On the 9th day before Christmas, we want to share our top 5 Tile Placement games. Currently the most popular mechanic in board gaming, tile placement as a mechanic has caught the world by storm where most games have a tile placement mechanic in them. These games feature placing a physical piece of cardboard (called the tile) to score points or trigger abilities, often based on adjacent pieces or pieces in the same group/cluster, and keying off non-spatial properties like color, "feature completion“ and cluster size. It a great way to create spatial awareness and logic thinking!
5. Carcassonne: The grand daddy of all tile-placement games in which players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected. Players are faced with decisions like: "Should I use this tile to expand my city, or should I place it near my opponent instead, giving him a hard time to complete their project and score points?" Since players place only one tile and have the option to place one meeple on it, turns proceed quickly as it is a game full of options and possibilities.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne
4. Patchwork: one of the great (designer) Uwe Rosenberg’s earliest tile placement games where 2 players compete to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 9x9 game board. A player either purchases one of 3 patches standing clockwise of the spool or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons, move the spool to that patch's location in the circle, add the patch to your game board (quilt), then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You're free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn't overlap other patches. An absolute genius of a game!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163412/patchwork
3. Alhambra: Another classic game where players are acquiring buildings to be placed within their Alhambra city complex. Money in Alhambra comes in 4 different currencies and is available in the open money market. The 54 buildings of six types become available for purchase in the building market 4 at a time; one building is available in each of the 4 currencies. The game rewards efficiency, as when a player purchases a building from the market for the exact amount, the player may take another turn.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6249/alhambra
2. Kingdomino: You are a lord seeking new lands in which to expand your kingdom. You must explore all the lands, including wheat fields, lakes, and mountains, in order to spot the best plots, while competing with other lords to acquire them first. The game uses tiles similar to Dominoes (hence the name!). Each turn, a player will select a new domino to connect to their existing kingdom, making sure at least one of its sides connects to a matching terrain type already in play. The order of who picks first depends on which tile was previously chosen, with better tiles forcing players to pick later in the next round.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204583/kingdomino
1. Azul: Players take turns drafting colored tiles from suppliers to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they've placed their tiles to decorate the palace. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets; wasted supplies harm the player's score. The beautiful tiles in the game are based on azulejos (originally white and blue ceramic tiles) based on the Portuguese King Manuel’s Moorish decorative tiles.
