I’d be remiss if I didn’t root for the home team by mentioning that Sumer is on Kickstarter. Sumer, which started life as a thesis project at the NYU Game Center, takes on the question of what happens when you take a worker-placement game and play it in real time on a computer. It turns out that if you put in the enormous amount of work the Sumer team has, the answer is “you get a really excellent game.”

The Kickstarter page talks about Sumer in some detail, so I’ll just say that it’s inspired by the classic M.U.L.E., has undergone intense playtesting (it’s already seen tournament play!), and is a ton of fun. Give the Kickstarter a look; this game’s worth your time.