This morning when I drove into work I thought “I wonder how many games I have by mechanic? Just what are the top mechanics in my collection?”

So after trying to get some sql written to extract that information for me, I gave up and wrote the functionality I wanted in Python in a fraction of the time.

So here are the Top 10 Mechanics in My Game Collection.

1. Hand Management (90 games)
2. Dice Rolling (80 games)
3. Variable Player Powers (70 games)
4. Set Collection (44 games)
5. Card Drafting (43 games)
6. Modular Board (40 games)
7. Player Elimination (36 games)
8. Co-operative Play (31 games)
9. Area Control / Area Influence (28 games)
10. Deck / Pool Building (23 games)

It should be noted that the games could have (and most probably will) more than one game mechanic, so will have been counted more than once.

However it’s still interesting to see this sort of information. I would have never in a million years thought that I had that many games with a hand management mechanic.

I might write a small version of my ranking engine to allow me to rank these game mechanics, and also maybe publisher and designer. If I look at my rankings only four of my Top 10 games that I own have this mechanic. Which is 40%. While the mechanic itself is approximately 41% of my collection. So in this case there does seem to be some correlation between the two.

With this new information in hand I can do a series of posts now of my Top 10 games by popularity of the mechanic in my collection.