That's Up My Alley! Game Mechanisms I Enjoy

 That's Up My Alley! Game Mechanisms I Enjoy

My friend Chad suggested writing about game mechanisms I enjoy, so here ya go! Imma talk a little about each mechanism, why I like it, and in which games I admire it most (so far).

• Asymmetry
• This has become a big draw for me over the years. It's not a necessary element by any stretch, but these are games I'm most often excited about, regardless of whether or not I end up liking them more than games without the asymmetry. I've always been one to act contrary and see what I can learn from it. When I played StarCraft with my friends, I was the only one in the guild for awhile who played Zerg. It was always either Terran or Protoss for my friends, and I was genuinely more interested in Zerg from a narrative standpoint. But also, I was convinced they had to be better than my friends thought they were. I was not good enough at the game to be the one to prove it, but I was happy to keep trying. I was the only one who regularly played as the Necromancer in Heroes of Might and Magic II, and then III. I like asymmetry because it necessitates different strategies and tactics. I like the feeling of ownership when I can identify a faction/hero/whatever as "mine." That was just as true about the Zerg and Necromancer then as it is now about Grand Moff Tarkin (Star Wars Armada), Heart of the Wildfire (Spirit Island), or Ba'ar Zul (Conquest LCG).
• Games I really thoroughly enjoy that feature asymmetry are Root, Spirit Island, Star Wars Armada, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and Twilight Imperium. There are plenty of other games that feature asymmetry, and I like some of them, too. But these are the titles that jump into my brain when I consider why I enjoy asymmetry in board games.
• Shared Tech Tree
• There is only one game I know that implements this mechanism, and it's Beyond the Sun. I enjoy the hell out of this game, and while the shared tech tree is only one reason why, it's a really cool central feature of the game that I've never seen done before. You have to buy in and do the research, sure. But if someone does it before you, you know what you're researching and don't have to flip through the cards to find out. It's just a lot of fun and it's easy to get lost in expanding the tech tree and lose track of exploring planets.
  

• Perfect Information
• The ultimate game of strategy and tactics is a game in which a player has perfect information. There is no chance in chess: your pieces are identical in starting position, capacity, and number as those of your opponent. All moves are made in the open. The only secrets in the game are those held in the heads of the players as they lay traps and scheme about how best to win the match. Your opponent may make mistakes, sure. And you can take advantage. But nothing happens that you couldn't see (skill level and vision of the long game aside) and anticipate. I don't play a lot of perfect information games besides chess (at which I'm not good, but still enjoy playing), but I play some games that sort of as close as one can get. I like the way it forces one to think, and how a sound strategy will absolutely have to pay off because the game is won by skill and not by chance. Much like solving a puzzle, seeing plans pay out upon completion is very satisfying for me.
• Star Wars Armada is not a perfect information game because dice are rolled. That said, the only hidden information in Armada (during play, not before, when fleet lists and objectives are unknown) are the dials and the dice that will be rolled while attacking. It took me awhile to learn that when a player loses in Armada, the dice are rarely to blame. If you've hit the point where you lose because of dice results, then you likely screwed up your positioning. War games are all about positioning, and while bad dice can hurt you, if you lose because of dice, then it's extremely likely that your positioning was lacking. I love that when I attack, my dice might surprise me, but I know exactly what defensive measures my opponent can take (defensive retrofit upgrades or defense tokens). Again, not perfect information, but it's in that vein.
• Along those lines, I'm happy with games that minimize hidden information or random occurrence. Crop tiles are randomly drawn in Puerto Rico, players don't know which new power plants will be revealed in Power Grid, it's a surprise as to which resources and Djinn will be flipped up in Five Tribes...there's definitely some chance there. But otherwise, the board and its components are out there for everyone to see. Nobody has a secret hand of cards in front of them, and no dice are rolled. When I win these games, more often than not, such a win feels earned because it's that much more likely that my choices are what won me the game rather than chance. It's far more satisfying (for me) to win a game of Five Tribes because I hit on some really great Builder moves and diversified my resources than because my numbers kept coming up while playing Catan.
• Worker Placement
• I love this mechanic, and have for as long as I've known about it. Unfortunately, I honestly couldn't explain why. I just know that nobody has to work very hard to convince me that I should at least try a worker placement game if they own it and are willing to teach me how to play. While my favorite games are not worker placement games, worker placement is probably universally my very favorite mechanism in all of board games.
• I enjoy the hell out of the way dice are used as workers in Euphoria. Sure, it adds more chance to the game, but I just really like how the design fits with the theme of workers who may become intelligent enough to realize they're in a dystopian society and so run away, costing a player those workers. I'm a huge fan of Everdell and cannot play it enough. Sure, it's a damn pretty game and the components are stellar, but those are not the only reasons I keep coming back to the game again and again. Abomination is another favorite worker placement of mine, and though I've only played it once, I think Paladins of the West Kingdom will only get better with more plays.
• Machine-Building
• My friend Roger will often talk about how vulnerable he is in games wherein players build machines because he'll be so focused on building a brilliant machine that the game ends before he was ready and he's got a really damn cool machine, but never got the points he needed to win! When I talk about "machine-building," I mean a game in which players assemble different components or effects (decks, abilities, etc.) with the intention of those components effectively creating a sort of machine that plays the game for the player. In other words, players are building a Cascade Effect: when that card comes up again, it'll trigger this worker, and that worker will collect these resources, which I can then use to upgrade this thing which will cause that card to come up more often, which will trigger my worker more often, and so on and so forth. It's ridiculously satisfying when the Cascade Effect towards which you're building triggers the way you planned and just turns you into a boulder rolling down hill. It feels good when plans pan out, and machine-building is the embodiment of that.
• Quacks of Quedlinburg isn't necessarily the best example of this because so much is up to chance (what are you pulling out of your bag? You can calculate the odds of what you'll pull, but there are no guarantees!), but I'm still buying ingredients for my pot based on how they can complement one another. Twilight Imperium and Clank! are also games that come to mind when I think about machine-building. Star Wars Armada to an extent, but it really depends on the fleet I'm flying. There are some really intricate ones that utilize this mechanism, but others don't really do that at all.
• Role-Playing
• I enjoy role-playing a lot, and that's true of my board games as well. I think I wrote previously that I had played and enjoyed Sheriff of Nottingham when my friend Roger taught me the game. It was a lot of fun, and I was all too happy to play it again when the good folks at Cabin Con wanted to break it out for Cabin Con 2020. The second time I played it, though, was a very different experience from the first. Fun both times, but Cabin Con was the time wherein each player was role-playing the game. And that made way more difference to me than I anticipated. Not necessarily in terms of gameplay and how it went, but with regards to how much I remember about that specific game. I don't remember anything at all from my first time playing the game except that I had fun and got caught with illegal contraband often enough that I couldn't make a run at winning the game. But I remember plenty from the second game. Not the least of which was that I had trouble making headway with a particular player as Sheriff because every other player was convinced that apples grew on vines instead of trees, and as I was the only person insisting apples grow on trees, it became that much more difficult to negotiate my way across. And frankly, it just became this hilarious, ongoing bit that got more and more outrageous. Sometimes, I'd rather build a character in a game "the way they should be built" rather than trying to min-max them and make them as powerful as they can possibly be just because I have more fun with a sub-optimal build.
• To that end, I think of Sheriff of Nottingham, Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Imperial Assault, and Fortune and Glory. I think of Sheriff strictly because of the fellas at Cabin Con. I think of Descent and IA because you build your character up throughout the campaign, gaining new skills and acquiring new equipment, much like any RPG. Finally, I think of Fortune and Glory because I sometimes make decisions in this game based on what I find fits the character and genre more than what I think will increase my chances of winning. So much of this game is based on luck (throw dice, and then throw more dice! Draw the right or wrong cards that require the skills you have in spades or don't have at all!) that there are few strategies that can consistently be applied without severe vulnerability to cascading disruption. It's not all as bad as Eldritch Horror and other games of its ilk designed by FFG, but Fortune and Glory is still an Ameritrash game at its heart, and thus susceptible to such disruption. Even with the best-laid plans. Almost especially with the best-laid plans...
  
  
  
• Narrative-Writing
• This can apply to almost any game, honestly; it's just that some facilitate that better than others. When I talk about writing a narrative, I mean an instance of a game that sticks with you long after it's done. Not just games like Gloomhaven that have a story behind them, but games that allow players to craft a story as they play the game, thus making it more memorable. I honestly can't remember any specifics of a game of Dominion or Viticulture that I have played. I enjoy both of those games! But none of the plays I've ever had between them (and others, of course) left me recounting what had happened to other people. Even as I write up some of my game recaps, I find that can be the case, and so I focus in one or two little details because there's no grander narrative spun from the game. At least, none that I appreciate.
• Games can handle this in different ways: some with an actual narrative, such as any game driven by campaign play, and some with mechanics or settings that lend themselves to such a creation. There are a number of games I enjoy enough that part of the fun is crafting a narrative, but I sort of don't include those here just because I'm making extra effort to get there. The games I think of when it comes to this mechanism are pretty varied. I think Eldritch Horror sets itself up for narrative-writing really beautifully because the characters are all different, the Great Old Ones really set very different tones for the game from one another, and the game is swingy as hell. Hard swings in a game can really stick with players because they are effectively big plot twists, and who doesn't remember twists like those found in The Empire Strikes Back or The Sixth Sense? Spirit Island fits the bill because of how unique each spirit is, and because players can choose to introduce scenarios or adversaries into their games. A dear friend of mine (who is family at this point, because she married someone I consider to be my brother), Alissa, played a game in which she was the Lure of the Deep Wilderness. And let me tell you: she set up a murder hole right in the middle of the island the likes of which I've not seen. It was literally all Suf and I could do to keep throwing more and more Invaders into the murder hole so she could do every last thing she had lined up from turn to turn. It was nuts. There was nothing spectacular about the game other than this, but it sticks with me because this game is designed to write a narrative with each and every game played. Twilight Imperium also lends itself well to this mechanism!
• But the game that really compelled me to include this mechanism on my list is Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile. It seems to me that the best part of this game is having the winner write up the history of a generation (one game) in the little journal that Leder Games included. The resultant chronicle is of paramount interest to me, and I think it's just the coolest damn thing to have created a game in which the world changes without the game itself needing to strictly identify as a legacy game.
• Ambush (but only in fast games!)
• To be specific, I only like the notion of crippling ambush in games that don't last very long. The outside of this for me is Boss Monster, which usually runs about 30 minutes. Any longer than that, and I'm not a fan of games in which I can be ambushed and crippled in the blink of an eye.
• Plague and Pestilence is a great example of this: if other players think I'm hoarding more population points than anyone else, the table will turn on me really quickly. If everyone else decides to eliminate me, barring extraordinary circumstances, I can't stop them from taking me out. The game is fun and short enough that if it happens, I can still enjoy it. Coup is another one, given how quickly the hands go by. King of Tokyo is another, as I've only invested so much time and energy into it. If I've got the lead and I'm stuck in Tokyo while everyone else is just landing attack after attack, I may not love it, but I won't walk away from the game, either. Boss Monster is absolutely the longest game I'm willing to play in which the game can turn on me fast, and I'll still come back for more. Sometimes, the heroes just come up too strong to handle, and I'm unable to change my dungeon to suit my needs as quickly as others are able to alter theirs so the heroes come to me instead of going to them. Nothing I can do about that except grimace as those cruel heroes mercilessly slaughter my Boss Monster.
• Tactics versus Strategy
• This is something I think of often ever since reading an article on Cardboard Edison awhile back. The writer differentiates between tactics and strategy, explaining that strategy is an overarching approach to a problem or game, while tactics are the tools that players will utilize and wield in order to fulfill the aforementioned strategy. For instance, in Star Wars Armada, my choice to fly one of my Gladiator Star Destroyers just a little fast in order to draw out a greedy and overeager opponent is a tactic. I've utilized that tactic because my overarching strategy is to use my Kuat and second Gladiator to flank my opponent's fleet, and this tactic might be a good way to reach my final destination in the service of my greater strategy. I don't have specific games I'm going to list under this mechanism because it's primarily a matter of perspective and opinion. That said, I like games that I can break down this way. I don't always think of it this way while I'm playing, but it's often how I discuss games if we debrief after playing. I also draw parallels between this mechanism and how many actors approach performance. So it's something I like to give a lot of space in my head.

There are plenty others out there that I enjoy! After all, if there weren't, I doubt I'd have nearly the game collection that I currently do! But when I consider this particular subject, these are the mechanisms and the game titles that pop into my brain. How about you?