Top 10 Worst Board Game Mechanisms (And My Favorite Games that Use Them)

Hello everybody. Welcome to Totally Tabled. My name is Shaggy and today I'm doing something a little bit different. I'm running down the top 10 worst board game mechanisms and my favorite games that utilize them. So, this is a bit of silly fun. And to add to the fun, I'm going to create a game within the video so you can play along at home.

First, I'm going to show my favorite board game. And I want you to try to guess what mechanism I have in mind. It shouldn't be too hard, but you can let me know how you did in the comments below. Okay, let's jump in with my number 10, which has been playing this whole time. It's Star Wars Outer Rim.

Can you guess the mechanism? Okay, got it. Yeah, we're starting out easy. It's obviously pick up and deliver. This is low down on my list because it's not like I hate this genre of game. It's just not the type that I typically enjoy. I find it a little bit boring and and just not very compelling. That might be because usually these types of games involve trains in some way and I just I'm not that big into trains.

What Outer Rim does so well is it puts a lot of story and excitement into the process of picking up and delivering. All that theme is extremely helpful in getting me excited about doing that kind of gameplay. And obviously there's a lot more going on in Outer Rim. It's not like that's the only thing you're doing, but I love that these are like jobs and and missions where, you know, you're maybe escorting somebody to to a different planet or you're carrying contraband and you're sneaking it into somewhere.

I really need that theme to spruce up this mechanism. Now, I will say one exception to that is the underlooked and underappreciated game Switch and Signal. This is essentially everything that I hate about pickup and deliver except that it is cooperative and it sort of turns everything into this really interesting puzzle that just works for me.

Check out my playthrough of that one if you haven't. And of course, I've also done a playthrough for Star Wars Outer Rim. But there you go. That's my number 10. Pick up and deliver. Number nine is paperback. Pretty easy to guess this mechanism. Pause if you need more time. It's of course spelling. Now, this is a pretty personal one because, as some of you might know, I'm sure I've mentioned this in the past, uh, I used to work as a writer.

I' I've been a journalist. I wrote screenplays. I've done some various freelance writing sort of things. And because of that, people assume that I'm able to spell. And that's really making an ass out of you and me because I am terrible at spelling. I can't do it. I've never been able to do it. I just can't figure it out.

Luckily, we have a thing called spellch check now, but for some reason in most of these games, they don't let you use that. But the bottom line is I just don't find spelling to be a fun activity. Paperback, however, makes it fun by adding in that deck building aspect. I'm selecting the letters that I want.

Some of them have special abilities on them, so I don't necessarily need to have the longest word. And there's cards in there that add flexibility. So I can sort of put in some, you know, wild cards that can be any letter. And it's fun to build your deck with letters that combo with other letters that form words that are sort of easier to make.

Just the whole thing comes together and turns that spelling chore into a fun deck building experience. So, for me, paperback works, but pretty much any other spelling game, not so much. So, that's my number nine, spelling. Number eight is Cosmic Encounter. Now, this one's hard. It could be so many different things.

Cosmic Encounter has a ton of different mechanisms, but the one that I think is the worst is interrupts. Now, interrupts are this mechanism where you're going through your turn. You're you're taking your actions. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing, and then one of the other players comes in and says, "Huh, stop." And plays some card that stops you from being able to do what you're trying to do.

Right? In some way, they are interrupting the flow of your turn because a card tells them they can do it. There aren't a lot of games that utilize this, but every game that does, I just don't like it. Cosmic Encounter gets away with it because it's Cosmic Encounter. It just fits so well with what the game is all about.

The nonsense. I don't know. It just takes a game like Cosmic Encounter to be able to sell me on this kind of gameplay, but no other game really does. every other game with an interrupt. I would prefer that that interrupt wasn't a part of the game. It just really feels like one of the worst kinds of negative interaction.

That is so annoying. It's annoying when they do it on their turn. It is super annoying when it's done on your turn. I want my turn to be just for me. You can all sit back and watch as I execute, you know, my moves completely free of any sort of intervention. Does anyone find this fun? I I can't imagine.

Okay, I'm going to start to uh ramble a lot on these uh on these. I can tell. So, I'm going to stop myself there. That's number eight. Terrible mechanism interrupts. Number seven is Galaxy Trucker. This is one of my favorite games of all time. I adore this game and the mechanism I have in mind is pretty obvious and it has a little connection with interrupts.

I'm just talking about realtime actions. I have never been a fan of real time in a strategy game. You know, some kind of silly party game, fine. Dexterity games, right? All that's fine. But if you want me to think about my turns, think about what I'm doing, I want to have as much time as I need. I don't want someone to have an advantage because they can think quicker than me.

And that might be because I am sort of a slow thinker, right? I'm a I'm a slow speaker. I'm a slow thinker. And just the pressure of the real time just like shuts my brain off and I just can't think anymore, right? It's too much pressure. Why are we adding this real time into a board game? It doesn't make any sense.

Now, Galaxy Trucker gets away with it. One, because it's pretty silly and light-hearted and clearly not a game that you're supposed to take super seriously. It's not some like super heavy strategic hero. Also, it's not real time all the time. And third, what you're doing in real time with the placing of the tiles and building out your ship is really fun.

you're kind of supposed to make mistakes. It's supposed to be funny. You're supposed to build sort of a bad ship. Other real-time games haven't quite captured that magic that Galaxy Trucker does. They end up feeling either like really messy, like the games where you're rolling dice really quickly. It just feels too messy.

It feels like you're not rolling properly. You know, you're just sort of dropping the things on the table. Lots of mistakes are happening all the time. It just feels too frantic, too easy to break rules or I'm made to like think too much in too short of a time and then that just gets stressful. So yeah, if there was never another real time game, I would be perfectly happy.

I got Galaxy Trucker. I'm good. And if I get tired of that, I can throw in Space Alert, which is also very good. But there you go. That's my number seven real time games. Number six is timeline challenge or just timeline. The mechanism here is trivia. This kind of goes back to a spelling where you know you can either spell or you can't.

With trivia, you either know things or you don't. And I don't I I really don't. So, in something like the god-awful trivial pursuit, it's just an exercise in frustration and embarrassment at just not knowing things that maybe I should or I couldn't possibly be expected to know. You just have to throw up your arms and be like, I just don't know that.

Sorry. It's like a test more than a game. And tests are not fun. I think we can all agree. Ironically, the way a trivia game works is if you don't have to know the answer. In fact, the better that you can do by not knowing the answer, the better the trivia game. And that's a little bit of what timeline and timeline challenge brings.

So, in timeline, you have all these cards and they're either like historical events or they're inventions and you need to try to figure out either when they were invented or when this event happened. But you don't need to know exactly when it happened. You just need to know approximately when it happened based on the other cards that are in the timeline because you're just going to place that card either before or after the other cards that are there.

So like, you know, I don't need to know exactly when the toothbrush was invented. I just need to know if it was before or after, you know, the pyramids were built or the invention of perfume or, you know, things like that. And I might be able to do that or just get lucky. That's not going to happen if you ask me the exact date when it happened.

But in a game like Timeline, I might be able to guess and get away with it. That's way more interesting than a traditional trivia game. But honestly, even with these, I would just rather play a different type of game altogether. Not a big fan of trivia. That's why it's my number six. Number five is Nautilion.

This is a little bit more of an obscure game, so you may not know what mechanism I'm talking about here, but it's roll and move. The concept of roll and move is that some game where you know movement is critically important and yet it's all determined just based on the random roll of a dieice. Obviously roll and move is a almost universally hated mechanism that very prevalent in older games like Monopoly and Clue and games like that.

Just wildly random for no good reason. Frustrating. the very opposite of good modern game design. Now, there's lots of ways that designers have tried to take that mechanism and reduce the luck a little bit by letting you roll or spend to augment the dice and things like that. Nautilon works because instead of rolling just one dice, you're rolling three dice and then you're assigning those dice to three different things.

It just creates way more decisions, way more interesting, and yet it still is that roll and move mechanism. Now, Tillion shows that you can make roll and move work. Unfortunately, we have a glut of these, especially older games or, you know, more cheaply designed games that use this mechanism. Never a good idea.

That's number five. Roll and move. Number four is Colt Express. There's a couple mechanisms I could be talking about. Pause if you need a second, but yes, I am talking about memory. I despise memory in board games. Is it because I have a bad memory? Yes, that is why. I just do not see why players should have an advantage because they're able to remember things.

You know, again, this is like one of those skills where you have it or you don't, and there's nothing you can do if you have a bad memory. You're just not going to be able to remember. Now, there's a lot of great games where, you know, there's an maybe a small element of memory that you could potentially bring to the game.

In any game like that, if I can at all, I try to eliminate that bit of memory with house rules if I have to. Most modern games are smart enough to try to remove that, but any game that places memory like front and center as one of its main mechanisms, count me out. Cult Express gets away with this. Possibly because of the 3D train.

That's not a major part of it. I think it's just the silliness of it all. I think there's just enough unpredictability. There's enough chaos. you know, if I'm not able to exactly remember what everyone has done or even what I've done, the result of that is usually funny rather than frustrating for me anyway.

So, the theme and the tone goes a long way of sort of covering up my hatred for memory. And I really like programming, too. So, that's number four, memory. Number three is innovation. This is a tough one, but the mechanism I have in mind is take that. Take that has a a little bit in common with interrupts, but it's someone on their own turn just playing a card or something that directly attacks you.

There's usually nothing you could do about it. You couldn't see it coming. And it's something that is in a lot of like mainstream cheapy card games. It really is the worst kind of negative interaction. It's just the laziest form of it. I personally don't find that kind of gameplay interesting in any way.

There's nothing strategic about it and it makes it feel like why am I even doing anything if you can just play a card to destroy it all right? There's often not really a sense of progress and it can often feel very swingy and lucky. Victory and defeat can feel very undeserved. Innovation is like the highest form of take that.

Uh innovation is like a chef that has taken junk food and somehow made an elegant fancy meal out of it. One of the ways it's done that is by giving you a way to defend yourself against these take that effects. In innovation, every negative card, every attack card has a symbol that activates it. And you can only attack other players that have fewer of that symbol than you do.

So, as long as you accumulate a lot of symbols in your tableau, then you know, you're going to be able to protect yourself from any cards that the other player might play. Things still can feel very random and swingy, but you do feel like you have a little bit more control. I have kind of a lovehate relationship with Innovation, but I can't deny its brilliance.

And the way it sort of elevates Take That Take That game is pretty incredible. Again, designers, if you're designing a game, avoid Take That, please. That's my number three. Number two is Robo Rally. Funnily enough, it's another programming game, but I've already said that I actually like those. The mechanism I'm talking about here is lose a turn.

Some of these at the top are just so obviously bad that I don't even know what to say. Losing your turn is just not fun. It's especially not fun if it's because of another player. So again, related to the take that if someone plays a card that causes you to lose your turn, like in something like Uno, that's just beyond awful design.

I personally think in every game, every player should always have their turn, and if possible, everyone should have equal numbers of turns. Now, with Robo Rally, it works a little bit better because as you play and take damage in the game, your programming gets messed up. And so every once in a while you need to take a turn to just sort of reset that so you can do a better job at your programming.

In a way you're losing your turn, you know, because you're choosing to. Now it is because of the, you know, damage that you're getting often from other players, but at least you get to choose to lose your turn and you're getting something for it. You're getting some kind of benefit. So it just feels a little bit better.

But in the vast majority of games, it's just a giant bummer. And there were very very few games that have lose a turn that I even play or enjoy at all. So that's why it's my number two. Terrible mechanism lose a turn. And the absolute worst board game mechanism is in the game Hit Zero. This game is a favorite of mine despite having many mechanisms that probably could have made this list.

But here I'm specifically talking about lose a turn on steroids and that is player elimination. Everything I said about lose a turn applies to player elimination times 10. It's just unacceptable to have a game where one player just has to sit there and watch the rest of the players play because they've been eliminated.

It just is such an awful idea. There are plenty of arguments that you can make to defend it, you know, in particular games as a game design, but for me, it always comes back to the fun factor. It just makes for a miserable experience. And because of that, it's just not a game that I'm going to want to play with other players when I'm having fun.

Now, you know, for solo games, I love being eliminated. I love losing those. I love extremely hard survival games where I'm going to die, but if I have a group of four friends over, I don't want one of them just sitting there twiddling their thumbs for an hour. That's just unacceptable. Now, Hitz Road almost works like the closest to working for me.

Uh because of one the nature of the theme and the game play, right? the fact that it's zombie survival, you know, it it fits, but also most of the time if someone does get eliminated, the game is nearly over. You won't be sitting there for an hour. That's just not going to happen. And the other thing that it does well is that it's actually a fun game to spectate.

And I've often been the one who's first eliminated in Nitsy Road. I'm really bad at that game in multiplayer. So, I know exactly what it's like to sit there and and watch the game for, you know, a round or two after. It's a fun beer and pretzel style game. It's not too long. It's not too serious. And so, the player elimination works and it gives you that extra edge, that extra tension that the game needs.

I've not felt that way with a lot of other games that have player elimination. And so I'm glad to see that most games either, you know, immediately end when someone gets eliminated or, you know, they have some other way of handling it so that that player has something to do. So there you go. My worst board game mechanism, player elimination.

What mechanisms did I miss? Please let me know in the comments below. I tried to avoid all the party game ones cuz those are just too easy. you know, all the acting and behaving silly and and all that kind of stuff. I was mostly just focused on, you know, strategy games and things that you see in those.

But yeah, please let me know in the comments. And if you like this video, please think about subscribing to the channel. That would really help me out a lot. Well, that's it for me. Thank you so much for watching and goodbye.