Top 100 Mechanisms in Board Games: 50-41

hi i'm adam porter and this is my top 100 board game mechanisms that i love and 10 that i really don't and over this list so far we've covered 50 mechanisms already so we're now at the top 50 board game mechanisms so as i've said in previous videos here we're lifting the box lid we're opening those rule books and we're looking at how these games work what are the things that create those fun experiences that we all love and what can you do as a designer to make how can you piece these different mechanisms together to create something unique we've got a hundred mechanisms here okay that's that's billions of possible combinations that we could make there billions and billions that's why we can create so many unique fantastic experiences so number 50 is a real staple of the modern board game genre in fact probably going back through i can't even say this is modern this is something that features in ancient games and that's hand management so hand management is where you've got your your your hand of cards and you've got to kind of work out what you want in that hand of cards when to play cards when to hold on to cards and so on it sounds simple doesn't it but actually there are really ingenious ways of utilizing this mechanism for example in bonanza what a great mechanism a utilization of hand management systems so in bonanza your cards are ordered you must never change the order of your cards because you when you play a card it must always be the card at the top of your sort of pile of cards that that's the card you're gonna have to play and they're gonna have to go in order so in that game you end up trading cards with other players to get rid of the cards that you don't want because ultimately at some point they're going to be at the top of your pile of cards in your hand and you're going to have to play it so let's get rid of it before that happens and try and get the cards that we do want to the top of the the pile in our hands and we do that by negotiating with the other players and trading freely um so that's quite a a unique twist on on card play but uh perhaps a more traditional game would be something like lost cities by ryan kenitzia where we're playing cards into columns they've got to go in numerical order but you want to get as many cards as you can in that numerical order following a number sequence in order to maximize your scoring but if you want to get rid of a card it's no use to you you put it in the center of the table where it becomes available for the other player so there's a lot of hanging onto cards that happens in lost city so maybe i don't want them but i know my opponent needs it so i better hang on to it but what that means is that my hand is now clogged up with cards that i don't really need uh so is it worth it clogging up my hand uh which is limiting my ability to play the cards i want to play just to prevent my opponent from getting them well maybe it is maybe that's better maybe it's better that my opponent doesn't get to play those cards but i'm playing with you know a much limited hand i've talked previously about the game enchanted plumes and the clever way that we do hand management in that game where you can play either one or two cards on your turn and then you draw cards from the deck or you swap cards with the central display but of course if you're swapping cards with the central display that means that your hand size is not getting any bigger you're not replenishing any cards so in fact your hand size is getting smaller and smaller and you're playing with a reduced pool so every now and then you might want to play a term where i just play one card instead of the optimized version yeah where we play two cards and draw cards from the deck blind rather than getting those nice open ones where i know what i'm getting so that game is all about hand management and mitigating your your sort of risk uh you know and and working out when you can play with that that paired back hand where you've just got a couple of cards two or three cards and when you want to actually you know breathe out and relax a little bit and let your hand replenish and okay i'm not getting as much stuff down on the table but now i've got more to choose from so hand management is a really satisfying part of many many card games number 49 is positive interaction so i've talked in a previous list about take that which is negative interaction where i directly attack you i've talked just in that hand management section there about the fact that i might hold on to cards just to punish somebody else so that's negative interaction but there are also games out there which use positive interaction where when i take an action everybody else benefits from it and and that's really really satisfying it's a good way of getting interaction into a game without any bad feeling or anybody feeling frustrated we talked previously about the follow mechanism where when i take that build action everybody gets to build okay i get a better version of it but everybody is benefiting from that action that i've taken in the game abyss when i reveal cards other players get a chance to buy that card before i do but in order to do so they have to give me stuff they have to give me pearls which are going to be really beneficial later in the game so i really like positive interaction in games you don't see it all that much i think it's a mechanism that could be employed more and i think there's a lot to explore there as a designer number 48 is interpretation so what i'm talking about there is games like dixit and mysterium where we have an image an abstract image maybe some well abstracts the wrong word isn't it a surreal image where it's not quite clear what's going on or why it's happening or what story is behind that card and we've got to interpret it in some way so in dixit you give it a title and then you then everybody has to guess which card is the one that you gave that title to from a selection that's laid out in mysterium there's a ghost player and they're revealing these cards without talking about it they can't speak so they just show you cards and you've got to interpret what they're trying to say with that card they're trying to guide you towards a murderer and a location and a weapon and the card the pictures though they're so surreal you're looking at and you're thinking well are they showing me that because those things in that picture are pointy does that mean that it was the dagger that was used or are they showing me that because it's got lots of the color red on it which links to this particular character who's got a lot of red on them or what is it that they're trying to tell us and so that idea of interpreting things is it's a nice change of pace from the sort of strategic thinking you know sort of in previous lists i've talked about number sequences for example games can get quite mathematical so using that other part of your brain that creative part of your brain where you have to interpret things um it can turn some players off of course some players aren't strong at this stuff some really strategic players might not be great at the more creative side of things just as some of the more creative players might not be great and strategic players and so it's not necessarily for everybody but if you play with the right people who enjoy this sort of stuff it can be a really rewarding warm experience sitting around and interpreting pictures and discussing what they mean can be really satisfying can be really funny number 47 is another staple of the genre and doesn't really need much explanation it's set collection so there's lots of different ways we can make sets if you look at simple you know poker hands for example you've got three of a kind a pair four of a kind but then you've got a straight uh or or a run of cards you know or a flush where all the cards are of the same color or a full house where you've got three of one and two of another all different types of sets i've talked previously about spelling games where we're putting together letters to make to make words essentially we're forming a set of letters that create a word so all sorts of different ways that you might make sets in games a really good example of this is sushi go sushigo has lots and lots of different examples of sets particularly if you get stuck into that sushi go party edition so many different versions of set collection and in fact phil walker harding he was the designer of sushigo most of his games have massive amounts of set collection in all sorts of different ways and formats going on in them so for example it might be that you know your first card scores you zero or even negative points but if you have two of that cards you get five points or seven points you know three of that cards you're getting an amazing score or it may be that you need three before you get into positive points but two or one is bad you know or it may be that each individual card the first card that you get is one point the next one is three the next one is six the next one is ten the next one's fifteen that's sort of pyramid scoring so set collection works in all sorts of of different fun ways and if you wanna look into different versions of set collection and different options available to you then phil walker cardings sort of canon of games that is that that's that's your starting point that's where you're going to find all the different versions of set collection that you can you can get out there i think he's probably explored all of them by this point number 46 is spatial roll and right games so that might be uh connecting up different parts of your grid as an avenue trying to connect the castle to different grapes with with lines or it might be filling up a grid with polyominose so tetra style pieces drawing them onto a grid in order to fill up that grid or to surround the mountains or to surround monsters it really satisfies the organizing part of my brain i find it satisfying to fill out a grid um it really does feel like you're drawing a map or you're planning something i remember as a kid i found this maybe this is odd i found nothing more exciting than drawing a map of my bedroom i used to draw the map and then i would cut out pieces shapes of the different the different sort of bits of furniture and i'd rearrange it all i loved organizing it i'd spend days doing this stuff and shifting my bedroom around my parents must have hated it but that idea of drawing stuff and lining it up and going well this could go here and this could go here and planning recently i've been planning you know what could i do with my garden if i got somebody around to reshape the garden move the patio over there maybe the shed could go over there we could put up a fence here it really fires off some something in my brain it's just something i want to be doing sort of planning stuff out on paper and laying it all out and that's what these role and write games achieve for me number 45 is social deduction so this is where we have a bunch of players and they're usually split into different teams often it's two teams so you've got the goodies and the baddies right or well whatever the teams could be and you might know some players know who's on their team maybe the baddies know who's on their team but the goodies don't know who's on their team so everyone shut their eyes at the beginning when the roles have been handed out um and throughout the game you're trying to work out who's on your side and who isn't who's trying to betray you who are the traitors in this group who's sabotaging those missions that we're going on um the resistance avalon was the game that i played the most in this genre i played that an absolute ton when it first came out a lot of really really great gaming experiences playing that but i haven't played it for many years one of the things that's quite challenging about social deduction games is that they can get quite loud they can get quite aggressive and i don't mean aggressive in terms of we're all punching each other but there's lots of accusations going around the table you know and blame and and and deceit and and trying to sort of uh mislead each other and that's great if you're with a group of close friends who really get on and don't mind that stuff and aren't going to find it uncomfortable but i have known people who do find it uncomfortable and i've also played with people who make me feel uncomfortable just because i'm not that close to them and i feel they're getting a little bit too into it and you know so they've got to be played with the right group but when you do play with the right group you can really fire off each other and you can really spark up some excitement it can create some lovely moments a really good game in this genre probably my favorite is deception murder in hong kong which brings in a little bit of mysterium that we've talked about previously a little bit of interpretation so there's one player who can't speak but they're giving clues to the rest of the group and those clues are who was the murderer and someone around the table was the murderer and so everyone's throwing accusations around uh trying to interpret this play as clues the murderer themself is trying to mislead everybody and say well it was definitely that person because of this this this and this and trying to deflect any attention from themselves it's a really satisfying system number 44 is permanent abilities now i've talked previously about the fact that i quite like single-use abilities i quite like the streamlined thing of having an ability that i can use and then it's gone and i can forget about it i don't have to keep track of all sorts of things but having permanent abilities can be really satisfying too yes i've got to remember what i'm able to do but if i've got some great power and then another great power added on top of it and maybe they combo it just allows me to build up an engine and get better and better throughout the game and it's nice when you start to see players who've all started out the star the same at the start of the game and they start to diverge throughout the game in terms of the sort of things they're able to do on their turns because they've got different cards in front of them so this is something that would feature in a game like abyss abyss is one of my very favorite games um in evolution my absolute favorite game that's all about special powers you're you're evolving these creatures by giving them different traits that allow them to get access to food that the other creatures can't access or maybe get access to the food first before the others can or perhaps they even turn carnivore and start eating the other players so the other players start to develop their defenses by giving themselves hard shells and horns and things like this it's it's great when you see things evolving and powers in play and those powers remain in play throughout the game number 43 is tire laying and i'm talking here specifically about monomonos or squares okay single square tiles as you see in carcassonne now carcassonne was i mean i've been playing games all my life but carcassonne was the first of the sort of euro games that i came across that kind of got me into all this stuff and i remember being in that shop and talking to it was rules of play in cardiff and talking to the shopkeeper and him saying you know what game could i play this christmas and him show me carcassonne and saying to me it's like a jigsaw but you build it all together you you create the board as you as you go by laying down these square tiles and connecting up roads and cities and i was like wow a game can be this i'd never thought that a game could be that with a with a board sort of growing as we as we play the game how fantastic you know and so obviously now it's it's hard to get myself into that mindset because i've seen so many different game systems but it was really exciting for me at the time and actually i played many games now over the years with these single tiles these monomono tiles and games like cacao and voluspa and isle of skye is a great one a little bit more complex than than carcassonne with an economic side where we're putting value on these tiles and trying to sell them to the other players but essentially still the same thing trying to connect up terrain rivers mountains roads um it's it's a lovely little puzzle it creates a nice look on the table it's intuitive um but it's refreshing for people coming from traditional games into the into the hobby um so i've still got a lot of time for tile laying with monomials and we're back to dixit the dixit mechanism but i'm not here talking about interpretation and creativity anymore what i'm talking about here is specifically the scoring where when you give your card a title in dixit so i name it something and then i get mixed up with the other the other cards and everything's revealed and people have to guess which one was my card well i want some people to get it right but i don't want everyone to get it right so the scoring in dixa is if nobody guesses my card i get zero points and if everybody guesses my card i get zero points so i've got to come up with a clue that's just obscure enough that some people around the table will get it and other people don't and that is just the ingenious scoring mechanism the crux of the whole game is based around that concept don't be too obvious but don't be too obscure and that's the delicious decision when you're making up when you're being creative coming up with those clues another game that does it is the game or hein it's also called um which is a party game where again you're giving clues these are verbal clues to um to a film or a a person a personality or something like that very simple game but again you want some of the players to guess it and others not to so you've got to kind of split the group and and and try and just be just be obscure enough number 41 is speed reaction now this probably isn't a huge surprise to you that i like these sort of games i've already talked about real-time games um and and um you know perception speed perception and things like that but this one is more about uh physical reactions and reflexes um so it might be building laying out your cups in speed cups so you have a picture and it's got colors in a certain order and you've got to position your cups in that order before the other players so something which is all about dexterity or it might be um something like plaparagai which i reviewed earlier this year which is a game where you lay out a card and there's a whole bunch of rules about what you have to say based on the color of the card the animal on the card what other cards on the table and the rules change depending on those different combinations so you often find yourself saying the wrong thing or stumbling over yourself and you're not allowed to hesitate otherwise you're gathering up cards and you don't want to be doing that you want to be getting rid of your cards so i find this really i always find it amusing the sort of falling over yourself to to say the right thing to do the right thing before the other players um other games like wringleding where i've got to put little sort of bands on my fingers matching the bands showing on the on the hand on the card real simple stuff but i do love that physical dexterity race or that verbal race to get the words out before the other players so that's numbers 50 to 41 i hope you found some games there that spark your interest maybe games that you want to look up or or mechanisms you might want to employ in your own designs but as usual i want to mention one type of mechanism in games that i really don't enjoy and so today the one that i've chosen is be funny i really don't like games which require you as a player to be funny so this is games like snake oil or fun employed or you know anything which requires me to take a couple of cards or a card and then and then twist it and make it make it amusing and then be judged by the other players and the players choose which of us around the table is the funniest and allocate that person some points oh i find that really annoying i find it annoying because sometimes i might be funnier than some of the other players and then i feel awkward and bad when they're not very funny and then people start giving them sort of sympathy sympathy votes you know for because they because you can't just have one person getting all the stuff and then often more often i'm not the funniest at all in fact i'm barely funny at all and there's somebody else who's hilarious and then i feel really awkward because i want to be as funny as them but i'm not and then so i'm getting the sympathy votes and i know i'm getting sympathy votes i i i find it so awkward and cringy um i just to be honest i won't play these games anymore i used to i used to play them and and and have a go and now i just think you know what it just makes me feel so awkward i i feel bad for myself or i feel bad for other people when i'm playing them which takes all the joy out of it of course anyway that's my own personal moan i know a lot of people enjoy these games and good for you good for you there's nothing wrong with that go and have fun with them um but yeah they're not for me anyway i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please watch some of my others and please continue to come back for the other installments in this we've still got some way to go and i'll be releasing videos every two or three days for this for this particular list please comment let me know what you thought please subscribe if you haven't already done so and i'll see you next time