Toronto Chapter Steward of the Game Artisans of Canada, and yes, that is a rather roguish title.

Steve T.

Steve Tassie has been many things over the years: actor, comedian, high school teacher, Origins-nominated game designer, soda jerk, and port-a-potty attendant. Currently, Steve is a voice actor, an attempted novelist, occasional podcaster, and the Curator and Head Game Guru at Snakes & Lattes Board Game Cafes. Steve has been a player of all kinds of board, card, & roleplaying games since he was a small boy. Now that he's a large boy, his taste in games run toward light-medium weight Euros, thematic Ameritrash games that focus on story over strategy, and dexterity games. He would probably crush you at Ghost Blitz. If you're on the Twitters, he is @RealSteveTassie and you can totally follow him.

Taylor G

Taylor learned to love board games when she was a wee youngster. Logic puzzles and strategy games make her feel all the good feels, so she just keeps playing! You won’t find Taylor out and about without at least one game in tow (ask her about her love for big games that come in pocket sizes!). She spends a fair amount of time on 8 wheels rolling in her skates at the park, while also finding spare moments for reading, sewing, knitting, cooking, and staring at her plants. Taylor lives in Cincinnati with her loving partner.

Thomas B.

Thomas likes to tell people he learned Chess from his dad at the age of 3, although to be honest it was probably more “randomly moving pieces around” than “learning.” Still, ever since, he's loved all types of games: video, board, card, lawn, forest, mind, reindeer – you name it. He likes to think that such a broad interest, along with a late entry into hobbyist board gaming, has helped keep his mind open to the variety of experiences games can offer. Thomas now spends most of his time playing, reading about, dreaming about or building decks for Android: Netrunner. When he's not doing that, he studies public history at Carleton University, doing his master's research on representations of history in (you guessed it) board games.

Tim F.

Tim was introduced to hobby gaming around his twelfth birthday, and spend his formative gaming years playing a lot of old collectable card games, and HarnMaster and Traveller roleplaying. While his main focus in the hobby now is board gaming, he finds it very hard to resist the allure of old, dead collectable card games, or clunky & finicky old roleplaying games. When he’s not playing games, Tim is probably collecting fountain pens, teaching political science, or hanging out with his cats. After musing about his five favourite games for some time, he came up with this list: Shadowfist, Viticulture, Alien Frontiers, Above & Below, and Arkham Horror.

Victoria D

Victoria Detcher is a chemical engineer by day, cellist by night, and book nerd always. She resides in the heart of Houston, TX, where her current ambition is to get her friends to reach a level of board game proficiency so they can finally all play Agricola together.