The following is a list of all board game mechanics I know in this category, and that aren’t too niche. Card game mechanics are also included. I’m posting this mainly for my own reference.

---

Auction / Bidding: This mechanic requires you to place a bid, usually monetary, on items in an auction of goods in order to enhance your position in the game. These goods allow players future actions or improve a position. The auction consists of taking turns placing bids on a given item until one winner is established, allowing the winner to take control of the item being bid on. Usually there is a game rule that helps drop the price of the items being bid on if no players are interested in the item at its current price. In most games, once a winner for one item is done, if there are more items to be bid upon, another auction is held for those items. The process repeats until a game condition is met or items are exhausted in the auction phase of the game. This is similar to Worker Placement, but workers can be kicked off spots by bidding higher.

In Power Grid, for example, you start with no power plants and must win bids to be able to produce power. Winning a bid on a given power plant allows that player to add it to their current inventory of power plants and also allows for more power to be made in a given turn. In Vegas Showdown, players bid on rooms. such as a slot machine or a restaurant, in order to build a larger hotel with more prestige and value. Winning players pay for the room based on their bid and place it in their hotel. In both examples, bidding is done in a turn format and players have the option of passing on bids.

Auction Compensation: Losing bidders in an auction receive a lesser award in place of the lot they bid on.

Bids as Wagers: Players bid that they can achieve some outcome in the ensuing gameplay phase. Scoring is based on whether and how well players achieve their bids. Examples would be Spades or Contract Bridge.

Closed Economy Auction: Closed-Economy is a meta-mechanism that can modify any auction type. In a Closed-Economy Auction, all the money spent in the auction is paid out to the auction participants themselves.

For example, in Nightmare Productions, the winning bid is distributed evenly between the non-winning players, and losing bids is the only way to gain more money.

Constrained Bidding: This is a meta-mechanism that can modify other auction techniques. Players may not bid any number that they wish. They may only bid based on increments and/or combinations of certain resources. Examples of this are Ra, which forces players to select one of three bid tiles for their bid, and High Society, where players must increase bids by adding money cards from their hand and are not allowed to make change.

Dutch Priority: A Dutch Priority Auction is a multiple-lot auction in which prices for the lots are determined based on the number of bids placed on the lots up for bid. The winning bidder is the first player, in bid priority, who chooses to pay the current price for a lot, which is equal to the number of bidding tokens there. Priority may be determined by a variety of factors, including global turn order or turn order for each lot based on order of bid placement. Players may typically pass on the purchase when they are the priority bidder by removing their bidding token. This has the effect of reducing the price for the lot by one. The Speicherstadt introduced this mechanism. In that, players place meeples one at a time on different lots to be bid on. After all meeples are placed, each lot is evaluated. The player with the first meeple placed on a lot may purchase it, but must pay a price equal to the total number of meeples. If they cannot or will not purchase it, they take their meeple back, and the next meeple in line may purchase, now at $1 less. This opens up lots of opportunity for counterplay and brinkmanship in a relatively simple system.

English: An auctioneer asks for bids of a certain amount and players indicate their willingness to bid at that amount, usually by holding up a hand or paddle, or by calling out. Players are permitted to adjust the increment of the bid, usually by shouting out their actual bid, though this is done infrequently, and usually either to indicate a smaller increment than the auctioneer requests, or a much larger one. When a certain amount of time with no increases occurs, or it is clear that no one wishes to raise the current bid, the auctioneer declares that the high bidder is the winner.

Fixed Placement: a meta-mechanism that modifies a multiple-lot auction by creating rules about which lots players may bid on, and representing bids visually on a board or cards. It is often combined with constrained-value bids. A Fixed-Placement auction ends when every player passes and/or no player has the right to bid further. The highest bidder for each lot wins the lot. Good examples of this mechanism are in Amun-Re and Vegas Showdown. In these games, there is a track below each lot up for auction. Each player places a marker on the lot they are interested in, at the value they want to pay. If another player wants to bid on that lot they do it by placing their bid marker on a space higher than the current bidder. The outbid player retrieves their bid token, and may place it on the same lot at a higher price, or another lot. When all players have placed their token, the bids are resolved.

Multiple Lots: An auction in which players simultaneously bid on Multiple Lots in parallel, instead of bidding for one lot at a time serially. The actual format of the auction can follow any of the auction mechanisms. For example, in Revolution! players perform a simultaneous Sealed Bid Auction on 12 different actions.

Once Around: The players each have one opportunity to bid, either passing or raising the prior bidder. The order of bids is determined by one of the Turn Order structures. After the last player has their opportunity to bid, the high bidder wins. Although this helps shorten the auction (as increasing game length is a pitfall of including auctions), it strongly favors the last player to bid, as they know what their winning bid needs to be, so the designer needs to take care to balance properly.

Sealed Bid: Players secretly make a bid. All bids are revealed simultaneously, and the high bidder wins. Typically some tie breaker mechanism is required. Common ones include closest to start player or using a secondary currency for a tie-breaking bid. A variation on this is called Sealed Bid with Cancellation. In this case, if two or more players have the same high bid, they are eliminated from contention. The highest non-duplicated bid is the winner. This is best used with Constrained Bidding to make ties more likely, and was first used in What the Heck? (originally called Hol’s Der Geier, so it is sometimes referred to as “the Hol’s Der Geier mechanism”).

Selection Order Bid: Selection Order Bid is a form of multiple-lot auction in which players are not directly bidding on the lots themselves, but the order in which they’ll draft the lots. As the bid increases, players may pass and accept a later place in the order. In some cases, players must pay their entire current bid (an all-pay mechanism), and in others they may recover some of their bid.

An early example of this mechanism is in For Sale.

Turn Order Until Pass: Starting with one player and going in turn order, players may raise the current bid or pass. When all players but one have passed, the player remaining in the auction is the winner. Normally players that pass may not re-enter the auction. However, allowing re-entry is a variation that is not uncommon.