51 Mechanics: Worker Placement

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

51 Mechanics later (well, more like 45 when we exclude the few that don't really have a game-based or gamified learning application), we arrive at Worker Placement, one of the mechanics favored most by those on the highly dedicated end of the gamer spectrum. Worker Placement games are well known for their complexity. Indeed, some of the most beloved Worker Placement games are considered among the most difficult of contemporary games. In Worker Placement games, you are allotted a limited supply of pieces (workers), each of whom allows you to take a specific action. There are also a limited number of available actions and a limited number of opportunities to take each action (sometimes only one player per turn can take a particular action). This makes gameplay cognitively very complex and engaging...and also sometimes infuriating!

Agricola (BGG Rank: 17)

Nominally a game about farming in early modern Europe, Agricola is one of the classics of the worker placement genre. It's actually somewhat helpful to play just out of the box to understand what the farmer's life in that time was like, but it can be bewilderingly complex, even for sophisticated gamers. There's a lot here, and the engine is very powerful or the right gamifying teacher.

Alchemists (BGG Rank: 80)

In Alchemists, you are playing, essentially, potion makers in training. Your job is to discern and publish theories about the correct formulas for certain kinds of potions, sell potions to unsuspecting adventurers and find the patterns of materials that will generate the best possible combinations. Fun out of the box, particularly for those who also like the game Zendo and its pure deduction mechanic.

Caylus (BGG Rank: 45)

In Caylus you are building a new castle for the French king. As you build the castle, the city in which the castle is being built expands and develops as well, allowing for ever more worker placement opportunities. A rewarding game experience for those who want an intense experience.

Kingsburg (BGG Rank: 267)

A fun and accessible entry in the Worker Placement field, Kingsburg is a game of dice as well. On your turn you throw three dice. The values on these dice determine the workers in the Kingdom you are eligible to select. For example, to access the King, whose value is 18, you have to throw three 6s. If you were to throw a 2, a, 3 and a 4, you could use each die individually or combine them in whatever combination you'd like. Be mindful, though, as you can't put dice where someone else already has placed dice.

Village (BGG Rank: 110)

Village has a great story mechanic as well as its Worker Placement mechanic, and while I appreciate its story element, I think its deployment of the Worker Placement mechanic is perhaps the best implementation in contemporary gaming. You're trying to build a medieval village into its ideal form over the course of a few historical generations defined by game pieces in the community graveyard. 

51 Mechanics: Voting

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

The voting mechanic is used in a lot of different settings, not just games about elections (indeed, none of the games I cite below are election games). In this mechanic, the players are required as part of the game play to ballot on a variety of topics/concerns. Sometimes these directly impact the outcome of the game, but other times they have an influence over an aspect of the game that could then shift the balance to one player or another. Sometimes the balloting is secret, sometimes its public, sometimes its more of an abstraction. At the end of the day, each player has control of a certain number of votes and has to deploy them in the service of whatever goal they're trying to achieve. This is an easy game mechanic to deploy, but because it so directly generates winners and losers, one should be mindful when using it in class to not assign assessment points to the voting process.

Dixit (BGG Rank: 195)

Dixit is one of the games in the vein of Apples-to-Apples, in which one player offers a card/concept/gestalt to the players and the rest of the players attempt to match that card in some way, depending on the rules. In Dixit, players are matching an abstract card to a brief description meant to evoke the card, but not so "on the nose" that all players vote for it. A wonderful family game, great for younger and older audiences, and outstanding at developing abstract communication skills.

Founding Fathers (BGG Rank: 1013)

Founding Fathers is a simulation of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in the United States. Dividing the players into factions, the game makes extensive use of the voting mechanic as the delegates to the convention select between different versions of articles of the US Constitution. A very fine history simulation game that would help anyone trying to master the ebb-and-flow of how the Constitution came to be.

Kingmaker (BGG Rank: 1701)

A classic from the 1970s that still has thousands of die-hard fanatics (despite its ridiculous game-end condition and unreadable map), Kingmaker is a game of the British War of the Roses in which players represent factions of contentious nobles attempting to control royal heirs and bring them to the throne. The voting mechanic in this game enters into play whenever there is a meeting of Parliament, which virtually any player can call under the right conditions. Parliament divvies out favors, titles and so forth, and can even vote to legitimate or de-legitimate a crowned heir. Absolute control of Parliament is one of the ways to accomplish a victory, but anyone who's played this great, great game will tell you there's no hope of achieving that objective!

Secret Hitler (BGG Rank: 192)

In the minds of many Secret Hitler is the best of the social deduction games, in large part because of the way it creates a pure information state. It's a fiercely competitive and challenging social deduction game and like all of them, voting is critical to gameplay.

Spyfall (BGG Rank: 392)

Spyfall is another social deduction game in which all of the players, except one, are given a card at the beginning of the game showing some kind of location (a cruise ship, a circus...). The other player is given a card that says "spy." The non-spys are trying to figure out who the spy is and the spy is trying to figure out where they all are. Each game lasts a maximum of eight minutes of back and forth, rapid fire questioning, suspicion and general mayhem.

51 Mechanics: Variable Player Powers

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

I'm not going to lie. Variable Player Powers is one of my top 5 mechanics. First, I love that there's the deep connection to roleplaying games that this mechanic represents with each player having a unique character or perspective. Second, the variability of each game is maximized in this mechanic because you've got so many characters to choose from generally that no games play the same. Last of all, these games give players different angles of attack when coming up with strategies and perspectives to achieve victory. Each of the games on this list is a classic in many ways (the lowest ranked, at 184, is Small World, one of the top 50 games of the past twenty years without question, at least in my perspective). They are great for the gamifying teacher because they give you an example of how to create perspective in the context of game play.

7 Wonders (BGG Rank: 42)

In 7 Wonders, each player is trying to construct one of the great ancient wonders like the Pyramids or the Colossus. Each of these wonders is looking for a particular combination of materials for successful construction. As a result, players direct their building along certain lines that are different than other wonders. This helps create a productive balance in the game and to give each player a plausible pathway to victory that is uniquely theirs. 7 Wonders is one of the great classics of modern gaming and keeps paying dividends the more you play.

Battlestar Galactica (BGG Rank: 62)

Baked into the perverse DNA of this classic game is the idea that different characters have different unique or specialized powers. Every character, from the Admiral to the lowliest pilot, can have a game-changing impact on this game. Because this game is based on a television program that was uniquely excellent at creating meaningful characters, the gameplay is exciting and believable right from the start. The social dynamics of this game make it rather different from the others on this list as well.

Dead of Winter (BGG Rank: 64)

The most "Galactica-like" of the other games on this list, Dead of Winter is a sort of cross between Galactica and a story like The Walking Dead with a bit of 28 Days Later thrown in for good measure. You are trying to survive the zombie apocalypse in a snow-bound settlement with just a few too few resources for anyone's good. Aaand, begin...

Small World (BGG Rank: 184)

In Small World, you represent a particular civilization during your turn composed of two identities - an adjective (Bivouacking, Forest-Dwelling) and a noun, representing some kind of fantasy race (Halflings, Skeletons). The way these two identities interact with each other and how each player's unique perspective interacts with each other is at the heart of game play. Players are obligated to take on a variety of identities throughout the game, which makes the interactions and relationships that much more fun...or insane, depending on your point of view.

The Grizzled (BGG Rank: 292)

One of the most challenging of all cooperative games, in The Grizzled, you take on roles associated with a French combat team in World War I. The object is to endure and survive while dealing with being bombed and starved and scared out of your wits. With a unique artistic style and a compelling, simple narrative, this game is worth even more attention than it gets.

Cover image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/2371549/grizzled

51 Mechanics: Variable Phase Order

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

One of the mechanics that is definitely better suited for more experienced game players (and gamifying instructors), Variable Phase Order is a mechanic wherein each game turn is likely to be played in a different order than in previous or subsequent turns. The turn order is determined by some aspect of the game itself, rather than predetermined by where players are sitting at the table or some other way of defining it. These games are challenging because it isn’t just deciding what to do on your turn that influences your decisions. Rather, there’s also the calculus you have to undertake to get a handle on when your turn will actually transpire in the game turn. Much more complex, and interesting to help students get a mastery of circumstances that extend beyond player turns in a system.

Citadels (BGG Rank: 319)

Every round, a player is going to become a new character in this game of city building. Players are trying to be the first person to build eight buildings in their city and different cards have different abilities. Selecting the right roles time after time is the best way to manage your path to victory in this game, and it can be quite challenging to get a sense of that. Each of these kinds of games really work to develop critical thinking skills, this one perhaps more than most.

Libertalia (BGG Rank: 298)

In Libertalia, you are a pirate captain trying to take advantage of your fellow pirate captains in a race to acquire resources. The challenge? You’re all trying to hire people from the same pool of available characters who act at different times in the course of the game. At least as much about deducing what your opponents are likely to do as anything else, Libertalia is a fun variant on the pirate themed games that were all the rage a few years back…and it can be learned in five minutes.

Mottainai (BGG Rank: 762)

In Mottainai, you are a monk trying to accomplish a wide variety of different tasks in order to achieve your winning objective. Choosing when to act at the right time influences the ways in which your fellow players can act on their turns in interesting ways. This game rewards thoughtful planning even more than the others do.

Puerto Rico (BGG Rank: 16)

One of the great classics of the board gaming renaissance, Puerto Rico was one of the first games to put this mechanic front and center. In this game, you are playing the role of a colonial administrator building up the colony of Puerto Rico in a variety of different ways. The players select a role to play on their turn and these roles allow you to act each in turn. The “governor” of the island on a particular turn gets to act first and get a special boon as a result, regardless of the action card they’ve chosen to employ.

Roll For The Galaxy (BGG Rank: 60)

Roll For The Galaxy is the dice version of Race For The Galaxy. In these games, you are building an empire in space based on planets that deliver different advantages. Quite complex, it has a great capacity to reward the clever player.

Cover image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/3239922/mottainai]

51 Mechanics: Trading

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Trading is a classic mechanic, used in games of all sorts from the beginning of the post-WW2 wargames era through to contemporary design. Indeed, the mechanic is so ubiquitous that it can be found in lots of different thematic places. It's a versatile mechanic used extensively because managing trading is almost inherently fun and it engages not just a capacity to understand value and relative value but also the social dynamics of making an effective trade. In some of the exemplar games listed below, the social context of the trade is sometimes more important than the trade itself for game play and fun purposes. This is a great "out of the box" mechanic to help students learn about value.

Bootleggers (BGG Rank: 1127)

In this game, players are rum runners and suppliers of assorted "products" to speakeasy's in Prohibition. Gameplay is pretty straightforward with a number of mechanics in play as you construct your illicit empire. Sufficiently historical in its organization that you might even look into it as an example of how to understand Prohibition.

Catan (BGG Rank: 281)

The best-selling game of the German-design era in modern board gaming, Catan is a classic for a reason. Its gameplay is easy enough for even non-gamers to understand. Its building mechanics are interesting and the dynamic of trading makes the game an exciting contest of trying to determine who is going to come out ahead of the curve as each trade moves resources around the board. A great game to understand the basics of civilization building. I recommend playing it with the Cities & Knights expansion as the best gameplay experience.

Civilization (BGG Rank: 228)

A classic from the days before Catan (the late 70s and early 80s!) in which players take on the role of an ancient civilization in the Mediterranean basin (Egypt, Crete, Assyria and so forth). Starting with just a handful of people, players expand their civilizations throughout the territory of the game board, waxing and waning in power as fate, and calamities dealt from player to player as calamity cards, devastate their societies. This game takes a LONG time to finish and is ultimately won not by how big the civilization is but by how sophisticated its culture is. Fascinating game - great fun, but not for the faint of heart!

Compounded (BGG Rank: 1121)

Compounded is a game that brings to the gamespace some interesting science. This game gives the players the test of making chemical compounds based on resources they have available to them or that have been traded to them. It also takes a bit of luck to be successful. Pretty quick playing, it can give students a sense of how chemical reactions work at a straightforward level.

Mare Nostrum (BGG Rank: 1080)

Another game set in the Mediterranean basin, in Mare Nostrum, players are once again playing civilizations in that part of the world. In this case, players build empires that have access to a very wide variety of resources which are used to build cities, armies and other developments to enhance the likelihood of victory. The trading mechanism in the game is clear, sophisticated and fun.

Cover image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/4175509/mare-nostrum-empires]

51 Mechanics: Time Track

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

The Time Track mechanic is one of my all-time favorite mechanics for generating excitement and a new kind of challenge in contemporary gaming. In the Time Track mechanic the player turn order is variable and is based on the kinds of actions the player previously took. As a result, players might get to make two, three or even more turns in a row to compensate for the fact that the previous player took an action that gave him/her great benefit but took a lot of time to accomplish. Because there is a very neat balance between the amount of time spent to accomplish an action and the potential benefits of taking these actions, there's a dynamic tension the player needs to manage every time it becomes their turn. A really interesting mechanic for helping students understand the value of time, the amount of time it takes to actually accomplish certain goals and the trade-offs between going fast for a few points or taking the long way for potentially many, many more points.

Around the World in 80 Days (BGG Rank: 1320)

In this game, players are choosing between different modes of travel to accomplish an around the world journey, á la Jules Verne. Players have the option of choosing trains or ships, but there has to be a correspondence of cards in order to allow the player to make a particular choice. The winning player is the player who made it around the board in the fewest number of days.

Chaosmos (BGG Rank: 2001)

Chaosmos features a universe in a state of active and ongoing collapse. In this game, players travel from planet to planet gathering secret knowledge in the hopes of attaining control of a powerful tool that will allow them to survive the end of the universe. The Time Track is just one of the many mechanics in this exciting, tense game.

Neuland (BGG Rank: 1894)

Neuland is an old classic that should be, in my judgment, much more highly rated than it actually is. Some game writers suggest that Neuland was the originating game of the Time Track mechanism and in Neuland, it works exactly as I described above. In this game, players are constructing logistical supply chains of goods and materials to construct buildings that allow them to place their family coat of arms on the board. The first to accomplish this wins.

Thebes (BGG Rank: 377)

The most significant and accessible implementation of the Time Track mechanic is found here, in Thebes. In this game of competitive archaeology, players are trying to acquire the knowledge necessary to more effectively dig ruins in the Middle East and Greece. Every action the players take has a certain number of time units required to execute the action. Digging in ruins is the most time exhausting. A brilliant game with very high replayability.

Tokaido (BGG Rank: 435)

One of the most beautiful games to be published in recent memory, in Tokaido the players take on the role of travelers along the Japanese royal road. Players travel from hostel to hostel having adventures along the way at different kinds of rest stops. A player is welcome to choose a lucrative stop far down the road at the cost of not being able to make many picks or could choose less desirable stops in the hopes of accumulating a lot of them. Some say it's more of an experience, but it's a great model for how to use games as assessments.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/278241/thebes

51 Mechanics: Tile Placement

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Tile Placement games have been hot ever since Carcassone debuted in 2000 and remain so. In Tile Placement games, the player's turn involves the placement of a tile on some kind of board to accomplish an objective. Inevitably these games are part Tile Placement and part Pattern Recognition, as the best place to put the tile onto the board is going to have something to do with recognizing and maximizing patterns. As a result, these games are great right out of the box for developing abstract thinking, number sense and, yes, pattern recognition. The great thing about these kinds of games as well is that they are generally very easy to learn, so players who are new to more advanced modes of board gaming can easily be introduced to this modality and find it quite accessible. Because they are about the relationships between the patterns as well, they are a great model for gamified learning. Many quite interesting gamified plans could come from each of these games being used as a model.

Azul (BGG Rank: 41)

Published in late 2017, Azul was an instant sensation. In this game, you are creating tile patterns that resemble Portuguese tile work. That may sound a bit dry, but the game play is accessible, strategic for heavy games and fast. One of the best new games of the year, pretty as all get out and a delightful challenge.

Bärenpark (BGG Rank: 362)

Another 2017 offering, in Bärenpark the players are creating zoological parks for, you guessed it, bears! A pretty strategic family game as these things go, Bärenpark features tiles with many different shapes and sizes and asks each player to place these tiles so that they complete four play grids. The way you play your tiles determines the next tiles you'll have available on subsequent turns. Charming and challenging.

Carcassonne (BGG Rank: 140)

Carcassonne is the grand-daddy of this genre, in which players expand the landscape of medieval France, creating little towns, big cities, productive fields and roads and well-supplied cloisters. Game play is easy, but mastery of the scoring mechanics is quite tricky. This game has dozens of expansions, but plays great right out of the box without expansions.

Metro (BGG Rank: 1458)

In Metro, players are trying to make connections between different 19th century Parisian underground railroad stations. Sounds a bit dry, I know, but I assure you, this is a great game. Each turn, you have a tile in front of you that has different patterns of railway on them. You can play your tile anywhere you like (with few restrictions) and once you do, if that completes the circuit, whatever railway stations that now connect are scored. Probably the most challenging of the pattern recognition forms of Tile Placement in this list.

Terraforming Mars (BGG Rank: 5)

Another recent hotness, in Terraforming Mars you take on the role of a corporation or other collective entity driving to create the conditions on Mars such that it can be described as fully terraformed. This involves atmospheric and temperature manipulation as well as transformation of the surface of the planet (the Tile Placement component). This is a great game worthy of the attention it is showered with. It looks way harder than it actually is.

51 Mechanics: Take That!

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

The Take That! mechanic is interesting because it directly places the players in opposition to each other to accomplish some kind of goal. It's not quite the same as a game that's merely competitive, however. Rather, in this kind of game, players' actions cause pieces/cards/equipment belonging to the other player or players to be removed from the board or to be segregated/de-powered in some way. For gamifying teachers, using this mechanic is probably a terrible idea for younger students, and using it as a primary mechanic is probably not a good idea as anything other than providing a little competitive flavor. These games are great fun and for the right player, they're just about perfect. But for those who either don't want to have their game materials messed with, or who don't want to do the messing around, it's probably best to stay clear of this mechanic.

Android: Mainframe (BGG Rank: 1724)

Mainframe, a game set in the Android universe, is a game where you take on the role of a computer hacker breaking into the server of a corporation. You are trying to establish control over that server to the detriment of your fellow "runners." This is a very fun abstract strategy game (the abstract strategy field often has a bit of the Take That! about it) that would be great out of the box for teaching abstract thinking.

Baseball Highlights: 2045 (BGG Rank: 368)

Sports simulation games are not as thick on the field as one might suspect, and good ones are even rarer still. Baseball Highlights: 2045 speculates about the future of baseball where there are three kinds of players: naturals, cyborgs and robots. Each type of player is good at one aspect of the game and not so good at some other aspect. Gameplay in BH: 2045 is abstracted with one of the critical game mechanics being the removal of your opponents' cards from the field of play so they don't allow the opponent to get base hits or score runs. 

Lords of Waterdeep (BGG Rank: 51)

A very popular Worker Placement game, Lords of Waterdeep is a complete game setting in the Dungeons&Dragons campaign milieu Forgotten Realms. Set in the city of Waterdeep, players take actions that help them advance their control of or access to certain city resources. Quest-based, this game is a nice introduction to the Worker Placement mechanic and to the Take That! mechanic, but is more complicated than some of the other games in this list.

Magic: The Gathering (BGG Rank: 156)

The game that started the collectible card game revolution in the early 1990s, Magic: The Gathering is, on its leading edge, laughably complicated. But it is accessible to casual players and in that form, it is one of the best games to introduce game-based critical thinking to young learners. The combinations of mana, spells and actions combine to make Magic one of the greatest games invented in the last 50 years. A justifiable classic, but for new players, just buy a couple of basic starter decks and proceed...don't worry about the vexing complexity. All in time!

Smash Up (BGG Rank: 630)

Good, zany fun is the order of the day with Smash Up. In this game, you take two decks of twenty cards, each representing some pop culture archetype (Killer Plants!, Sparkle Ponies!) and shuffle them together to form a team of ridiculous awesomeness. Your goal is to score victory points by conquering bases. The Take That! mechanic is the central mechanic of this game, but it is very easy to learn, plays fast and is so over the top in its silliness that it's hard to get too worked up about losing.

Cover image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/1518578/smash]

51 Mechanics: Storytelling

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

As a longtime player of tabletop roleplaying games, I have long valued the presence of a storytelling component in any of the games I play. Even very old classics sometimes had a component of the gameplay that encouraged me as a player to tell stories about what was going on in the game over the board. I can think of two particular examples of this. Kingmaker, a 1970s game about the Wars of the Roses, had a complex political system woven into the gameplay and also featured numerous potential claimants to the English throne. These invited impromptu acting, the deployment of appropriate British accents and gave us all a sense of ebb and flow that made telling a story about what had just happened very easy. The second example is the virtually unheard of 1981 game Fifth Frontier War, which was part of the Traveller campaign setting. Because the game featured preprogrammed movement and an interstellar war, the sudden arrival of two fleets in similar space (or the failure of one or the other to appear) made a simple hex-and-counter wargame pop for me.

Storytelling games are becoming ever more popular as the "Legacy" games movement gains steam. Use these games right out of the box to help students understand how story is structured and how to tell them effectively. Or use the mechanics of any of these games to make your class work like a story or to have students design their own.

Fog of Love (BGG Rank: 881)

Essentially a romantic comedy film in a box, the goal of Fog of Love is to achieve your goals in developing a relationship. A two-player game, this was published in 2017 and attracted a lot of attention for its theme and style, as well as for its innovative game play.

Mice & Mystics (BGG Rank: 206)

Mice&Mystics is a campaign game in which you take on the role of a mouse soldier attempting to accomplish an assortment of story goals with other mice (or by yourself in solo play). Clearly inspired by the novels in the Redwall series and by the graphic novels in the MouseGuard series (themselves inspiring the roleplaying game of the same name), Mice&Mystics is a satisfying, complex game that puts story first.

Rory’s Story Cubes (BGG Rank: 1844)

These sets of dice are great as ice-breakers, stimulants to the imagination and as generators of stories in their own right. I have used these in all sort of settings to help get a story going or to challenge someone in a game design class to reconsider the direction their going by retelling the story based on the role of these dice. Super fun.

Stuffed Fables (BGG Rank: 994)

You are stuffed animals sworn to protect a little girl. Go! Stuffed Fables is as simple as that. A delightful game that features an extended campaign in which you take on the role of these stuffed animals (all of whom have distinct powers and personalities).

Tales of the Arabian Nights (BGG Rank: 310)

The mother of all storytelling boardgames, Tales of the Arabian Nights has you taking on the role of one of the characters in the Tales and then undertaking a series of quests throughout the world of the Tales (Arabia, India, Africa and so forth). You are trying to gather "Destiny" and "Story" points through the experiences you have which will allow you to return to Baghdad and claim victory! The story framework the game's designer did to make the gameplay possible is a labor of extraordinary depth - it makes a typical choose your own adventure story look like a toddler's picture book. Great fun, especially for 3 players.

Cover image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/688794/tales-arabian-nights]

51 Mechanics: Stock Holding

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

The Stock Holding mechanic is one of the great classic mechanics in board games, dating from the golden age of design. In the Stock Holding mechanic, players are purchasing stocks in a variety of companies (or in some way that is similar to this, conceptually) which track in value up and down based on the decisions the players make in the game. These kinds of games are excellent right out of the box for game-based learning because they require the player to execute economic skills based on their own critical thinking. Each of these games is an intriguing foray into economic practice and decision making, each in its own way. Be mindful, "stock" is a somewhat flexible concept - it isn't always accurate to describe these as stock - perhaps shares might be a better way to understand it. Many of these games have very straightforward mechanics and are easy to learn but difficult to master.

Acquire (BGG Rank: 208)

Perhaps the definitive game in this mechanic, Acquire is a game in which the players buy, trade and sell shares in hotel chains represented on the game board. As chains merge, they disappear and can reappear in new iterations. The goal is to become the majority shareholder or minority shareholder in enough large chains to make enough money to win the game. This game is a tactical masterpiece as each play of a tile on the board can radically change the direction of the game, as can each buy decision a player makes. Deservedly acclaimed as a classic.

DIG (BGG Rank: 4109)

Part of Chris Handy's series of games no bigger than a pack of chewing gum, DIG is a game in which the players represent dogs digging up bones that are worth differing amounts based on how far from the dog house they happen to be. A good way to introduce younger learners to this mechanic.

Lagoon: Land of Druids (BGG Rank: 2248)

In Lagoon, players are taking on the roles of druids who are using their powers to manage and shift the energy balance on their world in favor of the energy they use and against the energy they oppose. The "stock" in this case represents the shifting tides of these energy forces. A bit tricky to get a handle on, but once understood, this great game is a highwire act.

Monopoly (BGG Rank: 15345)

One of the great conceits in modern gaming is that Monopoly is a dreadful game. It's very low BGG rank would appear to confirm this. But, let me make the case for it. If Monopoly is played correctly and by its printed rules, it's a far better game than the way it's generally played. As written, Monopoly requires players to buy or auction any unowned property and doesn't provide any mechanism to add money back into the game, except through passing Go! or drawing Chance/Community Chest cards. If played this way, Monopoly is actually an interesting game of managing the title deeds, trading and auctioning. When played with money in Free Parking and all of the other "house rules," it takes a tactically interesting game and makes it a bloated mess.

Union Pacific (BGG Rank: 470)

One of the great economic rail games, in Union Pacific players are trying to take control of various railway companies in nineteenth century America. Innovative for its time in many ways, the game remains a great example of how this mechanic works. Will you expand your strength in a company or make it more valuable?

51 Mechanics: Simultaneous Action Selection

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Games that feature the Simultaneous Action Mechanic allow all players to act at the same time, changing the nature of turn taking and making the process of playing the game, sometimes, that much quicker. In these games, each player decides what they want to do at the same time. Actions are revealed and executed according to the game’s parameters. The best part of these kind of games from the perspective of gamified learning is that in a larger classroom where you still want to create a gamified experience, it can be a big help to have all of the students decide how they want to act as one “turn” and then move on to resolving those actions. In this regard, the mechanic functions in the gamified classroom more as a game management tool than anything else. In the games listed below, however, they all function to accentuate the actual play experience.

Among The Stars (BGG Rank: 427)

In Among The Stars, players are assembling their own space station and trying to maximize the value of that station through the strategic drafting of cards from an ever shrinking available deck. In this regard, the game is a bit like 7 Wonders, but I think in many respects the game is more fun. Each thing you build into your station you have to pay for and the cards all have interesting mechanics that relate to or trigger from other cards or other mechanics. A real delight of a game, short, and potentially useful in helping a student understand economic relationships.

Dixit (BGG Rank: 193)

Dixit is one of the greatest family games of the last ten years or so. Players each have a set of cards featuring abstract art and on their turn, the active player chooses one of her cards and gives it a short description. Each of the other players then try to match that description with a card in their own hand. Once all the cards are displayed, the other players try to decide which card was the card selected by the active player. Learnable by anyone and wickedly replayable, Dixit should be in nearly every classroom.

Junta (BGG Rank: 951)

An old classic recently reprinted, players in Junta take on the roles of different members of the cabinet in a “banana republic.” The goal is to siphon funds from the national treasury into your Swiss bank account without being assassinated or in some other way meeting with a terrible end. The president of the republic doles out funds from a variable pool of money at the start of each turn. Satirical, funny and at times infuriating, the game is a must play, particularly if you are interested in unconventional takes on politics.

Room 25 (BGG Rank: 841)

Designed by my friend François Rouzé, Room 25 is a collaborative game in which the players are prisoners trapped in a structure that appears to have no exit. It’s a tricky game, made more so by the fact that one player just might be a traitor in your midst. An exciting and challenging game that would be excellent for developing critical thinking and collaboration skills right out of the box.

Space Alert (BGG Rank: 147)

Space Alert is a mad race against time for the players, all of whom are officers on a starship that is having the worst 10 minutes of its existence. The players are the crew of the doomed ship and as a literal clock ticks away the threats that the ship has to overcome, players are scrambling about the ship trying to ensure that their actions are sufficient to save the vessel. Heck, it only takes 10 minutes to play. Give it a shot!

Image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/387198/space-alert

51 Mechanics: Simulation Games

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

One of the most fertile frameworks for game design is in simulation games. These games mean, through intentional design, to either give the player an experience that is like in some degree some other experience or replicates in game form some system or context from history. Simulation games have a long and storied history. Arguably, the modern era of gaming was initiated by the invention of the game Tactics in 1954. The first commercially successful wargame, Tactics ensured that other designers would come forth with increasingly complex and realistic simulation experiences for their devoted followers. I have by and large left proper wargames off of the list that follows, because this list is meant to give inexperienced gamers an angle into each of these gaming mechanics and for the inexperienced players, even the most straightforward wargame is going to provide a too hefty to manage alone challenge. If you're a history teacher and you have an interest in military or diplomatic history, however, by all means get in touch with me and I can send you some great suggestions for wargames.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue (BGG Rank: 255)

In Flash Point, you are members of a fire brigade trying to extinguish a fire in a structure of some kind. In the base game, it's one of two kinds of houses (the board is double sided). In other expansions, new kinds of buildings are introduced. Like many cooperative team games, Flash Point requires players to take on the role of someone in the fire brigade with specialized skills. An excellent teamwork simulator and does a good job of helping the team understand how the process of fighting a fire works.

Leaving Earth (BGG Rank: 631)

A richly designed experience that simulates the process by which humanity learned how to design and fly spacecraft in the early space age. Perhaps too complicated for an inexperienced gamer, but also perhaps right on the edge of that difficulty level. An extraordinarily thoughtful design that means the player to give very careful thought and attention to all of the factors that influence spacecraft design, the context in which that design takes place and the missions upon which those spacecraft were deployed.

Memoir '44 (BGG Rank: 118)

Memoir '44 is the only wargame on this list, because it is an accessible simulation of World War II combat. It doesn't hurt that the components of the game are very well designed! If you might be interested in wargames as a deeper dive into the gaming hobby, particularly as it relates to education, teaching and learning, would be well advised to check out Memoir '44.

The Pursuit of Happiness (BGG Rank: 652)

The Pursuit of Happiness is a simulation of a full and rich life. You begin the game with some youthful experiences and hobbies, develop a complete adult life, retire if you're able to pursue your passions and then, at the end of the game, die from some sort of cause. Similar in intention to The Game of Life, The Pursuit of Happiness is a fun game about personal development and a compelling artifact in and of itself in understanding western values and how western societies see progress, success and satisfaction. 

Republic of Rome (BGG Rank: 339)

In all fairness, Republic of Rome is probably too complicated for beginners, but it's such a ridiculously good example of a simulation game that I just had to include it. Republic of Rome simulates the growth and development of the Roman Republic from its earliest days through the anarchy that ended the Republic in the time of Caesar. Each phase of the game (Early Republic, Middle Republic, Late Republic) has a very different feel and ultimately plays differently from the other two phases. You represent factions within the Senate, vying for power and influence while also sharing collective responsibility for saving the state from its many enemies and challenges. The balance between how well you self-aggrandize and how well you support the state determines not just whether you'll win but also whether the state will survive or fail. If Rome collapses, all players lose. I can't think of a better way to spend 12-14 hours of gaming!

51 Mechanics: Set Collection

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

The Set Collection mechanic is singularly useful for the gamifying teacher. Set Collection is ultimately about making decisions about pattern, anticipating the availability of resources and trying to manage scarcity. What makes these games appealing to the gamifying teacher is their accessibility. There are games of this kind that are wildly complicated and others that couldn't be easier. If you think about the kinds of sets you want your students to understand, nothing would be easier than using one of these five games as a model/anchor game to build your own student experience.

Bohnanza (BGG Rank: 366)

In Bohnanza, you play a bean farmer trying to maximize yield in two (or three) bean fields. Each field can have only one kind of bean planted in it at a time. Through strategic trades, you attempt to gain beans that are valuable to you at a cost that doesn't imbalance the game in your opponents' favor. Easily to learn and highly strategic, this game also would be a good introduction to the trading mechanic.

Lost Cities (BGG Rank: 294)

Lost Cities is a two-player game (there is a four player variant too) in which you undertake expeditions to exotic locales. Each locale has cards numbered from 1-10 and three "handshake" cards that increase the potential value (or cost) of an expedition. Over the course of three turns, players try to gather the best expedition cards they can and play them fast enough to get full value before their opponent "goes out."

Tigris & Euphrates (BGG Rank: 69)

Tigris&Euphrates is the second Reiner Knizia game on this list. An old classic, T&E is asking you to gather resources in farming, trading, religion and government through your game play. The trick of T&E is that your final score is the score of your weakest area. What this encourages is players to try to find strategies as balanced as possible. A tricky but fun and enlightening experience.

Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar (BGG Rank: 37)

Tzolk'in is a game that simulates the full range of life in ancient Mesoamerica. This one might be better called "Sets Collection," because there's a lot that you're having to keep track of. An extraordinary feature of this game is its board. The Maya are well known for their complex understanding of time and the game board represents this through a series of interlocking gears that change the available actions on any given turn. It looks much harder than it actually is, but this game is definitely for experienced players.

Zooloretto (BGG Rank: 605)

Michael Schacht has won the Spiel des Jahres and deservedly so for his inventive designs. In Zooloretto players take on the role of zookeepers trying to assemble from "delivery trucks" the best mix of animals for their particular zoo. The challenge is that there's only so many places to put the animals...and if you don't collect your sets effectively, you're going to have a lot of animals in your barn, each of whom costs you victory points.

Cover image: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/1522182/tzolk-mayan-calendar]

51 Mechanics: Secret Unit Deployment (Hidden Information)

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

The "secret unit deployment" mechanic might be even better understood as a "hidden information" mechanic. In all of these kinds of games, players know certain kinds of information while other vital pieces of information are missing. How this works depends on the game, but in every case, you as the player have to make decisions about what to do on your turn without the benefit of full information. This strongly engages the more intuitive, more "soft skills" capacities, as opposed to the games of perfect information where you know everything that you can know. Secret Unit Deployment games ask the player to make judgments about what their fellow players are more or less likely to do based on their past behavior and so forth. They can be very tricky if you don't have a lot of experience playing with the group of players you're playing with.  Great games for the gamifying teacher because they give you a chance to measure soft skills in your students and also to help them develop their critical thinking skills.

Android: Netrunner (BGG Rank: 38)

Android: Netrunner is a living card game (LCG - a form of card game that plays a bit like a collectible card game, but where you acquire all the cards when you buy, rather than random assortments of cards) set in the Android universe. Of all of the LCGs, Netrunner is usually considered the most strategic. In this game, one player plays a mega-corporation attempting to keep corporate secrets secret. The "corp" player is opposed by a hacker who wants to steal these secrets. The ways in which the corporation protects itself and the hacker organizes its attack are concealed. If you like Blade Runner, Android is inspired by that universe.

Captain Sonar (BGG Rank: 99)

In Captain Sonar, you and your fellow players are the staff and crew of a state-of-the-art submersible. The trick - on the other side of the table are your opponents...the crew of an equally state-of-the-art submarine. Your objective - destroy the enemy ship! But what is the enemy ship doing? And is your own staff sufficiently coordinated to carry the day? 

Kremlin (BGG Rank: 843)

Kremlin is an old classic republished with some additional bibs and bobs a few years back. In Kremlin, you play factions of the Soviet Communist Party. Your objective is to control the General Secretary (the party leader) and successfully wave to the crowd at the yearly military parade. Do this three times and you win. The trick here is that you are not obligated to reveal the different Soviet politicians you have influence over until you choose to. This gives you the ability to stealth a candidate into high leadership and then without warning take him or her over.

Letters from Whitechapel (BGG Rank: 179)

Whitechapel is one of my all-time favorite games. In Whitechapel, one player takes on the role of Jack the Ripper and the others take on the role of the police trying to catch him. The Jack player commits a crime on a turn and then attempts to get back to his secret lair using a hidden movement mechanic. The police move and have the ability to investigate or arrest. If they perform an arrest action when Jack is in that numbered circle, the police win. Tense, strategic and fun.

Lifeboat (BGG Rank: 1842)

Lifeboat is a clever game in which you play a character who has been forced into a lifeboat due to the sinking of a doomed ocean liner. Each character has a couple of basic qualities that are public and a piece of hidden information. They love one character in secret and hate one character in secret. Victory points are scored if the character who is loved survives and the one you hate dies. A fun, social game that generates a lot of banter.

Cover Image from: [https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/977006/letters-whitechapel]

51 Mechanics: Route Building

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Route/Network Building games are one of the hottest mechanics in the contemporary board game space. In these kinds of games, you are building some kind of a network that scores you the maximum amount of points based on the conditions established by the game. In some of these games, the network is generally the same, conceptually, for each player. In other games of this kind, each individual player is trying to accomplish a task unique to him or her. Where this kind of game often becomes transcendently fun is in how complex the routing task becomes when other players are trying to establish their own routes along the same pathways you are interested in using. This is a perpetually vexing experience about these games. It is also what makes them one of the best games out of the box to use to develop critical thinking skills. 

Power Grid (BGG Rank: 27)

Power Grid is a by-now all-time classic board game design. In this game, you are building a power distribution network in some country or another (this game is famous for its expansion packs, which give you the ability to play the game in virtually dozens of countries now). You have control over certain kinds of power plants (coal, oil, nuclear, trash-burning) and they give you the capacity to power certain numbers of cities in your network. One of the best economic games ever published.

Terra Mystica (BGG Rank: 7)

Certainly the most complex game in this group, in Terra Mystica your objective is to expand the territory under the control of a particular nation. That nation is bound to a particular kind of territory. Over the course of the game, you have to terraform environments that borders your nation in order to expand. The network, in this case, being the land and territory that you've successfully terraformed. Very little luck is involved here - it's all about careful planning.

Ticket to Ride (BGG Rank: 123)

Ticket to Ride is one of the most popular games in recent memory having sold millions of copies. In Ticket to Ride, you are trying to build the most efficient rail network across the United States (or some other country/continent, depending on the map you're playing) that connects a certain combination of cities that you drew on "destination tickets." Playable by even the least "gamer-y" player, the complexity of the map is just enough to really stimulate critical thinking.

Tsuro (BGG Rank: 767)

In Tsuro, you are building a route across a map by placing tiles on a square grid and then moving your stone along the pathway created by the new tile you played. Simple, abstract and fast-playing, this is a great game to get students understanding the resonance of patterns.

Yamataï (BGG Rank: 566)

Yamataï is a game of route building in which you place ships in and around the mystical land of Yamataï. The object here is to build efficient routes that allow you to build personal buildings and hire specialists that enhance your subsequent turns. A beautiful game with a Japanese aesthetic.

51 Mechanics: Roll/Spin and Move

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

For anyone who isn't a devotee of the modern board gaming hobby, roll/spin and move is more or less the mechanic that makes a game a game. That's what games are! You've got a board with spaces and then you roll dice or spin a spinner and move a piece around the board and when you land on spaces, something happens. Couldn't be simpler. When done well, these games are properly fun, exciting even. But when done poorly, they are a dull death slog. For a teacher doing game-based learning, they don't offer a lot as a general rule, but this mechanic can be a great way to introduce gamified instruction to a classroom setting (as many people have played these kind of games...indeed, even very young kids). If you want to get a sense of how this mechanic might be used with greater effectiveness, here are five games to try.

Camel Up! (BGG Rank: 381)

This mechanic is used a lot in racing games, and Camel Up! is a particularly good example of these kinds of games. In this, you are a camel driver attempting to beat all others with your camel and get over the finish line first. The game has an interesting mechanic to ensure that there is never a "tie" that has to be resolved. If a racing game is something you think your students might like, try this and see what you think.

Colosseum (BGG Rank: 349)

Colosseum is a big, beautiful game about impresarios in ancient Rome who are working to try to put on a fantastic show. One of the things you have to do in this game is move various officials of the Roman state around the board. As they move, their relationship to you and the other players change. As much a game about tableau building as it is about roll/spin/move, this is one of the most beautiful games published in recent memory.

Clue (BGG Rank: 7586)

Good old Clue! If you want a great example of a properly good roll/spin/move game, the best one is probably Clue. A game with a well-known pedigree, in Clue you are trying to determine the identity of a murderer, where s/he commits murder and with what. If you haven't played Clue in a while, play it again and remember how good it actually is.

Deep Sea Adventure (BGG Rank: 549)

Deep Sea Adventure is a roll/spin and move game with a twist. You take on the role of a deep sea treasure hunter who's down on his luck. You've had to share your submarine...and its' limited air supply...with a bunch of other treasure hunters. In this game, you gather treasure, but the more you gather, the slower you climb back to the surface. Run out of air and you drop your treasures...you've got three rounds to sort this out!

Heimlich & Co. (BGG Rank: 1517)

This game from the 1980s is one of the earliest Spiel des Jahres winners and a fascinating deduction game in which you move pieces around the board based on the roll of dice and score points for the different colors based on the color of the pieces you moved and what squares they landed on. The trick? You don't know who belongs to what color and nobody knows what your color is. Fantastic deduction combined with roll/move.

Cover image from: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/978202/colosseum?size=large

51 Mechanics: Role Playing

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Role playing has a nearly 50 year old tradition in the contemporary gaming space, with the publication of Dungeons&Dragons in the early 1970s. Tabletop role playing is a huge topic for gamifying teachers. Indeed, it will form the theme of the entire third season of the podcast which is being prepared as I write this. Role playing as a board game mechanic is a feature that has developed alongside many other game mechanics in the last twenty years or so. What role playing mechanics in the board game framework do is allow players to have an identity, a perspective, that always makes the gameplay more exciting. Players might start with a full character who can level up over time or develop a character from scratch in some way. What matters is that when you give a player a character whose perspective is yours to take, it makes the experience of gameplay more intriguing, more exciting and more meaningful. These five games will give you lots of ideas about how you might integrate the Mimicry modality in your work and develop characters with your students that make learning a different kind of experience.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game (BGG Rank: 17)

The world of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos has been the subject of both board game and tabletop role playing game development for a long time. The most recent version is this game, the Living Card Game of Arkham Horror. It might also be the best version of the Arkham Horror series ever. In this game, which can be played solo, you have a character and you build a deck of cards specific to that character from an assortment of cards available to you. You use this deck to try to defeat scenarios that tell a unified story. At this point in the game’s development, there are two full narratives (one about Dunwich and one about Carcosa) in addition to the introductory scenario. 

Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game (BGG Rank: 529)

An accessible dungeon crawler game that is based on the fourth edition of Dungeons&Dragons. Characters in Wrath of Ashardalon have a series of powers that would be similar to powers you’d have if you were playing the tabletop version of the game. Each scenario is short and the rules are straightforward.

Mage Knight (BGG Rank: 16)

Mage Knight is a very rich and rewarding experience, but it is a difficult game to learn and master. In Mage Knight, you play an adventurer who is exploring a fantasy world. You develop increasingly powerful skills over the course of the game as you proceed through the game. There’s a version of the game based on the Star Trek universe as well.

Tales of the Arabian Nights (BGG Rank: 311)

Tales of the Arabian Nights is a classic game from the 1980s that was republished in the 2000s. This book is a fully immersive storytelling experience. You goal over the course of the game is to have a rich and meaningful story for your character and then to get back to Baghdad and tell that story in order to win the game. This experience brings the full world of the Arabian Nights to the gameplay. An outstanding design, easy to learn and incredibly immersive.

This War of Mine (BGG Rank: 195)

One of the most poignant games I’ve ever played is This War of Mine. Based on the videogame, This War of Mine takes place in an analogue to Sarajevo during the Bosnia War…a city besieged. You and your fellow players take on the role of a party of civilians who don’t know each other but are dependent on each other to survive. Survival is the objective…live long enough to see the city liberated. There are brutally difficult decisions to make on every turn. Indeed, the difficulty of the decisions start with the very first decision and never let up. Harrowing, meaningful and extraordinary.

51 Mechanics: Press Your Luck

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Press Your Luck games are a tricky one for the gamifying teacher. All gamified experiences are enhanced if there is a bit of luck involved, but too much (and it is easy to overdo this) and learners/players will feel as if fate is more important than what they actually can do. So, be careful. In these kinds of games, there is a dimension of the game that encourages you to take a risk with randomness, with fate. In each, there’s a reward for the successful risk taker and a punishment for the one who fails. No great surprise there. What makes these games fun to play is precisely that risk taking. These are all fun games, and definitely worth playing if you want to get a handle on this mechanic. For my money, the best of the lot is Ra.

King of Tokyo (BGG Rank: 226)

In King of Tokyo, players take on the role of Japanese monster movie monsters trying to become master of the world by defeating other Japanese monster movie monsters. The trick is that you only get to take certain actions while you are the active attacker of the city, but while you are in active attack, you are especially vulnerable. How long do you stay in one role or another?

Mystic Vale (BGG Rank: 394)

Mystic Vale is the first “card crafting” deck building game. In this game, you start with cards that are Tarot-sized and over the course of the game, the player buys clear plastic cards that get sheathed into these Tarot-sized cards and change their powers. Fascinating game mechanic. From the Press Your Luck perspective, in this game, you flip over a number of cards until you get a combination that is one point away from causing what’s called “spoiled.” You are welcome to take the face up card on your deck and then flip the next card, but if it has a spoil marker, you lose your turn and get a small boon as a result.

Ra (BGG Rank: 136)

Ra is a great classic from the 1990s, developed by Reiner Knizia as part of his mediation on the auction mechanic. Ra’s Press Your Luck component centers on the main action of the game, drawing tiles from a bag. In Ra, when you draw a tile from the bag, you add it to a row of already-drawn tiles. If you chose not to draw a tile from the bag, you could choose to initiate an auction for the tiles in the face-up row. It is up to you to decide whether this makes sense or not. Having said that, in the bag are a number of tiles called Ra tiles. These force an auction to happen whether you wanted it to or not. The balance between these choices makes this game tactical, one of the most tactical of the Press Your Luck mechanic games.

Tiny Epic Quest (BGG Rank: 531)

The “Tiny Epic” games are well-loved for a reason. In this game, players gather materials and resources by day and at night, have to roll dice to determine how far they’re willing to take risks to bring forward some or all of their gains. Rest and wait to play on or roll?

Welcome to the Dungeon (BGG Rank: 791)

In Welcome to the Dungeon, players take on the role of braggadocio cowardly dungeon explorers challenging their friends to dungeon dive. If you go into the dungeon, however, you have to go with fewer resources than you’d otherwise like to have. The hope is that you’ve got the right combination left so that you can survive. Win twice and you win.

Cover image from: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/187402/ra

51 Mechanics: Pick Up And Deliver

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Pick Up And Deliver games are excellent at helping students master complicated network relationships. In all of these games, players are required to find some kind of object/material/commodity in one part of the board and then bring that object to a different place on the board. It’s really that simple. What makes these games great is how much critical thinking is required in order to maximize the utility and advantage of particular objects and particular routes. There are always a significant number of ways to win these kinds of games…what makes the difference is whether the player has selected the optimal combination of commodity and route. These games are great at simulating economic realities of different kinds (what’s the difference between a land route, a railroad and a sea route, for example). They are uniquely useful at helping understand now by-gone technologies. They are, most importantly, fun to play.

Firefly: The Game (BGG Rank: 274)

One of the best board game redeployments of an existing intellectual property, Firefly is an almost perfect representation of the television show on which it is based. Throughout a star system players will find a host of characters who have jobs that pay decently or pay well, depending on how immoral/moral or criminal/law-abiding the player is prepared to be. Every game is different because of the combination of ships/characters/objectives that are used to initiate play. I’ve never won this game, but I keep coming back to it.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue (BGG Rank: 252)

Flash Point is a cooperative game in which the players adopt the roles of different members of a fire brigade attempting to save the residents of a home that is on fire. Like any other cooperative, this game is tense and easy to lose, but it is in the management of the victims (that which is picked up and delivered) that makes this unlike other cooperatives. Great at building team process as well.

Istanbul (BGG Rank: 91)

Istanbul is a fantastic game in which players are moving around a simulated city trying to acquire gems. These gems are available at a variety of places, but these each require a different object from somewhere else to acquire. Not especially difficult to understand, Istanbul is fiendishly difficult to master.

Niagara (BGG Rank: 1074)

An old classic, in Niagara players are attempting to gather gems (gems, again!) from the shore of a raging river. The boats the players command move based on weather cards played by the various players. Coordinating moves is exceptionally interesting and very difficult.

Space Dealer (BGG Rank: 1596)

Space Dealer is a trading game in which players are trying to deliver goods within a particular time window. Every player has two egg timers to manage what they’re doing. As they take actions, the timers tick off time. When the timers runs out, the ship is grounded. Each game takes 20-30 minutes, but in that time, the players are going to be working every second!

Cover image from: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/1732600/niagara

51 Mechanics: Pattern Recognition

BoardGameGeek (BGG) is a singular repository of gaming information, knowledge and wisdom that has been serving the modern board game hobby since 2000. I consult it regularly and have used its database to manage my own game collection. I also used it when I was writing my 2016 book on gamified instruction, particularly with regard to the game mechanics that BGG identified and organized content into. While there are more than 85,000 games, even now, there are just 51 mechanics. Since every mechanic offers something to the teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, I'm going to use this section of Game Level Learn and my own contributions to it to assess games from each of these 51 mechanics. Next up?

Games of Pattern Recognition are among the most useful in a gamified classroom because, like their cousins the games of Pattern Building, they are interested in helping the player develop the critical judgment to recognize like-to-like and then do something about that. Pattern Recognition is the kind of mechanic that can be made accessible to especially young learners, effectively bringing gamified strategies to bear in even Kindergarten or grade 1. The ultimate point of the Pattern Recognition game is virtually self-explanatory...recognize the pattern before everyone else does and win.

Anomia (BGG Rank: 1512)

Anomia is a fun, accessible card game in which players flip cards from a deck, looking for patterns that match. When they turn over a card and find it matches another players' card, those two players must come up with an example of a particular person/place/thing listed on their opponents' card. For example, I flip a card with a # and the world  "bridge" and notice that you have a card with the symbol # and the word "fabric." I have to come up with "rayon" faster than you come up with "Golden Gate" in order to win.

Bears! (BGG Rank: 5310)

Bears! is a fun and easy dice-matching game.  

Potion Explosion (BGG Rank: 417)

Potion Explosion is in the vein of classic "match 3" video games in which you are looking for symbol patterns that could explode, scoring you points and changing the dynamic of the board in general. In addition to finding these patterns, players use other patterns to make combinations that could score them even more points. Harder than Bears! and Anomia, but no less engaging.

Set (BGG Rank: 1214)

Tracy Wazenegger and I discussed Set on a recent episode of Game Level Learn and I believe (as does she) that it is one of the best of the Pattern Recognition games. Match cards from a field of significantly more cards and win.

Zendo (BGG Rank: 704)

I have written about Zendo at length and remain of the opinion that it is one of the finest games to use for game-based learning there is. The gameplay of Zendo is straightforward. A player creates a rule that the rest of the players, by using the game's pieces, are trying to discern through inductive reasoning. In this regard, playing the game is precisely like solving a scientific problem by means of the scientific method. Ridiculously interesting and easily leveled so that it's properly hard for an advanced learner and more manageable for a younger one.

Cover photo from: [https://boardgamegeek.com/image/849860/zendo]