As the name of the mechanic suggests, real time games are about doing stuff in real time. That can be moving pieces, rolling dice, solving puzzles, really anything, but you have a time limit that you are working against. Now, it can be that one person needs to do something, then the next, then, the next and you are trying to get it done as quickly as possible while still taking turns. Other times it might be that everyone is doing stuff at once.

Let’s give an example of a game like this, I actually talked about one in my Board Game Mechanics for Variable Player Powers, which you can find here, Magic Maze. In this game you have a group of fantasy heroes who are going shopping at the mall. A silly premise, but each player has a direction that the character can move, north, south, east, west, up some stairs, into new rooms, etc. The game has a timer that is running and you can move to spots which allow you to flip the sand timer, plus you need to move to spots where you can get the items, plus you need to get out as well. This is all done in real time with players moving the pawns, and it’s done cooperatively. The trick is that no one can speak, the only form of communication that you can do is put a pawn in front of someone to let them know you need them to move one of the characters. So it’s very tricky to coordinate because everyone is having to keep track of 4 heroes and where they are moving.

Probably the biggest thing that real time adds to games is tension. There is a clock, a timer, something that is counting down. And it isn’t like in something like Scattergories where you have a limited amount of time to come up with as many answers as possible and then compare the answers, in that, the comparing the answers is really part of the game. In most real time games, when you hit the end, the game is over and you either in or lose. There is no tallying up points, there is no checking to see if you did well enough, and while that can show up in some games that offer some real time, for the most part, it’s pretty obvious how well you did in the game. So it’s a constant pressure to make sure you are getting the right thing.

For that reason, I think that these games are going to generally be fairly polarizing. Even for myself, real time games are not something I want to pull out all that often because they can be stressful. And it requires people to make split second decisions, and for a lot of people, that can be too much pressure to work on. There are some games that help with that a little bit, but even those, because there is a real time element are going to be more stressful than your average game. These types of games are definitely not ideal games for people with analysis paralysis.

So, if these games sound interesting to you, what are some that work well?

Gateway Game

Fuse – In this game it’s a race against time as you try and defuse as many bombs as possible. The trick to this is that you are trying to roll dice to do that. Each player will take a turn as fast as possible to roll some dice, and then each player takes one and adds it to a bomb they need to defuse. But, there are rules as to what dice are needed to defuse a bomb. One might need to dice that add up to the value of a third die. So you need to pick numbers that work for that, or it might be that the numbers need to increase. If you can’t take a die to help defuse a bomb, you have to take one off of your current bombs and put it back into the bag of dice. So you need the luck to work out in your favor. All of this while an app counts down time and everyone is trying to make sure everyone can get a die but also not take too much time discussing.

Medium Weight

Captain Sonar – This one is interesting because it’s actually one that has less tension, which is odd considering you are on two teams of subs who are trying to figure out where the other is and sink them. Each player has a different role on the submarine. One person is the Captain who is giving orders, telling players what direction to move, conferring with the First Officer who is readying systems like mines and torpedoes, the Radar Technician who is listening to the other teams Captain and trying to figure out by mapping their path where the other team is, and working with the Engineer to keep systems up that the Officer will want to use. Now, that seems like there is a lot going on, and there is, it’s a fairly lengthy game to teach, but what each role does is quite simple. The reason that this game is less stressful is that while it is real time, there is no complete this before time runs out. It’s just tracking down the other ship, that means as the Captain I can announce which direction we’re moving as quickly or slowly as I’d want. This is definitely a different feel than a lot of other real time games.

Heavy Weight

Galaxy Trucker – Now this almost falls into the Scattergories category of “real time” games. The reason I say that is because about half the game isn’t in real time. Instead you are dealing with complications that are coming your way. This can be pirates or asteroids, or picking up supplies for your ship. But where it is real time is the building of the ship. You are fighting with your opponents over tiles that are all face down to start. So you are frantically trying to get the ship put together with enough engines, cannons, crew, cargo room, and power so that can make the best run possible and have as little of your ship blow up as possible. The issue is you need to connect the pieces right. If there’s a two prong connector keeping it together, it better connect to a two prong and more things like that. And some parts just deadend, so it might be a nice cargo area, but do you want it if you can’t protect it with space cannons or shields? I’m not sure how much more complex this is than Captain Sonar, but there are more decisions that need to be made in this game about building your ship and more things to keep track of when doing that.

I will say that out of all of the games I’ve mentioned, Magic Maze, Fuse, Captain Sonar, and Galaxy Trucker, I’m fans of two of them, the other two I’d play but they’re just okay. Magic Maze and Fuse have a much higher stress level and I like playing board games to relax so stressful board games won’t cause me to freeze up, but they aren’t high on my list. With Captain Sonar, it is real time but it’s not as rushed feeling. And with Galaxy Trucker, the game is goofy, you poorly put together space truck will fall apart some and that’s fine, because it’s supposed to, you’re just hoping it’s better than everyone else’s. One final real time type of game I want to mention are Unlock and Exit, both of those score you against how long it took you to solve them. These are good gateway style real time games, I just didn’t mention them because I just talked about them with Escape Room games.

Do you like the tension of real time games or are they too stressful? What are some of your favorites?

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In area control players are trying to control portions of the board for some benefit. This can be to win the game, it can be that they get a resource if they control the area, or it can allow them to acquire currency or victory points. To do this, you are looking to have either all or the majority of the pieces in an area.

Like I saw saying, the classic example of this mechanic is Risk. In Risk you are getting armies, taking them to conquer areas of the world hoping to eventually reach world domination and hold every area. You do this by rolling dice to see if you can defeat your opponent and push your armies out as far as you feel is safe so that when your next turn comes around, you can get more armies and push things out further in your march to victory.

As I was saying earlier, for some people, this mechanic can be considered mean or less fun to play because it encourages confrontation. If you have the majority or the area completely controlled, I might want it to help me win the game, so I’m going to directly interact with your pieces and negatively impact your plans. What can happen in games like this is that someone will take the early lead in the area control and then will have the other players gang up on them to help prevent them from running away with the game, but that can feel very mean to the player who is getting ganged up, and this is something very common in Risk, because there are just some positions that are extremely strong.

A lot of modern board games try and balance this out. Some of the examples I give will make it so that the confrontation is much more common but not as negative in the game. Or some games now balance it out by saying if you don’t have the majority, you get some lesser option or the leftover option from the person who has the most selects from. This helps keep the game from feeling as mean and as personal because either everyone is always in the midst of the conflict, or the conflict isn’t as directly negative as because you still get some reward. This really makes area control more appealing to a general gaming crowd and can remove the memory of old childhood fights while playing Risk.

Gateway Game

Smallworld – This game is one of those that is conflict all of the time. In this game you are collecting coins, which are victory points at the end of the game. To do this, you just look at the number of areas that you are controlling at the end of each round. So you are regularly fighting for areas on the board. But with Smallworld, a 2-5 person game, the map size changes depending on player count in order to keep the conflict level high. So on a three player game, you are guaranteed to be running into your opponents. Beyond that the race and trait combination that you select at the start of the game isn’t the one that you have the whole time. So maybe your commando pixies were good to start, but as your opponents start to attack you, you can put the pixies into decline and get a new race and start attacking your opponents with that race. So it’s a balancing act that keeps you in the game and in conflict throughout the game. But because there is so much conflict no one generally feels ganged up on.

Medium Weight

Hanamikoji – Now this game is actually pretty simple as well, but I really like it as a thinky two player area control/area influence game. In this game instead of a chunk of land like so many area control areas, you are trying to win the favor of Geisha. To do this, you have to give them gifts. What makes this game interesting is how the mechanics work. Each player has a total of four given actions that they can do, and they can do them each once per round. Each player gets four turns during a round, so they can either set aside a gift that their opponent won’t see, discard two gifts that won’t be used for influence, show three gifts, of what their opponent can take one, or create two groups of gifts that their opponent can see and their opponent picks one. The game plays extremely fast but offers more interesting and important decisions than a lot of larger games do as you try and puzzle out what your opponent might have based off of the choices that they give you.

Heavy Weight

Blood Rage – In this Vikings themed game, you are fighting with the power of the Norse gods backing your clan. You do this by spending action points and upgrading your troops and completing missions. To complete these missions and to get more action points for turns, glory for winning in battle, and other things, you need to control an area. However, conflict will arise as you raid an area and the opposing clans can come rushing in and try and stop you from being able to take it. This one is about grabbing that control each round and trying to get control of Yggdrasil so that you get improve in multiple areas. This game does a good job of balancing out winning fights and getting control of those areas and losing because of what is known as the Loki strategy. Loki is all about tricking people and gaining victory points that way. Definitely a good game all around with a lot of different objectives you can go for and an area control game that can allow you not to have to be purely in the conflict and you can still do well.

There are so many options for area control out there, these are just a few that I like a lot and that work well for a good variety of people. Area control or influence doesn’t have to be as swingy or give as many options for a run away leader as something like Risk did so it shouldn’t lead to hurt feelings like straight up conflict games can. What are some of your favorite area control games?

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The idea of variable player power is that each player can do something different in the game. Now, that might mean that you’re the only player who can do something, or you can do something better than anyone else. And this isn’t because of the skill that the player possesses themselves, it is instead something that the game grants the player the ability to do.

A kind of silly but obvious example of this is in the game Magic Maze. In that game you are trying to, without verbal communication, move a group of heroes through a mall so that they can pick up what they need and then get out before time runs out. In this game each player has a certain power, you might be able to move the heroes down while I can move them up, someone else can move them left, right, and so on and so forth. While all the powers do basically the same thing, move the heroes, each of them moves it in a unique way. And now I wouldn’t really consider this a great example of how variable player powers can be used in a game, it is obvious, because you are doing something different than anyone else, in fact, you are only doing things different than everyone else.

In most variable player power games, your power isn’t the only thing that you can do. Most of the time there will be a set of common actions that you can take, but you’ll have some added thing that you can do in the game. Pandemic is a good example of this. In Pandemic everyone has the same abilities, you can travel, treat a disease, trade a card, or cure a disease. However, if you are the Dispatcher, you can move other character pawns, not just your own. If you are the Medic, you can treat a disease better. And the same goes for the likes of the Researcher and Scientist and all the other characters. They can all do the basic actions the game, but they can improve upon a basic action or add in a whole action or affect that is specific to them.

Why I like this mechanic so much is that it makes each role in the game feel different. And it means that each time you play the game it feels different as well. In the Pandemic example, if I play the Dispatcher, I’m doing actions that are helping us win the game but that are consistently different than those of the Medic. I care about getting people to where they need to be versus healing a disease. So next time when I’m the researcher and my actions are all about getting people the cards they need, I can coordinate and plan with the Dispatcher to get me to where I need to go so that I’m not using the cards I need to help someone else cure a disease. Sure, you can repeat or find a favorite character for playing or team that you like for winning, but some of the fun is trying out new things. And that’s even more interesting, in my opinion, in a competitive game, because generally that means you are changing how you target a win, I’ll talk about on of my favorites with that coming up here.

Gateway Game:

Homebrewers – Now, I’m sure people have a bunch of different games that I could have put here, but this newer game is one that I really like that plays fast. In this game you are brewing and improving your homebrewed beer. You do this by adding ingredients to your beer, this improves your beer so it makes it more likely you’ll play in the Summer Beer Fest and Oktober Fest. Where the player powers come in is that each character can do something unique. One of the homebrewers is better at cleaning their equipment, another is efficient so they get an extra action die in a month. All of things that are done are simple, and at the end, you end up with a lot of crazy sounding beer that might be good or might just be weird. If that theme doesnt work for you, Pandemic is also a great opion.

Medium Weight:

Xenoshyft: Onslaught – Again an area that could have a lot of different games, but I really like this one because it combines two or my favorite mechanics, player powers with deck building. You even get to blow up some bugs in this cooperative game. In Xenoshyft: Onslaught, you are fighting back wave after wave of bugs who are trying to get into your mining base on an alien planet. To do this, you create a line of defense, but what’s fun is that you can help other people with their defenses as well, so it’s very cooperative in nature. The player powers come in with what group of the security defending the base you are. If you are a medic, that means you start with a special card to start in your deck and it means that you get a few special abilities that unlock over the various waves of bugs. It can be a discount when it comes to buying weapons, armor, more troops, medical supplies, and then they start to build from there. It’s a very tough cooperative game, but I like it a lot.

Heavy Weight

Lords of Hellas – Now, this one is my most controversial pick because there are a lot of good ones out there, and some people don’t like Lords of Hellas all that well. I really like it, though, because of the variable player powers and multiple win conditions. In this game you are either trying to control two groups of land areas, a completed statue, defeated three monsters, or control areas with five temples. At the beginning of the game you pick a hero, and that hero has a unique power. This can help you decide what you want to go after in terms of winning the game. It can be as simple as just starting the game with a priestess but that means you can start going down the path of getting temples faster. But it leads you a bit in a way to win, though, when I got the extra priestess and was going for temples, I actually got closer to winning with two areas controlled. But I like the different options that it gave you and there were a ton of different heroes, so you could really tailor it to how you wanted.

Those are just some of them that I like, there are so many out there, even something like Gloomhaven falls into that category but I skipped dungeon crawler games because while it is a variable power, it feels and plays different, and I’ll talk about dungeon crawler and what that means coming up anyways. What are some of your favorite games with variable player powers? Does it sound interesting to you if you haven’t played a game like that?

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There are two different types of deduction games, the first is based off of the game Clue, where you are trying to figure out who-done-it. It isn’t a particular person in the group, it is a part of the game that there is some character that has done something. You are then using logic and reasoning to determine and guess a result. This can be done in a number of different ways, it might be that you are using reasoning while looking at a card. Or it could be trying to acquire information that other people know as well. These games typically end when someone figures out the solution or everyone gets it wrong.

The other type is social deduction. Social deduction is where you are trying to find out about which players at the table are the “bad guys”. These games normally have some way for both sides to win. These sorts of games are based off of Mafia or Werewolf where some people are normal citizens who are trying to figure out who the Mafia or Werewolves are before all the normal citizens are killed. This sort of game originally had a moderator who would run the game as you’d have to close your eyes and have secret information as to who was going to be killed. This has been built up over time for additional difficulty and intrigue to the game versus primarily being a conversation around the table.

The first type is much more pure deduction because all the information you’d need to know is available. With social deduction because the players are the ones who are lying, or telling the truth, about their role, the information is going to be less perfect as you try and read the people in the room and determine who is on what team and who is trying to cause the group as a whole to lose. So depending on what your style is, more social or logical, that’ll help determine which one is better for you.

So, let’s talk about some of the games that fit into these genres.

Gateway Game:

The Resistance – In this game it’s a simple social deduction where you are going on missions. However, depending on the numbers of players, some of the players are spies from the evil organization who is trying to stop the resistance. If they go on a mission, they can cause it to fail. But if they aren’t careful how they do it, they can reveal who they are. And if they reveal who they are, or people at the table guess who they are, they won’t get sent on anymore missions, because no one trusts them, and then it’ll make it harder for the spies to be able to fail missions. So it’s a balancing act for the spies to fail missions covertly so it’s harder for it to be pin pointed to them. The game plays fast, and you can put some theme into what is basically voting on a team and then team doing the mission if you want. The game scales well as well and is enjoyable.

Medium Weight:

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong – This builds and I would say is kind of between the two games on my list. While Resistance is completely about the interactions and being able to guess and read the other players, this game still has hidden roles, one person is a murder and one is a witness, and you might have an accomplice and everyone else is investigators who are trying to solve a murder. To do that, the game runner, who has the role of the forensic scientist, is sending up reports. These reports are will give the investigators clues, like, the murder took place at a hospital, or the murder victim was old, things like that. And the investigators are trying to piece together these reports in such a way that they can figure out which of the murder weapons and clues left that the scene, in front of each player, make sense for the murder. The murder and the accomplice are trying to deflect or suggest things that keep suspicion off of themselves. While the witness is trying to quietly keep people on track, because if the murder is caught, the murder and accomplice still have a chance to take out the witness which then still gives them the win. This game has more moving parts to it, and while the Resistance builds with accusing people, from the start of the game, people are trying to puzzle out what it might be from the first report that is sent up. Plus, figuring out who the murder is, you might have it narrowed down, but you still have to get the combination right of weapon and clue.

Heavy Weight:

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game – Now, this one is the first of the deduction Clue style games where the information is out there, it’s just if you can piece it together. This is a big box game that takes you through a series of cards, based off of how you as a group want to investigate and you are trying to get through five different cases. There are expansions that add more cases. You, and your fellow players, then will spend your time carefully investigating a case, talking to witnesses, digging through evidence, and going through the games online database. And the cases can be very different from working a cold case to finding evidence of people being framed, to a kidnapping. And they can do a whole lot more. I really love how this game blends the digital portion where you are using a database they’ve created for the game, looking up real events and history, as well reading the story off of the cards. There is so much to dig through, and in the end, you are answering the best that you can. And then the cases build off of each other as well, which makes it even more fun. It’s a bigger and heavier game and you won’t be able to solve the cases perfectly just because there isn’t enough time, but I highly recommend this if you’re looking for a meatier deduction game.

Do you like deduction games? Have you played Clue or games like Mafia? What are some of your favorite deduction games? There are a lot of good ones out there, and while I don’t love social deduction, I really love the more logical deduction games.

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So what is drafting, probably the easiest way to look at it is what is common in the rest of our culture. We have the NFL draft and NBA draft’s that are televised, people draft teams for Survivor or Fantasy Football. When you are drafting you are selecting one thing out of a pool of many things and that one thing is yours and no one else can have it. Game do something similar either with dice, actions, cards, whatever it might be.

There are primarily two types of drafts, the first being, I have a selection of things to pick from, you have a selection, we both pick, we both do our thing, and then we pass selections and repeat until they are all gone. This is how Sushi Go Party! works. You have a hand of cards, you pick one card putting it face down, once everyone has picked, you put them face up at the same time, pass your hand of card and repeat. Once all the cards have been drafted, you score, shuffle the cards back up, and repeat, passing the other direction this time, and then you do that once more back the original direction. It’s very common to draft in rounds like this where it goes one way and then another.

The other type of drafting is from an open pool. This is how something like fantasy football works, items are just removed from a general pool. In board games, this is how Sagrada and Roll Player work. You grab a certain number of dice, generally number of players plus one or twice the number of players, so that no one gets stuck with a single item to pick. You roll the dice, that’s the pool to draft from, then one person picks, and so on and so forth until all of the dice, except for one, are picked. Or if you do twice the number of players for the dice, you start selecting down one way and once everyone has gotten a die, the last person to pick a die gets the first pick of it going backwards, so last to first to select their second die.

The big difference between the two is open information and hidden information. With the general pool of things, the information is open, you and everyone else know what is available. But either way can bring up another item that is a part of drafting, which is hate drafting. Hate drafting is the idea that you take something that might not be the best for you, but would have been really good for the next person picking from the pool. It’s a balancing act of taking something that will still potentially help you, but might potentially give your opponent more points. Now, good game balance should generally make it worth it for you, except maybe late game, to take what you need versus what would block someone else. And while hate drafting is certainly a viable move, most of the time as a complete strategy it won’t help you win.

So let’s look at some games that use drafting:

Intro/Gateway Game

Draftosaurous – I really like this little drafting game that is somewhere between a roll and write game and a drafting game. In it you are drafting dinosaur meeples and placing them on your board to either creates sets or get as many of a type as you can and then passing your fist full of dinomeeples to the next player and getting a new set from another player. So the main thing is drafting and you are just putting the dinomeeples down depending on what was rolled on a die and how it’ll help you with scoring. The roll and write aspect comes from the die roll that tells you were to place stuff, but also that the scoring is very similar to a lot of roll and write games as is the board. It’s a super fast and very fun little game.

Medium Weight

Sagrada – This is just a beautiful game where you are trying to make the best stained glass window possible. In it you are drafting translucent dice and putting them, based off of various color and number restrictions on your board. The trick comes that you can’t have the same number adjacent to each other, or the same colors, so you have to consider where you are placing dice. Now, this would get really hard at the end, but they give you tools that allow you to manipulate the dice, which adds to the complexity of the game. This game just looks great on the table and has a lot of replayability with all of the tools, the different scoring cards, and just how the dice roll.

Heavy Weight

Roll Player – Now, I don’t think that Roll Player is a ton heavier than Sagrada, and I could have picked some other games, like Blood Rage that have drafting as a part of the game and a whole lot more going on as well. But Roll Player is my choice because drafting is the biggest part of it. In this game you are building an RPG character by picking dice out of a pool and placing them in for one of your six stats, strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. You’re also getting to manipulate those dice or already played dice by which score you put them into. Beyond that you are buying skills and traits and getting equipment, all of which can help you score more points. Along with that, based off of your class, you need your stats to be at a certain level, based off of your background, you need certain dice to be in certain place, and based off of your alignment, you can use traits to manipulate it and get it close as possible. The main mechanic of the game, draft a die, place it, and do what it says to do in that stat is very simple, but there’s a lot to keep track of.

Overall, I really like drafting games. Now, I only have one in my three suggestions where that has you pick at the same time, which makes a lot of drafting games very scalable, but there are a lot of out there like that such as Sushi Go Party!, 7 Wonders, and even Blood Rage. What are some drafting games that you like? Does drafting seem like an interesting mechanic to you?

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So in a roll and write, you, on your turn, or on the collective round of the whole group, are rolling some dice and filling in a spot on your own personal scoring sheet. In Yahtzee, this could be the total of the number of sixes rolled in a round, or 40 points for a large straight. In Railroad Ink, it’s adding in railroad track, or in Criss Cross it’s adding in shapes or symbols to your board. You do this either until everything is filled in, like Yahtzee or Criss Cross or for a prescribed number of rounds. At that point you either add up your numeric scoring values, Yahtzee, or you take the shapes and symbols and compute their scoring.

Now, a flip and write is extremely similar in how it works. The main difference is that you are flipping cards that people are using to fill in their area. This can be filling in a shape like in Second Chance or Cartographers or it can be numbers or some sort of other action like filling in bubble like on a test, such as in Welcome Too… These games do have, for the most part, a similar end scoring mechanic where you are then converting what you’ve done into points and adding up that total to see who won.

The core mechanic, though, of filling in a number, symbols, bubbles, whatever it might be on a sheet that is then used for scoring is consistent across both if you are rolling dice or flipping cards. The main reason that you’d use cards over dice is for additional consistency that you can get from the cards. It makes it less random than rolling a die, where, if you are unlucky, you could end up rolling a six every single time, which would be amazing for Yahtzee but pretty poor for most other games. So some of the games will use the cards to help with that consistency, especially in the case of Welcome Too… where the numbers go into the teens, so even with a twelve sided die, you’d have much wider variability. Also in that game, you can choose from one of three different options in terms of cards that are available and those three different options are pairs of cards, so it would be considerably more confusing with dice.

So, what are some roll and write or flip and write games that I’d recommend:

Gateway/Intro Game

Second Chance – This is a flip and write game that is very simple, it’s just about filling in shapes on your board to see how full you can get it. So every player has a shape, eight square shape (kind of like Tetris style) that they put on their board. Then two cards are flipped and players put down one of those two shapes touching a previous one on their player board. That continues until a person can’t fill one in, and than that player gets a “second chance” which is a card that only they can use. If they can use it, they are in the game, if not they are out of the game and count up their open spaces. At the end, once all the cards have been flipped or everyone is out, whomever has the fewest open spaces left is the winner of the game. Very simple and very fast, it’s a fun game you can sit down and play multiple times. And the game encourages, but doesn’t require, that you doodle in the shapes that you are putting down on the board.

Medium Weight

Cartographers – You are a map maker who is filling in various terrains on your map. But mainly, you’re doing it in a way that will make the scoring work. This again uses Tetris like shapes but there is more going on, it’s not just how much you can fill in. Instead, you’ll be looking to see four different scoring objectives that rotate throughout the game. You go out map making in spring, and you score objective A & B, summer – B & C, Fall – C & D, and Winter – D & A. So you’re thinking about what objectives will be scored coming up, but also knowing that while you might not score much for A in the spring, you don’t want to ignore it through the rest of the game because you’ll score objective A again in the winter. Plus, there are monsters, and while you putting everything else on your own board, the monsters tell you which way to pass your scoring sheet and your opponent puts it on. Any open spot next to a monster at the end of a round is a negative point. So if you aren’t careful, it is possible to get negative points in a round.

Heavy Weight

Welcome Too… – Now, I know the sequel to this game is heavier, Welcome To New Las Vegas, but I haven’t gotten a chance to play that one yet. This one is all about building your perfect 1950’s neighborhood with the white picket fences and everything being great. To do that, you are using one of three sets of cards, in those sets one is always going to be a number which will have to be a house number on your streets, and those house numbers have to go up numerically. And the other is some special power or spot you can fill in, maybe you numbered a house with a pool so you build that pool or maybe it’s a park or you improve property values or most importantly, you build those white picket fences. This game has a lot of good decision making points because the house numbers need to be always increasing, so while you can put in a 15 at the top of the row and a 12 three spots earlier, you now need a 13 and 14 to be able to connect those houses, which you might need to complete one of the building permits. So there are a lot of challenges and interesting decisions in this game, even with that said, it isn’t that heavy and goes very fast.

Are you a fan of roll/flip and write games? They are certainly having a moment now with a new one coming out seemingly every week. Do you prefer the thinkier roll and write games or the ones that you can just play really relaxed?

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In an engine building game there is some part of the mechanic that is going to make your game work more efficiently, effectively, and consistently. Deck building could be considered a weaker form of engine building as you are trying to build combos together. But Engine Building generally is going to be more specific than that. You’re going to be collecting the pieces so that you can do something that is going to give you a better chance of winning the game, and so that you can consistently do it over and over again. And each time you run the engine it should be running more efficiently and powerfully.

Your engine can do a lot of different things, it might generate resources of some sort, from goods in euro games to money, or it could just give you the points you need to win the game, or it could power up your attacks and the combat in a game. But as you go you’ll be able to generate more of what you need more consistently and possibly more efficiently. This can be done through acquiring new cards or abilities or upgrading abilities that you already have.

An example of this is Splendor where you are trying to buy gem cards for points and fulfill the wishes of wealthy nobles who are looking for specific combinations of gem cards. To get a gem card you have to spend gems, so at the start you inefficiently collect gems on your turn to get gem cards that don’t give you any points but do give you a permanent gem of one of the colors that you put on the table in front of you. So the more of the cards you can get, the more permanent gems you can get. And you can use the permanent gems to help you get more cards, so eventually the cheap cards that don’t get you any points, you’ll be able to get for free, and maybe even some of the medium level cards that give you a few points. Towards the end of the game you are spending only a gem or maybe two to get another gem card that is giving you a bunch of points. So the game has a building action to being able to do greater things, getting expensive gem cards. And the gem cards you have collected are your engine for getting more gem cards in the future more efficiently.

Let’s talk about some interesting engine building games.

Gateway/Intro Game

Homebrewers – I could have gone with Splendor here and it isn’t a bad choice, but I prefer Homebrewers because I prefer beer to gems (not a great investment strategy), but also because of how fast Homebrewers is to play. In Homebrewers you are a homebrewer who is trying to brew the best beer for Summerfest and then Oktoberfest. To do that, you need to sanitize your equipment, get grain, and brew. It’s very simple, but where the engine building comes in is that you can add in ingredients to your beer. So I am going to brew my IPA, I can add in something like oyster (don’t ask me why), and that might move up another one of my brews on the scoring track, or it might then give me money, or straight up victory points. And each time I brew that beer I’ll get more of whatever oyster gives me, and I can add more ingredients as well to IPA, or maybe my IPA’s are plenty good for scoring, I could add it to my Stout or Porter to build up that engine. So you can create combos that allow you brew more and get more points across the board.

Medium Weight Game

Photosynthesis – Now, let me preface by saying, I don’t have a lot of medium to heavy weight engine building games in my collection. While I enjoy good engine building, I get that most of the time through deck building which is a more random version of engine building. But I really like Photosynthesis, not because it’s overly complex, but because it has some thinky decisions in it. You’re trying to plant trees in the right spots at the right times, growing them so they will get you sun points, while trying to minimize the number of sun points your opponent gets. There’s a lot of thought that goes into where you are going to be placing the trees, where the sun is going to be located on the board and what trees might be getting blocked from sunlight in upcoming turns. This game definitely has more take that than the other two where you are a building your engine and you can block other people from getting sun points with the trees that they have just by planting close to them and casting a shadow that blocks their tree. Plus the game looks beautiful.

Heavy/Complex Game

Charterstone – Now, I haven’t beat all of Charterstone, but it’s a fun euro legacy game where you unlock things from game to game to make your engine more efficient, but also you can improve your engine in the game by getting more helper workers, friends, guests, items and more. So you can pick various strategies to help you score points, but it’s fun because it’s an engine building game that builds up not only throughout the game but also between games with the legacy aspect. So while the core concept of the game place your worker, take the action is very simple as time goes on and with the right guests, friends, workers, etc. you can build up a pretty complex engine that’ll allow you to do multiple things on a given turn. And that grows a lot throughout the game with a wide variety of things to do and utilize.

Now, I know my heavy/complex engine builder is nothing compared to a lot of them out there. Charterstone on Board Game Geek (BGG) is a 2.8 out of 5 in terms of weight, there are games like Food Chain Magnate or Terraforming Mars that are much higher with Food Chain Magnate over 4. I am interested in trying some of those games, but they tend to be less interesting to me because they are often longer. What I really like about Homebrewers is that it backings in some engine building in a package that can be taught and played in forty-five minutes.

What are some of your favorite engine building games? Is it a mechanic that you like or that sounds interesting to you?

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Deck Building

Most people are familiar with games that use decks of cards, from the kids game Candyland to something like Uno or Skip-bo to party games like Cards Against Humanity. All of these games use a communal deck of cards that players draw from to get their hand or to take an action and then they play those cards. It’s a very straight forward concept and you have a deck of cards that is consistent that you’ll be drawing the cards from and you’ll get whatever you get from that pool of cards.

A deck building game builds upon this idea of the deck of cards, but instead of having 108 cards in the Uno deck that everyone shares, instead you have your own deck of 10 or 12 or some number of cards. And when you start the game everyone’s decks are the same. But as the game goes on, you purchase more cards from a pool of cards that are face up to add to your deck. So when you have to reshuffle, now your deck is different than another persons deck.

A simple example of this is Ascension. In Ascension, you start with a deck of 10 cards, eight that give you points to purchase more cards, and two that let you fight monsters. The cards that you buy, some of them allow you to draw more cards when you play them, or get more points for purchasing more cards, or they’ll help you fight monsters. So by the time you shuffle again, you will have two or more different cards than the person you’re playing against, so the hand you’ll draw will be different from a hand of cards that they can draw. The further you get into the game and the more cards that you add to your deck, the more different your deck of cards will be from another players and the more different your strategy will be from another player. The deck building aspect of the game allows players to create a deck that matches how they want to play the game.

All deck building games give you a way to acquire more cards. In Ascension you purchase them, so a card that costs more will mean that you need more points to purchase it, so you might not be able to right away. This tends to be a core mechanic as well of a lot of deck building games is that they build up to you doing bigger and bigger things, but we’ll talk about what that mechanic is known as in a future article.

There are two main types of deck building games. The static market game or the changing market game. Ascension is an example of a changing market game. You have six cards to make your purchase from or to fight if they are monsters. When you purchase a card or defeat a monster, a new card is flipped down into the market form a draw pile and you don’t know what that card is going to be. So a card you want one turn might not be there the following turn, or might not be there at all again in a game. In a static market game you have a certain number of piles of cards, all the cards in those piles are identical so when you buy the top one, you know what the one underneath it is going to be. This allows you, from the start of the game, to determine a long term strategy throughout the game and to really dictate what your deck is going to be capable of doing. Dominion is an example of a static market deck building game. Now, it comes down to preference as to which one you like better. With the static deck it is going to more heavily favor the more experienced player or the player with better long term planning skills, because at the start of the game you can sit down, look at the static market and make your plan. If a changing market, you might come in with a plan but then need to adjust it on the fly, but it’ll keep the game more balanced between more and less experienced players. Neither is really a bad thing, it just comes down to personal preference.

Let’s talk about some deck building games that you might want to checkout if this sounds interesting.

Gateway/Intro To Deck Building Game

Ascension – For me, Ascension is the ideal deck building game, the changing market place means that a more experienced player doesn’t have a massive advantage and while there are some better strategies, it all depends on how the market comes out. It also works well because you are just doing two things with your cards, mainly, you are either buying with the purchasing power on the cards or you are fighting a monster with a fighting power on a the cards. A few cards do a few more things, like draw more cards from your deck but they are generally simple. The theme isn’t really there, but in most pure deck building games, which Ascension is, the theme will be missing or barely there anyways.

Medium Weight Deck Building Game

Clank! – Now, regular Clank! isn’t my favorite way to play Clank!. I like Clank! In! Space! better, but there’s just a little bit more going on than a medium weight deck building game. Clank! again has a variable market and monsters to fight, but you’ve added in some additional elements. It does more of one thing you see in Ascension, which is creating combos based off of who you’ve gotten, and it adds in more than just purchase and fight. You now have the ability to move and you are pushing your luck. Also, good cards might have negative consequences as well. It adds a bit more complexity and a bit more strategy to the game, even with a changing market place.

Heavy/Complex Deck Building Game

Aeon’s End: War Eternal – I had a few options to pick here, but I went with Aeon’s End: War Eternal. A lot of deck building games add to their complexity not so much the deck building aspect, but from additional pieces to the game play. Aeon’s End: War Eternal (or any of the Aeon’s End Games) are good examples of this. The deck building uses a static market, but you are presented with more choices. You have to cast spells at monsters, but to do that you have to purchase more spells, but with your money you also need to open breaches to cast those spells. Plus, all of the Aeon’s End games add in something else interesting, not only is there a lot of strategy to what you get from the market, you also don’t shuffle your deck, you just discard cards, so if you can plan it out correctly you can stack the deck in a particular order to get a lot of well balanced hands or maybe a hand with a lot of purchasing power in order to get a very strong spell. There’s just more to think about, though this game is cooperative so a more experienced player can help and teach a new player to the game.

Now, there are a lot of deck building games out there to choose from and some that fall into the category that I’d qualify as more deck construction games that work off of some of the same principles as a deck building game. Have you tried a deck building game before? Do they sound fun to you?

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