The Mechanix

Every boardgame has at least one “mechanic”. A mechanic is a system of rules that when looked at in a generic sense can be applied to anygame. When a game designer sits down to create his game he has to decide how to achieve the effect his going for with a system of rules. For example Monopoly has the very basic and often used mechanic of random movement determined by dice roll. This may seem like such a no brainer game mechanic that it is practically transparent, but you know someone somewhere had to think it up first, and not every game uses it. Look at Chess, that game defiantly doesn’t have random movement. That is because game designers have different goals when designing a game, and sometime they can achieve those goals by coming up with there very own unique game mechanic, but a lot of time they borrow a mechanic from another game and tweek it slightly to work within the parameters of their game. Some gameplay mechanics are just that good and that much fun that they have to be used again and again. As a matter of fact if you go on Boardgamegeek.com you can browse through games by what kinda of mechanics it has, it’s true! All the games on BGG are categorized by mechanics, and there is a good reason for it. Some gamers just really like certain types of game mechanics. I always love a game that has great mechanics. When I sit down and play a new game for the first time I will always get more excited about it if it has a really cool mechanic or better yet if it shares a mechanic with a game I’ve already played before and enjoyed. Recently I got a chance to play some new games that have mechanics that remind me of other games I’ve enjoyed in the past.



Kingsburg is a game where you try to influence members of the King’s Court in order to give you things that will help you win the game. In the game you roll three dice, and if the total on any one, two or all three of your dice equal the number attributed to one of the King’s Court you can place these dice on that person. Then you gain influence over them and consequently gain materials or favors that help you build your province. In the end if you have the most prosperous province your win.



This method of rolling dice and assigning them to spots on the board to gain various actions reminds me a lot of another game I have played in the past called Yspahan.



In Yspahan the dice that are rolled are assigned to a “Dice Tower” that determines what actions the players can take during the game. Each player only gets one choice and when they choose, the dice for that selection are removed. So there is a lot of opportunity to screw the other players, but that makes it so much fun.



Another game I recently played was Race for the Galaxy.


This is a simple card game but contains a lot of strategy in the play of its many planet and development cards. There are so many combinations and different directions you can take with the cards that you play that the game might not seem that simple after all.

One aspect of the game that is similar to another game I’ve played, are the Action Cards.

These action cards determine what phases of the game are performed and since the cards are played simultaneously and face down, every player has no idea what phases they will get to perform except of coarse for the action phases they themselves select. Also there is no way to pick all the phases you will want to perform at the same time. So there is an element of guessing what phases the other players might choose. This is very similar to another favorite game of mine called Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is a game about building settlements and growing and shipping crops. The settlements and crops are represented by card board chits and wooden pieces, it’s a boardgame with all the euro type pieces. In the first step of each players turn they select a “role”.

In the picture above you can see these roles fanned out across the top. Each role selected enables all the players to perform an action, with the person who selected the action getting some sort of bonus. Not all roles will be selected so in every round there will be actions that no one will be able to perform, just like in Race for the Galaxy.

Of coarse this similarity should not be surprising since Race for the Galaxy was originally slated to be the card game version of Puerto Rico. The guy that was working on Race had his initial design turned down by the company that publishes Puerto Rico, so he decided to slap a Sci-Fi theme on it and tweek the game play a little and tada, Race for the Galaxy happened. I’m very glad he did not give up on his design, Race is a very fun game.

The last new game that I played that reminds me of other game mechanics was Tikal.

This is a fun game were you control an expedition force that is out exploring a jungle in order to uncover lost treasures and the Temples of an ancient civilization. The game represents this exploration aspect with large hexagonal tiles that are drawn randomly from a face down stack.

I’ve always loved games where you get to flip up tiles as you explore, in this case a jungle, but in most games of this type, a dungeon. Warhammer Quest is one such game that comes to mind. I find that I am always drawn to any game that has an exploration mechanic and there are more then a few, and too many to mention here.

So if you are new to these types of boardgames you may have been wondering what makes some more popular that others. Well there is usually a lot of focus put on the theme or the storyline. Or maybe people will look intently at the amount of strategy or the “fun factor”. Also people are concerned about how hard it is to learn, or how fast it is to play. For me though, one of the first things I look at is the mechanics, and it always gives me a thrill when I play a game that does a good job of incorporating my favorite mechanics.