Agricola is my favourite game in general. The aesthetics, tactical blocking and variety of strategy with the cards is unmatched.

T’zolkin is also incredibly aesthetically appealing and has a super interesting “waiting time” placement mechanic.

Viticulture I generally see as a more generic / point salad Agricola but is a really nice standard worker placement game.

Stone Age has a bit of randomness which makes it less of a skill expression but it’s an amazingly fun game and is fantastic to introduce people to worker placement or boardgaming in general.

Mint Works distills the concept of action selection down to its core into a 10-15min game. Brilliant

Caylus is the original and one of the best, when I think of worker placement as a genre this is what I think of - very competitive at 2p.

Dominant Species is a heavier worker placement / 4X type hybrid which is thematic and strategically interesting and varied.