Introduction To Board Game Mechanisms Part 6

We’re coming to the end of the Board Game Mechanisms introduction series (for now.) By the end of this post, we’ll have covered 30 different board game mechanisms and you should have a pretty good idea of how they make up the DNA of a game. I’d love to know if any of the games we’ve suggested have drawn you in, or even any of the mechanisms have had you scrolling Board Game Geek for the games under that mechanism. So here we go, a last hurrah. Let’s go.

Track Movement – Luke Pickles

The last mechanism (for now) is one we’re probably going to be familiar with – Track Movement. This is not specific to racing games, but it does mean moving our pieces along a linear track. Roll and move games do this very well, but the one I’m thinking of as an intro game is the game which introduced me to the hobby. That game is Tokaido, where players are moving along the Tokaido trail from Kyoto to Edo (or the other way), attempting to have the best journey. Along the way, they’ll stop at onsen (hot springs), temples and markets, whilst painting some beautiful pictures. I love how this game looks and plays. On each players turn, they choose how far they want to go along the path and take the action. However, moving too far ahead means the players behind them have an advantage. You see, the player at the back of the queue takes the next turn.

I find this game wonderful because it introduces set collection in the market and paintings, competition for spaces familiar with worker placement games, different player powers, and above all else, it looks beautiful, giving players an excellent introduction to the board gaming hobby. Look at how well it did it for me!
If you fancy trying another game with Track Movement, I can recommend Great Western Trails.

Variable Set-Up - Max Davie

If you think of variable set up as simply ‘a different beginning’, then a lot of games have it, if not most. Sometimes each player's starting situation is randomised, for instance by players receiving different combinations of cards. In other games, the scoring conditions are randomised. But ‘variable set up’ as a mechanic is a deliberate attempt to make the starting position of players vary from play to play.

To explain this more clearly, it is worth thinking about cooperative games. In some sense the goal of a cooperative game is always the same, for the players collectively to win. If every game played the same, players would quickly tire of the challenge. Variable set up can vary the challenge, in order to make each play feel different.

A good introductory example of this is the game Horrified. In Horrified, players are working together to defeat monsters from the Universal canon. The variability is chosen by the players both in the number of monsters and which particular monsters they are going to fight this time. This leads to a greater degree of replayability than if the challenge was always the same.
Another variable that can be exploited is the board itself. One famous example of this is Castles of Burgundy, where the choice of board makes a subtle but definite difference to the optimal strategy.

Finally (at least for the purposes of this short introduction) the abilities and actions available to players can be varied. At its simplest this may allow for one rule to be bent or removed for each player, for instance for the role cards in Pandemic. At the more complex end, each game of Root is made unique by its combination of board, faction, landmarks and even card decks.

For some, the complex experience of setting up a fully expanded game of Root shows the downside of variable setup, and so if you want to explore this area of gaming, perhaps it would be better to start at the simpler end. Wherever you begin, variable setup adds greatly to the replayability and interest of any game that you enter and so is a valuable tool for maintaining player engagement.