Worker placement, resource management, but what for? Well, we are all part of a big factory, the Factory 42, and that’s where all those Government needs are worked out. Metal has to be forged, food to be served and other materials to be put together. To make all these dreams possible, we must send workers to up to 15 different places on the main board and on our player boards. Steam must be generated, inventions be made, research be done and resources be traded, there is really a lot going on in the game. Because each player has only 6 or 7 workers (depended on the number of players), you cannot visit all places in each round. And of course, that’s also not necessary. But often you need to cooperate to have a chance to fulfill the wishes. That means negotiating!

Each round, there is a new requisition from the government. That means: every round you must make new plans, it is nearly impossible to plan ahead for the next round. But, of course, you can improve your abilities when researching, and you can also store some rare resources in your own warehouses.

Each round of the game follows the same structure: First you draw new cards for the round. Next to the Government order, these are new available inventions, the market rates for the round and a special event that affects the current round. With all conditions for the round revealed, we can then send our workers to open spaces in the different locations of the board. Next to “normal” worker spaces, there is often a commissioner space at a location. When this place is occupied, it wields influence on other actions at that same location. Workers are placed clockwise, one by one, until all players have distributed their available workers.

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What follows next is the main part of the game, the resolving of the locations. Beginning with location 1 and ending with location 15 in the full game, the workers carry out their actions, of course only if there is a worker at a location. I will not go in every detail of all these locations. Instead, I would like to concentrate on the main mechanism to manufacture the goods the Government wants from us. Basically, this is a transport mechanism. It begins at location 3 where workers place and load railcars with available resources on loading spaces on the main board. These railcars can be spiked with more resources with help of workers in the next location, but still these railcars and resources are common goods. This changes at the next location again when workers send these railcars to open docks on any player’s board.

Some locations later, you can use your workers at the manufacturium locations on your player board to produce the final goods, the Government orders, using resources from the railcars and from your warehouses (these are mainly filled up by trading). But, producing the goods consumes steam, and that again comes from the general supply. Hopefully, any player has sent a worker to control this steam….

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Factory 42 turned out to be a great, but mean worker placement game. You will only have a chance to fulfill the Government orders, if you rely on other players. That demands a lot of negotiating. But you will see that there will be a lot of backstabbing, because once the railcars were shipped to other docks than you have thought, there might be no need any more to abide by an agreement. Once familiar with the game, the game flows smoothly. But it will take some time to get there. Although you don’t have to start with all components of the expanded game, the standard game with 12 instead of 15 locations is for beginners still complex enough. And the game can turn out to be a brainkiller, if you want to play it that way. So, there is a demanding learning curve, mainly because there are so many options to send your workers with a lot of text explanation at each location. This is not everyone’s case, but it is worth the effort. The game has a lot of interesting game mechanics and decisions. I also like the story of the game that perfectly fits the game flow. So, everything’s perfect?

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Well, there were also some points of criticism for the first edition of the game. So, I had to struggle with some of the symbols in the rules, on the cards and on the boards. Then, the player boards and the railcars could have been of better quality, and last but not least, the colour of some resources were hard to distinguish on the cards, especially in the evening hours. But while my first edition has all these issues, the "For the Greater Good Edition" does not suffer these problems anymore. I can assure that a lot of the cons have been fixed.

In the end, Factory 42 is a well-done and interesting worker placement game.

With the success of the last campaign of Factory 42, an expansion was bound to occur. And here we are: new employees are waiting to enter the communistic dwarfen world of Factory 42. And these new inhabitants not only optimise and vary the original game, the expansion also expands the game for a sixth player.

But let's concentrate in this short update on the new employees:

First, there is a Specialist that is just a little bit more equal than the other people around him. As she or he (you never know for sure in this dwarfen population) is special, there can only be one for every player. And because it (let's leave it at that) is special, it does not need to follow the normal placement order when brought onto the board, but it can be placed on any numeric slot. So you can choose the best benifit for your current situation.

It doesn't seem to be a big change in the game play, but it clearly makes the game more tactical when you ask me.

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A bigger change for the gameplay are the other new employees, called Golems. These are massive metal golems that - once placed - stay wherever they have been placed unless the active player chooses to change that. But of course that's only for free for the player who owns the Golem, all others have to pay for moving it. That's quite nice, isn't it? At least, if you have found a good place for it.

A small expansion it is, but I think it's a worthy one. It clearly makes the game more tactical and that's why I recommend it for the experienced players once they are familiar with the base game. Both new employees can be used modulary and must not be used collectively to add to the base game. So, you can always choose your favourite set-up. I personally liked to play with both of them on the board.

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That's why I can recommend this expansion for everyone who wants to make the base game modular. However, up to now, I can say nothing about the usability for the sixth player, because I didn't have the chance to playtest that. But I think it is an interesting additional incentive to get the expansion. If you're interested, you should make a note of the Kickstarter campaign that launches on 25th July 23.