by Derek Turner
It could be argued that there are a finite number of mechanics that can be used in board games, and that the true innovations in game theory come in how those mechanics are combined with one another as well as with various themes and other features. BoardGameGeek - inarguably the authoritative source on such matters - lists only 51 mechanics as possibilities featured in games. That number might not seem very high, but combinations and permutations of those mechanics have resulted in over 88,000 games being listed in the BGG database.But those 51, although exhaustive, are not necessarily finite in number in perpetuity, as every few years, there is a new mechanic that is developed and added to the list. I would argue that the "legacy" mechanic currently popularized by Risk Legacy, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, and now SeaFall will make the list 52 soon, since it seems to be developing enough of its own identity to be listed as a separate mechanic.
The most recent mechanic that became incredibly popular very quickly came almost a decade ago, in 2008, when Dominion introduced "deck-building" as a mechanic. There was a huge wave of deck-building games over the ensuing years, and now there are over 1,800 games and expansions on BGG with that mechanic identified, including at least two dozen that have achieved widespread popularity and acclaim.
But it was not too much earlier that the previous innovation in board gaming mechanics started to take hold: "worker placement", or "WP" for short. Although there are entries in the BGG database dating back to 1991, WP really took hold as a prominent mechanic in 2005 with the success of the game Caylus. In the next few years, games like The Pillars of the Earth, Agricola, and Stone Age had further critical and commercial success helping to cement WP as a leading genre in this modern age of board games.
Fast forward a decade, and there are over 1,300 entries in the BGG database that feature WP as a mechanic, including many entries in the upper echelons of the ranks of BGG. WP has emerged as one of the leading mechanics in crowdfunded games as well, and it has become a genre which could easily consume most - or even all - of a player's time. There's even a WP game set in an office building entitled "Worker Placement", which might be the point at which the mechanic unofficially jumped the shark, so suffice to say that it is a very popular genre.
Read the rest of my thoughts on the Worker Placement genre, including games I have played and want to play, some superlative lists of "bests", and my ten favourite WP games at my blog, Life of Turner: http://lifeofturner.blogspot.ca/2017/02/worker-placement-gam...