Worker Placement: Game Mechanics 101

To watch Adam's video lesson click here!

Welcome back to game mechanics 101! Today we are talking about worker placement games. I already shared a little about our experience with Agricola in our lesson introduction. It was our first worker placement game and only our second Euro game. It was difficult for us to learn and understand. Now, worker placement games are among our favorites.

Worker placement games are focused around your worker pieces and where you are going to place them. These games have a shared board with limited spaces to place workers. Each space will provide the player with resources or actions that they need to work toward victory.

In Agricola, only one player can be on each space on the board. This means that players can block each other easily. Viticulture has a limited number of slots open per action, but multiple workers can use each one. The number of available slots is dependent on the number of players.

The Manhattan Project has a main board with actions as well. However, the players can also construct their own board of options to play on. This means that not every player will have the same options by the end of the game.

Are Dinosaur Island and Dice hospital worker placement games? We have had a number of discussions about this. They both use workers that are placed on limited spaces, but the spaces are on the players’ individual boards. There is no community board in which the players interact with each other. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments. Join us next week for tile placement games.

Deck Building: Game Mechanics 101

Today we are talking about deck building. In a deck building game, players will begin with a starter deck of cards. They will add new and better cards to their deck over time. On a turn a player will typically play cards from their hand followed by drawing new cards from their deck. There are a variety of ways deck building is utilized in games.

Dominion was the start of the deck building genre. Players use their cards to gain victory point cards. These victory point cards help the players win, but also make it harder to get the cards they want in their hands. In Thunderstone, players use their cards to venture into the dungeon and fight the monsters within. The monster cards then junk up your hand like in Dominion but are also how you win.

Some deck building games work alongside a board. The Quest for El Dorado is one such game. In El Dorado, players use their cards to move to spaces on the board. It is a race to the finish and no victory points are involved.

Another popular deck building type is combined with cooperative play. The Legendary series and Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle are in this genre. In these games the players work together to defeat the villains. They use their cards to attack the enemies and heal themselves and their teammates.

What is a deck building game you are interested in playing? Let us know in the comments. Join us next week as we learn about worker placement games.

Drafting: Game Mechanics 101

Welcome to our first mechanic, drafting. Drafting is the core mechanic in many games. It can also be found in many games as a side mechanic or as a variant.

In a drafting game, the players have a hand of cards or items. They make a selection and pass the rest to the next player. Now, they will make a selection from their new hand and pass again. Play continues till the hand is drained, often with the last item being discarded.

7 Wonders and Sushi Go are card drafting games that combing drafting with set collection. The more cards you have that work together, the higher your score will be. Fields of Green is also a card drafting game but instead of collecting sets you are building a functioning farm with your card selections.

Between Two Cities has players drafting tiles instead of cards. The tiles chosen will be used to construct a city with the person sitting next to you. In this game your drafting choices affect your partners as well. Draftosaurus is another drafting game that does not use cards. Players draft from a handful of wooden dinosaur meeples (meeples are the shaped wooden pawns in a game). This game brings back the set collection aspect of some of the card games.

Drafting games can be difficult for inexperienced players to understand since they are not familiar with the cards or items available and how they interact. It is worth the effort to learn and play though. What has your experience with drafting games been like. Share your stories in the comments! Next week we will be discussing deck building games.

Why Learn Game Mechanics? Game Mechanics 101

Welcome to game mechanics 101! Today, we are going to talk about the "why" of game mechanics. Why is this something to even know about? We have a few reasons for you to think about before we dive into the first mechanic next week.

Learning New Games
Has this ever happened to you? You open a new game, look at the rule book, and are immediately daunted by its size. When you start at square one, the rules can be long and confusing. Years ago, it took us hours to figure out how to play Agricola before we discovered a how to play online. How to play videos are life savers in learning a game.  Now that we have played Agricola, we pick up worker placement games very easily. They function in very similar ways and knowing the mechanic has given us a head start on learning.

Game Descriptions
Let's stick with our Agricola example. When people ask me what kind of game Agricola is, I tell them it is a worker placement game about farming. I have the vocabulary to give a short, concise description. It also helps when choosing new games. We know that if a game says it is a worker placement game, there is a good chance we will enjoy it because we have liked others in that genre. Our family doesn't really enjoy bluffing games though, so we tend to avoid those.

Designing Games
If you are interested in game design, you should be trying as many game mechanics as possible. A limited exposure to games gives you a limited number of ideas to draw from. The more mechanics you know, the more variety you can put in your designs.

Are you looking forward to learning some game mechanics? Leave us a comment about mechanics you love and some you want to learn more about! Also, join us next week for our first mechanic, drafting.