My 5 FAVORITE Board Game MECHANICS

today we're going to be talking about board game mechanics the element of board game design that engages players and gets those problem-solving gears turning so in this video I'm going to share with you my top five favorite board game mechanics as well as several examples of games that exemplify that gameplay [Music] before I jump into the list be aware that this video is part of a greater series about what makes great board games where I talk about the five attributes of board game design theme mechanics components strategy and complexity and what people look for to find excellence in those five attributes if you'd like to take a look at that I'll leave links in the description but for now let's talk about my five favorite board game mechanics the first mechanic that always excites me is multi-use cards I mentioned San Juan earlier where cards can be used for the buildings that they provide or you spend the cards to build the buildings I think that's excellent cryo takes this another step by giving a card a third benefit you can either use the card for the vehicle you can recycle the card for the resources or you can add the card to your Tableau for its scoring bonus I think that's excellent because when you have cards with multiple uses regardless of what your hand draw is you can always find something to do with them one more example of a game that does this in a brilliant way and I would say is so elegant in its design is the solitaire game Friday in Friday it's a deck builder game where the objective of the game is to uh survive through a deck of cards that are attacking you or challenges that you have to face but every card that you survive or that you beat has a second purpose which gives you a bit an ability so if you defeat a card you gain that card and it takes on its other purpose it's just an excellent excellent idea and I I still am not aware of a game that is taken Friday and put it in a multi-player environment but I would love to find one if you know one let me know the next mechanic I enjoy is simultaneous gameplay this is where every player gets to do something at the same time and you see this in like every role in right game probably my favorite example isn't technically a roll and write but it's a draw and place I guess karuba right in karuba one player draws a tile the tiles are numbered so when the player says the number out loud every other player can draw the exact same tile so people are placing tiles on their boards at the same time I really find that fun to play with my family and we actually have two copies of kuruba because when I get together with other families we like to play it eight player another example is the game Tiny towns in tiny towns players get to pick a resource Cube that they use for their player board to build buildings the thing is whatever they select is what every other player selects and you can get really clever with this because you can actually pay attention to what other people are doing on their player boards and based on what you see them doing you can make a prediction about what they want and if you're good at this because you anticipate what they want you can make your move to be complemented by their move and it is a brilliant although very puzzly game where not only is everyone playing at the same time but everyone is actually motivated to pay attention to what other people are doing at the same time very few games especially Roland rights actually require you to pay attention to what your opponents are doing like uh tiny towns does the next mechanic that I always get excited about is any really novel variation on a worker placement game but possibly my favorite is a returned worker bonus so you see this in a game like cryo again where it's a worker placement game so on your turn you know you place the worker and you perform an action but then once all of your workers are out you bring your workers back and the act of bringing them back earns you something as well you see this again in the game Carnegie card Carnegie not only when you pull your workers you get something but every other player also has the option of pulling their workers back at the same time so Carnegie you have that element of a returned worker bonus and you're paying attention to what your opponents are doing again because you know if you can anticipate which worker they're gonna take back because you'll be able to take back at the same time as them you can plan on that and you don't have to do it on your turn I love games that find some way to engage you when it's not even your turn the next mechanic I really enjoy I don't even know what to call it I would say resting cards and it is kind of a variation on a deck builder where instead of having a discard pile that you're always shuffling in these games you always have access to your entire deck of cards but some cards are resting so you see this inside AI minds and Sky mines you have three discard piles and after you've played all of the cards from your hand you have to discard them into the three discard piles and then when you pick up cards rather than having a draw deck you get to pick up one of your discard piles so every time you discard you're planning how do I want my next hand to look if I discard this card into this hand then I can combo it with the other cards in that discard pile or I can play it over here you're planning your discard pile I think that's so clever because most of the time we discard cards and the discard pile gets you know messy and it's spilling all over the place because it's no one cares about the discard pile it doesn't matter until it gets shuffled and becomes a draw pile again and these resting games you have to plan for what you're going to do it happens in Sky mines and it also happens in a game called revive I'll describe that mechanic briefly as well in revive a card can go into three phases so first you have the cards that are available in your hand which by the way is laid out on the table so everyone can see what you have then you have the cards that are active these are cards that you've played into your player board you're using them and then you have your resting pile your your single discard pile so at the end of the phase you always pick up your discard pile all of the cards that were active become resting cards and you start a new round combined with your your discard pile your resting pile from before so you are always able to play any cards minus the ones that were rested from the previous round lastly I love games that have a stock buying mechanic so the two games I'm thinking of are imperial and East India companies both of these games have a very similar thing going on where the objective is to have the most money at the end of the game and the way you get the most money is by buying stock in the players and what I mean by players is that in Imperial there are different countries that are trying to get dominance in this map of Europe and in East India companies there are different shipping companies that are trying to make the most profit um is trading Goods now in both cases the players the countries or the shipping companies are controlled by your opponents the opponents around the table so in both games you can be the worst performing for what they what's happening in the game and yet still come out ahead because your Superior skill is in investing in the players that played the operations better there's two levels of game going on I find that so interesting now the difference the major difference between Imperial and East India companies is that in Imperial in order to make money you need to control countries and whoever has the most stock in a country is the one who controls the country so control of a country is always shifting during the course of the entire game in East India companies the game is a little simpler because every player is in charge of their own shipping company you can buy stock in your opponent's shipping company but the catch is in order to buy stock you need to have money and in order to have money your own company has to perform well so you can't just be a terrible Shipping Company you have to have some success otherwise you wouldn't have the money to buy stock in somebody else they both have this really neat like in order to come out ahead you have to have money so in order to have money you have to perform well anyway there's just a lot going on there I think it adds so much to strategy that's why I love this mechanic so very much so those are my favorite board game mechanics but I'm interested in what I may have left out if you'd like to tell me what your favorite mechanic is go ahead and let me know in the mechanics I love having these conversations with my viewers or if you'd like more from me don't forget to check out the description for the links to the other videos in this series my name is Ben and this is board game Dad thank you for watching I'll see you next time bye