The worker placement game mechanic, or action drafting, requires players to draft individual actions from a set of actions available to all players. Every round, each player takes a turn drafting an action until all players have had a chance to draft individual actions. Usually, there’s a limit on the number of times an action can be chosen in a round and therefore not all actions can be taken by each player.

Players show that they’re drafting an action by placing game pieces or tokens on the chosen action for the round. These tokens represent workers. Agricola players start the game with two family members (workers) who can perform more actions as the game progresses.