5 Game Categories Your Friends Wish You Knew

You may not realize it, but one of your friends is waiting for you to show interest in their board games.  Why does this matter to you? Because your friend is a serious gamer and has a wide variety of games that they can’t wait to play with you for free.  That's right you could gain access to tons of games and a teacher by simply starting a conversation. So what information do you need to know to start this conversation?  Take a look at five game play categories that serious gamers wish you knew about.

Deck Builders-

Deck building is a mechanic that is included in many different games. Games like Tyrants of the Underdark and DC Deck Building Game are great examples of deck building Mechanics.  It is the process of purchasing cards from a pool and adding them to your available stockpile which will make your deck. Once a card is purchased from a pool it usually can’t be played immediately but will later be shuffled with the rest of your discard pile and recycled as a deck.

Tile placement-  

Tile placement is a classic mechanic that appears in a lot of Gateway games, such as Lanterns the Harvest festival, and Betrayal at House on the Hill  which are always fun.  Similar to dominoes, players will be dealt a hand of tiles and will need to place them adjacent to other tiles to create matches, paths of progression, or larger areas of control.  This mechanic may also involve laying tiles over other tiles to block moves or take control of a set.

Area control-

Area control may be one of the more aggressive mechanics in board games.  Though this mechanic is not always confrontational it often involves thwarting other players’ movements. If your trying to understand area control think back to Monopoly.  This is the style where you want to have as much property as possible because it will gain you more points. The twist is that often area control is dependent on another mechanic to such as deck building or tile placement and often branches out into many different directions on the game board. Games like Warsaw City of Ruins, and Tyrants of the Underdark are great examples.

Cooperative games-

A fan favorite right now.  Cooperative games like The Captain is Dead Lockdown involve all the players working together to solve a situation put forth by the board game itself.  Most people enjoy co-operative game because you win or lose as a team. Which is great because most of the time you will be losing.  A quality cooperative game will have several different difficulty levels and scales to become more difficult as your teams skills improve.  These games are a great way to equalize any player skill levels as players work together with their assigned special powers.

Dice rollers-

Dice rolling has become the adrenaline in board games.  Games with dice were once considered “too random” But today there are games that make the randomness fun.  There are dice manipulation games, press your luck games, Yahtzee style dice rollers etc. All of these use dice to determine things like the success of actions you’re taking or what resources you will receive during your turn. Some great examples of dice games are King of New York, and Attack on Titan the Last Stand  Manipulations of the amount of dice you roll, and how many sides are on the dice have made dice rolling exciting and to many players a favorite component to a board game.