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The worker placement game mechanic, or action drafting, requires players to draft individual actions from a set of actions available to all players. Every round, each player takes a turn drafting an action until all players have had a chance to draft individual actions. Usually, there’s a limit on the number of times an action can be chosen in a round and therefore not all actions can be taken by each player.

Players show that they’re drafting an action by placing game pieces or tokens on the chosen action for the round. These tokens represent workers. Agricola players start the game with two family members (workers) who can perform more actions as the game progresses.

Tile placement games feature placing tiles to score points. Sometimes the amount of points a players earns is based on adjacent tiles of similar type (Carassonne). Other times the tiles need to be place in a proper manner (Giza), and the player earns more points with the more tiles they place in that order. There are even some tile placement games that require the players to interlock the tiles in a specific way like a puzzle (Galaxy Trucker), and the player loses points for not placing the tiles in the proper way.

Play occurs on a modular board, composed of multiple pieces, often tiles or cards. Many modular board games randomize board placement which leads to different strategies (Settlers of Catan) and exploration (Mage Knight). Many modular board games have tiles or cards which aren’t used, and in an effort to conserve space, these tiles remain out of play until they’re required.

Players of area enclosure games place or move their playing pieces to surround as much area as they can. Go is the oldest and most famous area enclosure game, but several games have continued this game mechanic. Reversi, or Othello, is an obvious throwback to the classic Go, but newer games like the stellar Agricola, which has players enclose farmland with fences, also use this mechanic in different ways.

The area enclosure mechanic differs from the area control/influence mechanic because players build areas on a game board, while area control/influence games have players battle to see who can control the most pre-existing areas on the game board.

Games that use the area control or area influence mechanic award points to players controlling an area or points to players who have the majority of influence in particular areas. It can be viewed as a sub-category of the Auction/Bidding mechanic in that players “bid” for specific areas through the placement of playing pieces.

Players of the popular Small World earn points by the number of areas they control. They can overtake areas by placing more playing pieces on an area than their opponents.

Hand management games reward players for playing cards in a certain sequence or group. The optimal sequence or grouping may vary, depending on board position, the cards held and played by opponents. Players manage their hand by playing cards that will net them the most value out of available cards given the current circumstance. Typically, cards have multiple uses in a game, which further obscures an “optimal” sequence or group.

Guillotine is a popular card game that uses hand management. Some of the cards in a player’s hand can change the sequence of nobles in line to be beheaded (affecting a player’s scoring), while others can change the point value of certain nobles already beheaded.

Players of deck/pool building games start each game with a pre-set group of cards (or, in the case of Quarriors, a pool of dice). Throughout the course of the game, players add to and/or change their deck by buying cards from a catalog of cards that is accessible to all players. Most deck/pool building games have a form of currency (often in the form of the cards or dice the players can purchase) that they use to buy new cards. Once purchased, these new cards are then integrated into the player’s deck or pool and grant the player new options of play.

Note: the deck/pool building game mechanic refers to something that happens during the playing of a game, not the modification of cards prior to play.

Games that use Card Drafting have players pick cards from a limited, communal pool. Like a sports league’s draft, all the cards in this pool are available to each player, but the players take turns picking the cards they need. Ticket to Ride is a popular card drafting game.

Keep in mind that games where cards are only drawn from a pile (UNO, Poker and countless others) are not card drafting. Drafting implies that players have a choice in the cards they receive. The aforementioned Ticket to Ride has a game mechanic where you can choose to blindly draw cards from the top of a deck, but Ticket to Ride is still considered a card drafting game because players are given the option of choosing face up cards from the same deck.

Roll or spin and move games are games where players roll dice or spin spinners and then move their tokens in accordance with what they received on their roll or spin. Many classic games use the roll/spin and move mechanic: Monopoly, The Game of Life and Sorry to name a few.

The term roll/spin and move is often used in a derogatory manner as if to imply that players don’t have to think a lot, but there are games, Backgammon for one, that use this mechanic and still have strategic value.

Games that use the point-to-point movement mechanic have spots on the game board that can be occupied by markers or figurines. These points are connected by lines, and players can only move their markers or figurines along these lines. It’s not enough that two points are near each other. The two points need to be connected by a line for a player to move from one point to the other. Friedrich is a good example of a Point-to-Point movement game.

Point-to-Point movement games differ from area movement games in that the game board isn’t broken into areas by dividing lines (Axis & Allies), and game pieces can’t move freely from one area to the next so long as they’re connected. Risk is an odd amalgam of both point-to-point and area movement. The majority of the game uses area movement (you move in and out of spaces that are adjacent to each other), but overseas movement uses point-to-point: Brazil to West Africa, Australia to Siam, Iceland to Greenland.