Board Game Mechanics
Within the resources that were provided a link was given that lists the different mechanisms that are included in board games. This will be important to think about as it will be what the game hinges on, and how it will work.
- Acting
- Action / Movement Programming
In programming, every player must secretly choose the next 'n' turns, and then each player plays their turns out according to the choices made. A game has the programming mechanic if it provides choice of actions, preferably several, with a mechanism of executing those actions such that things could go spectacularly or amusingly wrong, because the status of the game changed in ways one did not anticipate, or hoped would not happen, before the action is executed.
- Action Point Allowance System
In Action Point (AP) Allowance System games, each player is allotted a certain amount of points per round. These points can be spent on available actions, until the player does not have enough remaining to "purchase" any more actions. This method grants the player greater freedom over how to execute his or her options.
- Area Control / Area Influence
The Area Control mechanic typically awards control of an area to the player that has the majority of units or influence in that area. As such, it can be viewed as a sub-category of Auction/Bidding in that players can up their "bids" for specific areas through the placement of units or meeples.
- Area Enclosure
In Area Enclosure games, players place or move pieces in order to surround as much area as possible with their pieces.
- Area Movement
Area movement means that the game board is divided into areas *of varying size* which can be moved out of or into in any direction as long as the areas are adjacent or connected.
- Area-Impulse
Players subdivide turns into impulses alternating between players which repeat until both players pass (or in some cases a sunset die roll ends the impulses catching one or both players off guard). In those impulses a group of units is once activated or gets to act collectively before being marked spent. However instead of the activated units being grouped by a certain radius from a leader the units activated are in an area (and thus the need for the impulse system to have areas, not hexes). The areas exist to define scope of activation on an impulse (as well as restrict what can be done on that impulse with respect to attack and movement range). Thus each of a players groups of units each acts once by means of small alternating impulses instead of the traditional all my units then all your units. Finally before the next turn of impulses spent units are reset regaining the ability to act.
- Auction/Bidding
- Betting/Wagering
- Campaign / Battle Card Driven
The Campaign/Battle Card Driven mechanic is a relatively recent development in wargames that focuses the players' actions on cards they have in their hand. The very basic idea is that performing a single action uses a single card.
- Card Drafting
Card drafting games are games where players pick cards from a limited subset, such as a common pool, to gain some advantage (immediate or longterm) or to assemble hands of cards that are used to meet objectives within the game.
- Chit-Pull System
Used in war games to address the problem of simulating simultaneous action on the battlefield and issues of command and control. In such a system the current player randomly draws a chit or counter identifying a group of units which may now be moved. Schemes include moving any units commanded by a particular leader, moving units of a particular quality or activating units not for movement but for fighting.
- Co-operative Play
- Commodity Speculation
Commodity Speculation is a subcateogry of Betting/Wagering, in which in-game money is bet on different commodities in hope that that particular commodity will become the most valuable as the game progresses. Often the values of the commodities are continually changing throughout the game, and the players buy and sell the commodities to make money off of their investment.
- Crayon Rail System
The Crayon Rail System is a subcategory of Route/Network Building. Types of these games use crayon or other non-permanent methods of making connecting lines on a board, often eraseable.
- Deck / Pool Building
- Dice Rolling
- Grid Movement
The Grid Movement occurs when pawns move on the grid in many directions.
- Hand Management
Hand management games are games with cards in them that reward players for playing the cards in certain sequences or groups. The optimal sequence/grouping may vary, depending on board position, cards held and cards played by opponents. Managing your hand means gaining the most value out of available cards under given circumstances. Cards often have multiple uses in the game, further obfuscating an "optimal" sequence.
- Hex-and-Counter
Classic war-game mechanic, played with 'Counters' on a map with an Hexagonal grid allowing to move the counters in more directions (6) as opposed to a square grid with only four directions.
- Line Drawing
- Memory
- Modular Board
Play occurs upon a modular board that is composed of multiple pieces, often tiles or cards. In many games, board placement is randomised, leading to different possibilities for strategy and exploration. Some games in this category have multiple boards which are not used simultaneously, preserving table space. Unused boards remain out of play until they are required.
- Paper-and-Pencil
- Partnerships
- Pattern Building
Pattern Building is a system where players place game components in specific patterns in order to gain specific or variable game results. For example: placing chips on 2, 4, 6, 8 on a board gets the player an action card they can use later in the game.
- Pattern Recognition
Markers, usually with a colour or pattern, are placed or added on different random or pre-determined locations relative to a board or the markers themselves. As the markers move during play the player has to recognise a known pattern created by the markers to gain a good, points or win the game.
- Pick-up and Deliver
This mechanic usually requires players to pick up an item or good at one location on the playing board and bring it to another location on the playing board. Initial placement of the item can be either predetermined or random. The delivery of the good usually gives the player money to do more actions with. In most cases, there is a game rule or another mechanic that determines where the item needs to go.
- Player Elimination
- Point to Point Movement
On a board of a game with point-to-point movement, there are certain spots that can be occupied by markers or figurines, e. g. cities on a map. These points are connected by lines, and movement can only happen along these lines. It is not enough that two points are next to or close to each other; if there is no connecting line between them, a player cannot move his or her piece from one to the other.
- Press Your Luck
Games where you repeat an action (or part of an action) until you decide to stop due to increased (or not) risk of losing points or your turn. Press Your Luck games include both Risk Management and Risk Valuation games, in which risk is driven by the game mechanisms and valuing how much other players value what you also want, respectively.
This mechanic is also called push your luck.
- Rock-Paper-Scissors
- Role Playing
- Roll / Spin and Move
- Route/Network Building
Route/Network Building games feature network(s) (interconnected lines with nodes) using owned, partially owned or neutral pieces, with an emphasis on building the longest chain and/or connecting to new areas.
- Secret Unit Deployment
Secret unit deployment games are games that contain hidden information. Only the player controlling certain playing pieces has perfect information about the nature (or even the whereabouts) of those pieces. This mechanic is often used in war-games to simulate "fog of war".
- Set Collection
- Simulation
- Simultaneous Action Selection
The simultaneous action selection mechanic lets players secretly choose their actions. After they are revealed, the actions resolve following the ruleset of the game.
- Singing
- Stock Holding
- Storytelling
- Take That
Manoeuvres that directly attack an opposing player's strength, level, life points or do something else to impede their progress, while usually providing the main engine for player interaction in the game. Usually used in card games.
- Tile Placement
Tile Placement games feature placing a piece to score VPs, with the amount often based on adjacent pieces or pieces in the same group/cluster, and keying off non-spatial properties like colour, "feature completion", cluster size etc.
- Time Track
A time track mechanism is a variable player-turn order mechanism by which the player who is last on the time track goes next. The function of this mechanism can allow a player to have multiple sequential turns due to being last after each one. The basic premise is that you can choose to do a longer, slower task in the game, but in the meantime, a player taking shorter, quicker actions might change the "landscape" of the playfield. It is arguably a derivative of "action point" systems, except in the case of time tracks, the player doesn't have a fixed number of points she can or must use on her turn.
- Trading
- Trick-taking
Each player plays in turn order one card (or, in some games, a series, such as a pair or straight) from their hand face up onto the table; the group of cards played is named a "trick". According with the rules of the game, one player wins the trick and captures all of the cards in the trick. The object of most trick taking games is to capture tricks or point scoring cards in tricks or occasionally avoid winning tricks.
- Variable Phase Order
Variable Phase Order implies that turns may not be played the same way as before and / or after.
- Variable Player Powers
Variable Player Powers is a mechanic that grants different abilities and/or paths to victory to the players.
- Voting
- Worker Placement
More precisely referred to as "action drafting", this mechanism requires players to select individual actions from a set of actions available to all players. Players generally select actions one-at-a-time and in turn order. There is usually(*) a limit on the number of times a single action may be taken. Once that limit for an action is reached, it typically either becomes more expensive to take again or can no longer be taken for the remainder of the round. As such, not all actions can be taken by all players in a given round, and action "blocking" occurs. If the game is structured in rounds, then all actions are usually refreshed at the start or end of each round so that they become available again.
Actions are commonly selected by the placement of game pieces or tokens on the selected actions. Each player usually has a limited number of pieces with which to participate in the process. Some games achieve the same effect in reverse: the turn begins with action spaces filled by markers, which are claimed by players for some cost.
From a thematic standpoint, the game pieces which players use to draft actions often represent workers of a given trade (this category of mechanism, however, is not necessarily limited to or by this thematic representation). In other words, players often thematically "place workers" to show which actions have been drafted by individual players. For example, in Agricola each player starts with two pieces representing family members that can be placed on action spaces to collect resources or take other actions like building fences. When someone places a piece on a given space, that action is no longer available until the next round.
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