I’ve been playing board games, as a full-time hobby, for over 25 years now. And in that time, I’ve come to have some pretty strong opinions as to the things I like and dislike in a board game. I’m usually pretty open to trying anything–though I’ll probably throw a mild fit if someone tries to get me to play any of the classic games (Scrabble excepted despite its serious downtime problem) that you find in most game collections. However, if a boardgame hits more than a couple of following mechanics/categories/vibes (or all of them like the post image of the fantastic Railroad Tiles)…I will most likely find myself considering adding it to my own one-in/one-out game collection.
Tile Laying
I don’t love Carcassonne as a game (though the OOP The Castle version is a top tier game), but I do love the general idea of making a cute little map by aligning the matching edges of tiles together. It could be my childhood fascination with my grandma’s River’s Roads and Rails game (a wretched game design with beautiful art), or my larger fascination with making maps, but there is something about tile laying (for map-making purposes) that will always make me want to check out a new game.
Spatial puzzles
Of course, part of the appeal of a good tile laying game goes beyond the simple joy of creating an aesthetically pleasing map on the fly. There is a puzzle aspect to them, that can be found in many other game mechanics I enjoy as well. Like solving a tangram, or fitting Tetris pieces into a shape, I love games that make me feel like I’m solving a puzzle.
Whether it’s something as simple as Patchwork, or as brain burny as Dungeon Twister, if I have to spatially analyze the best possible move, I’m going to be a happy gamer.
Tactical
A pretty wide reaching category…in a larger sense all games are somewhere on a spectrum between tactical and strategic (assuming they involve any decision making). Strategic games, broadly speaking, involve more long term planning, trying to plan ahead, set up a good board position, and win the long game. Tactical games on the other hand care more about the exact board state at the start of your turn, and reacting in the moment.
Strategic choices are present in most games, but it’s the tactical ones that I love the most. My favorite game of all time, Krosmaster: Arena is a perfect example. The board state can change so much on your opponent’s turn that it really does become a new puzzle to figure out the best set of tactical choices you can make to answer their moves each turn. My second favorite game of all time, Advanced Squad Leader can of course be very strategic, but at the end of the day, it’s the tactical choices you make in getting your infantry across open ground that appeal to me the most.
Flip up and see
Finally a bit of an oddball. “Flip up and See” isn’t a game mechanic per se, but rather just what I call games where you are dealt a hand of cards or tiles over and over and flip them all up to see what good (or bad) stuff you were dealt each round. I’m specifically thinking of shedding ladder games like Tichu or Lexio, but Cribbage, trick taking, even deckbuilders like Fliptoons can capture this feeling.
It needs to be a bit more than “did I draw a good hand”–the rounds should be long enough (and the pool of information big enough) that you can spend a bit of time figuring out how to play your hand/use your cards. But, when done right, there’s nothing that quite beats flipping over your first cards in Tichu and seeing a handful of special cards and aces.
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