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.

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Crayon Rail System: The Crayon Rail System is a subcategory of Route/Network Building. Types of these games use crayon or other non-permanent methods of making connecting lines on a board, often eraseable. The most popular Crayon Rail games are part of the Empire Builder system.

Layering: Components are placed above other components, partially covering the ones below, or overlapping in various ways. Only the topmost visible icons/areas are active.

Examples include Patchistory and Smartphone Inc. using cards, and Taluva using tiles.

Modular Board: Play occurs upon a modular board that is composed of multiple pieces, often tiles or cards.

In many games, board placement is randomized, leading to different possibilities for strategy and exploration.

Some games in this category have multiple boards which are not used simultaneously, preserving table space. Unused boards remain out of play until they are required.

Tile Placement: Tile Placement games feature placing a piece to score VPs or trigger actions, often based on adjacent pieces or pieces in the same group/cluster, or keying off non-spatial properties like color, “feature completion”, cluster size etc.

A classic example is Carcassonne, where a player randomly draws a tile, places it next to other tiles (along with a meeple), in order to complete map features.