Welcome again to our series of articles demystifying the tangled mess of jargon in modern board gaming. I’m trying to keep the list in as roughly an alphabetical order as possible, so that it’s easier to find your favourite confusing term. This is part 3, but links to all the parts are included below.
Note: This post has been updated with extra terms.
Deck builder
A deck builder game is one where you create your own deck of cards over the course of the game by adding cards to your deck via some sort of “card marketplace”. Usually you start with a small set of beginner cards that enable you to perform minimal actions, the most important of which give you a token currency you can use to purchase new cards from the marketplace. In most games, once you’ve purchased the card, it goes straight to a discard pile (q.v.), which you later reshuffle back into your draw pile (q.v.). The new card will come up again during subsequent hands of cards. Over the course of the game, your deck becomes larger and larger, and you become less and less certain of which cards are going to turn up when. The only surety is that this mess is your own doing, and you have complete control over which cards are in the deck. The joy of this type of game is that you can start formulating a strategy from the start by selecting cards that play well with each other. Some deck builder games also have a method of removing cards from your deck to weed out the weaker ones.
One of the best examples of a deck builder game is Star Realms, and the game is about as minimal as you can get in terms of components: each pack comes with exactly the cards needed for two players, but you can purchase a second pack to support four players. Unlike a collectible card game (CCG) (q.v.), every deck builder game has exactly the same cards: there’s no wild randomness here. Two players is the best way to experience Star Realms, however, because the head-to-head nature of the game makes it a fantastic experience. (There’s also a free-to-play online version available on Steam and Android, where you can learn how to play and see if you agree with our contributor! —Ed.)
Some games combine deck builders with other board game mechanics, such as the wonderful Clank!: A deck building adventure or its successor, Clank! In! Space!. In both games, the initial set of cards provide currency with which to purchase new cards; you also have cards that provide movement on the board, and cards that generate noise—the titular Clank—as you move around the board.
Deduction game
If you fancy yourself a bit of a Sherlock Holmes or a member of the Bletchley Circle, then you might be at home with a deduction game where the goal is to decode or figure out some hidden information. Such information could be a word (such as you find in the game Decrypto), a hidden identity (such as in Werewolf), or even simply a location or image (such as in some versions of Codenames).
The most well-known deduction games, such as Secret Hitler and Two Rooms and a Boom, are also social games and require larger groups of players. Deduction games exist for smaller groups of players, however. The Shipwreck Arcana is a beautifully illustrated PnP (q.v.) game where players hold two numbered chits in hand, and by playing one of these numbers to the table the other players must figure out the remaining number.
Some deduction games are 1 vs many (q.v.) affairs where the object of the game is to figure out where the hidden player is. Tragedy Looper is an unusual take on this style of deduction game: the players attempt to thwart a tragedy that one player will attempt to set up, and must use a limited number of time travel loops to do so.
Designer
A board game designer is the person who fits all the mechanics together into a themed board game that you purchase and play with your friends. They are akin to the author of a book and are acknowledged as the author for the purposes of copyright. The greater the number of acclaimed board games a designer creates, the better-known they become; some designers become well known for a certain type of game. Vital Lacerda, for example, is well known for his really complex, convoluted games with dozens of interlocking mechanisms, and his accomplishments include The Gallerist and On Mars, which is probably one of the most complex games out there. Matt Leacock is known for his Pandemic system (which he followed up with Forbidden Island). Rob Daviau is known for inventing the legacy board game genre (q.v.); together with Matt Leacock, they designed the highly acclaimed Pandemic Legacy. Vlaada Chvátil is known for … being about as diverse as the others are specialists; his design credits range from light party games such as Codenames to possibly some of the most complex, difficult-to-play games around such as Mage Knight and Through the Ages. And then you get heavy hitters in the design space such as Dr. Reiner Knizia who has, to date, created hundreds of games (for a full list, see https://www.knizia.de/games/).
Dexterity game
Games that test your ability to work your fine and gross motor coordination systems are termed dexterity games. These involve pinching, flicking, placing, and removing game pieces. Arguably the most well-known tabletop dexterity game is Jenga, which involves players removing blocks from a wooden tower and placing them on the top of the tower, which serves to make the tower both higher and more unstable. While wrongly perceived as mostly for children and younger players, newer dexterity style games come with a higher level of tactical and strategic energy, and require the player to be good at deftly manoeuvring pieces around, but also to do so in a tactically advantageous way. Some of the better known ones include Tokyo Highway (which looks terrific on a table) and Junk Art. Technically speaking, many sports such as snooker, darts, and football are dexterity games, so this is a very wide category.
Dice chucker
Any game that has you rolling many multiples of dice around to perform just about any game mechanic can be termed a dice chucker. The important part of any dice chucker game is that you’re not just rolling one or two dice every now and again, but that you’re doing so with many dice at a time, and about every round, as an integral part of the game. Many dice chucker games come with dice custom made for that game, and the sides of the dice contain more than just the pips representing the value of that side. That said, many other games do come with standard dice.
Games with custom dice include Pandemic: The Cure (not to be confused with its bigger brother, which is a card-based system), Roll for the Galaxy, Elder Sign, and Champions of Midgard.
Games with standard d6s include Alien Frontiers, Roll Player, The Voyages of Marco Polo, and Grand Austria Hotel.
Dice placement
Once you’ve rolled all those dice from a dice chucker game (q.v.), many games ask that you place them somewhere, either on the main game board or on one of your player boards. Usually this process involves activating actions according to the value of the dice you played to those spaces. Alien Frontiers is a delightful example of this genre, because the placement area is shared with all other players, and the most wanted spots get snapped up quickly.
One of the best examples of dice placement on a player board is The Castles of Burgundy, by famed designer Stefan Feld (q.v.). In this game you roll only two dice per round (so it tenuously falls outside the dice chucker genre). However, what you do with those two values makes the game an absolute masterpiece of board game design. The cascading effects of your choices lead to dopamine-filled turns filled with exquisite combos; it’s something wondrous to experience.
Dice tower
1. A dice tower is a tube (often square or rectangular), usually made of wood or plastic, with a tray at the bottom. The inside of the tube contains tilted platforms—called “baffles”— of varying number. You insert dice at the top or back of the tower, and they tumble down the platforms, and emerge in the tray. The tower is ostensibly meant to ensure complete randomness of a roll, but people also enjoy the tactile experience of feeding dice into the tower; this is likely just as satisfying as watching the result emerge. Either way, it’s a good alternative to simply dropping the dice onto a crowded table, and potentially losing dice on the floor.
2. The Dice Tower is a YouTube video channel and review site run by Tom Vassel where he reviews, discusses, and offers dialogue on board games. The channel is well known and well regarded in the industry. Their “Dice Tower Seal of Approval” (basically a statement that the game is a lot of fun to play and is well produced) adds a coveted amount of legitimacy to any board game and is often printed on the lids of board games that attain this judgment. Often, Tom’s reviews can make or break a game in sales, despite his repeated saying of “This is just my opinion, but this game is not for me specifically, but that doesn’t make it a bad game.”
Discard pile
In any game that involves pulling cards from a draw pile (q.v.) or pool of cards, a space is often designated—usually next to the draw pile—to leave cards that are neither in the draw pile, in the players’ hands, or in play. For most games, the discard pile is left face up to avoid confusion with the draw pile, but some traditional card games demand that the contents of the discard pile be kept secret. Some games, such as Star Realms, distinguish between a discard pile that is in play, and cards that have left the game entirely (often with the moniker of “destroyed” or “trashed”). Note that, with the exception of some legacy games (q.v.), destroying a card does NOT mean physically rending or altering the card. The key difference is that cards in a discard pile can return to the players’ hands, while a destroyed or trashed card cannot return until the game is restarted.
Down time
When players talk about down time, they mean that period during which it’s not their turn or when they are not actively playing. This is important to many players because some games have such low player interaction that there is little to do but sit and watch the clock when it is another player’s turn to play, especially if the off-turn player is mentally fast enough and familiar enough with the game to strategize in advance. Other games might have high player interactions, but the game state changes so drastically between turns that it becomes nigh impossible to plan and strategize between turns. This becomes especially frustrating if other players have AP (q.v.) that lasts minutes on end; some players groups have instituted timers to ensure that these players don’t hem and haw indefinitely and turn a 90 minute game into a 900 minute game.
Drafting
Drafting can refer to any number of board game components but usually means dice or cards, and involves players taking turns to select from a pool of components. There are three main types of drafting:
- Turn order drafting (which includes reverse turn order drafting), where players simply go around and around the table selecting components until none are left.
- Snake drafting where players select components from first to last or vice versa, and then perform the reverse order immediately after, i.e. the person to pick last also makes the first selection of the next round of drafting.
- Simultaneous drafting where everyone picks at the same time.
Within those three groups, there are two further groups:
- Closed drafting, in which players select from a privately-drawn or rolled selection of components. Most turn-order drafts are turn-order or simultaneous drafts.
- Open drafting, in which players select from a common pool of components. Most snake drafting is open drafting.
Some games use drafting as their entire mechanic, for example Sushi Go! by designer Phil Walker-Harding. Because we’ve defined the terms, I can quickly state that Sushi Go! is a simultaneous turn-order closed draft, and players pick one card from their hands and pass the remainder of their hand to the player on their left while receiving a hand of cards from the player on their right from which to draft again.
Sagrada is a beautiful game that involves both open snake drafting and dice placement, and your success at drafting what you need determines largely how well you’ll score at the end.
Galaxy Trucker by Vlaada Chvátil is a simultaneous open draft during the first phase (q.v.) of each round (q.v.), where players scramble to find the tiles they need to build their spacecraft while the sands in the timer falls. It is about as chaotic as it sounds.
Draw pile
The draw pile is a private or common pool of cards. Players pull cards from the top of the draw pile into their hands or into play, depending on the draw pile and game. Some games have both private and common draw piles; for example, deck builder games (q.v.) provide each player with a private draw pile that they pull from, but the deck that fills the “card marketplace” comes from a common pool. Draw piles can be either face up or face down, depending on whether the top card of the deck is public information or not. Most games require that the draw pile be shuffled after retrieving cards from the discard pile and before pulling cards from it, but some games (such as Aeon’s End) state that shuffling must not occur when retrieving cards from the discard pile, making the order in which you discard an important strategic decision.
Dudes on a map
Any faction-based game that has an array of warriors hacking at each other with wild abandon can be termed a “dudes on a map” game. Often these games are also area control (q.v.) games. Simple cubes and wooden cylinders can also tenuously be called dudes on a map, but the best examples contain minis (q.v.).
Risk is an earlier example of this type of game, as are most wargames such as Warhammer. The theme (q.v.) can range from standard World War affairs to ancient Egypt (see Kemet, for example), feudal Japan (Sekigahara is a beautiful two-player example), to the far flung future (Warhammer again).
Dungeon crawler
Are you romping and traipsing around labyrinthine musty caves or wending chilly tunnels? You must be playing a dungeon crawler genre game, which might not necessarily involve any real dungeons in the traditional sense. The earliest known reference to the term “dungeon crawl” comes from a Usenet post in 1982, although it was likely in common spoken use for some years before that. The so-called “dungeon” simply refers to the area where players encounter things to fight while exploring. Other areas are the “town” areas, which are friendly and used for acquiring equipment and the like, and “overworld” areas, which are the boring areas between dungeons and towns where players are allowed only one action: travel.
But I digress. Dungeon crawl games typically have a fantasy setting with the staples of the fantasy role-playing genres including dwarves, dragons, demons, and other words that start with ‘d’. The key part of any dungeon crawl game is that it’s a heroic adventure, usually heavily story-driven, and often features some kind of player-levelling and powering up. Not all dungeon crawl board games have every feature, though, and some games are simple one-off adventures with no story, and the key feature here is simply exploring the area in search of whatever McGuffin the designer has placed for the players.
The highest ranked (at present) board game on the Boardgame Geek charts, Gloomhaven by Isaac Childres, is a thorough, typical example of a dungeon crawler which has every feature of such in a massive, ten kilogram box. Area exploration? Check. Story-driven? Check. Player levelling? Check. Fantasy setting? Check. Combat? So much check. The game doesn’t require a game master, and all players can partake of the adventure equally.
If you prefer your games more on the horror side, there’s Mansions of Madness by Fantasy Flight games, which doesn’t have the persistent story or player levelling, but careful exploration and combat are definitely part of the game. Betrayal at House on the Hill is a B-horror version of the same, with all the campy fun that goes with it.
If you enjoy app-driven games but prefer the stock fantasy setting, you can try Descent: Legends of the Dark also by Fantasy Flight games. The first two editions of Descent required that one player take on the role of the gamemaster (GM), turning the game into a 1 vs many (q.v.) experience. The latest edition uses an app to drive the enemy behaviour and the experience is more of a collaborative, collective stabbing event now than it was before.
I will also mention Clank! In! Space! or the original Clank!: A deck-building adventure in this definition, because they both involve the players moving and fighting through a winding labyrinth to reach the treasure at the end.
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