Six Perfected Game Mechanics (Volume 3)

This is the third volume of Perfected Game Mechanics (Volume 1, Volume 2), a series exploring games where, be they wonderful, amazing, inspiring, or even flawed in some ways, managed to utilize one particular mechanic with sheer perfection. That one mechanic is not going to be improved upon; there is nowhere “up” to go.

Note: the images representing the mechanics are from BoardGameGeek.

Highest-Lowest Scoring

[caption id="attachment_316299" align="alignright" width="150"] Highest-Lowest Scoring[/caption]

Definition: each player has scores in multiple areas or categories. The lowest of these scores is their final score. The highest final score wins.

Ingenious

BoardGameGeek lists only 268 games that use this mechanic. Even with so few games, this one has some great games vying for the top spot, such as Tigris & Euphrates, Gans Schön Clever, Between Two Cities, and Fields of Arle. There are literally a dozen games that could be said to have perfected this mechanic. For my money, the top prize goes to Ingenious.

Ingenious uses hexagonal dominoes with any of six colored shapes on either end, played onto a board consisting of rings of hexes. Players have six of these in their rack. When placed, each side of the domino scores based on the number of like-colored…

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