What is skill In boardgaming? Memory

Memory. The older I get, the more I realise I used to have a good one¹. Nevertheless, in the context of this article, memory is probably one of the more controversial skill-tests in boardgaming.

There are games which specifically are for developing your memory, but these all seem to be aimed at children. Chicken Cha Cha Cha is my favourite that I’ve come across - the giant wooden chickens are nicely tactile, but what I think sets Chicken Cha Cha Cha apart from something like Pairs is a subtle re-use of the memory mechanic.

In Pairs, you turn over cards 2 at a time looking for pairs. If you turn over 2 cards that don’t match, say a bat and a scorpion, you turn them back over and need to try to remember where they were, because on a later turn if the first card you turn over is a bat, you need to recall the location of the first bat to then make a pair. But that’s the end of it - once you’ve made that bat pair, the cards are removed. There is no point in you or anyone else continuing to remember where the bats were, and no penalty for being one of the players who did not memorise it in the first place.

In Chicken Cha Cha Cha however, you need to chase the opposing chickens, and you do so by trying to turn over a tile that matches the next space on the path, allowing you to move onto that space. That means that when the player ahead of you finds the tile they needed to move, you should try to remember where it is because you’ll need it soon. Not right away, but in a few turns.

To overtake all the other chickens and steal their tail feathers you’ll probably end up doing close to a full lap, but the lap is created from 2 copies of each picture, so once you’ve found a picture that allows you to move you are still rewarded for continuing to remember where that picture is, because you will need it again, and it’s reasonably likely that one of your opponents needs it soon too.

The design point I’m making is this: Both game reward you for having a memory but only Chicken Cha Cha Cha rewards you for maintaining that memory over the course of the game. The most satisfying finale to this game is when someone succeeds in running a flawless lap of the track as they have actually memorised the position of all 12 tiles. The game doesn’t crescendo by getting easier - it crescendos because your memory is improving as you play.

Anyway, aside from why Chicken Cha Cha Cha is my favourite memory game to play with children, and why memory games all seem to be children’s games, there are many ways in which board games can reward you for having a good memory (or a least, bothering to use it).

High Society leans into it for example - High Society is an auction game where cards are auctioned off one at a time, some are worth points directly, some are multipliers, some are catastrophes to be avoided (and the auction works differently for these). However, the player who ends the game with the least amount of money loses - making the winner the player with the most points as long as they don’t also have the least money. Each player’s current score is very visible, but the question inevitably arises: Do I have the least money? How much can I afford to spend?

Here’s the sticking point regarding that particular rule - everyone starts with the same amount of money, and every transaction is public. If you were allowed to take notes, you could write down what everyone spent, and know without any room for doubt who the poorest player at the table currently is. If everyone revealed their hand of money cards at the start of each auction, you would do away with the need for note-taking, and everyone would know how much money everyone had available.

But - would you still be playing the game as intended? If you play by ‘vibes’ and have a feeling of how much everyone spent, you get most of the benefit of tracking, but that fuzziness over what exactly anyone spent adds an edge of uncertainty that some find exciting. Playing with money ‘open’ removes that uncertainty - but so does playing with a genius who can actually remember the money amounts anyway²!

I also find it interesting that the ‘memory problem’ - if it is indeed a problem - is more pronounced at lower player counts, which is exactly where it is easier to deal with. At 3 players it’s very possible for the points leader to also have the least money, but you’re more likely to know because you only have to remember the account balance of 2 other players. At 5 players it’s harder to track who is the poorest, but it’s also less likely to be the points leader.

Another game which is absolutely not a memory game but contains one particularly spicy memory element is Power Grid. A deck of numbered power plant card is shuffled at the beginning of the game, and this drives the auction market. Each turn the top-numbered power plant is removed from the market and placed under the bottom of the deck, to come out later in “Step 3” of the game.

The thing is, that means that a card that left the market on turn 1 of the game ends up mattering something like 2 hours later³. . What was the capacity of that plant - was it the 7 I need to raise my total capacity? Did it need coal? If it’s my first game, how was I supposed to know that card could even end up being important? Friedemann Friese could have avoided the memory issue by either playing with that portion of the deck face up, or by shuffling the deck as a one off move heading into Step 3 - changing the required memory feat by removing the ordering.

But he didn’t.

OR DID HE!!?! I literally just fact checked myself. I thought to myself - “Self - that’s a really strange omission from a talented designer. Shuffling the deck of power plants as you enter Step 3 is such an easy thing to do to wipe that memory problem, why didn’t he do that? And that, dear reader, is why even after playing a game many many times and having it be my favourite game for some time, it’s still worth checking the rulebook or the BGG forums just to check whether you missed anything.

And I had.

I’ve been playing Power Grid wrong for literally decades. You DO shuffle the deck going in to Step 3! Still, despite now having a new article idea for how to cope with playing games incorrectly, my original point does still stand. You do still have a benefit for remembering for example just how many 7-capacity plants remain in the deck, just not what order they are in.

Of course, house rules are a thing, and you’re welcome to play your games however you like. If you want to generously show everyone the stack of power plants heading into Step 3 then go right ahead! If you play such a game on Board Game Arena, you can’t avoid that BGA allows you to collect notes, and has a fully visible log of all moves made. That can totally remove the memory element of any game, which is surely a boon for the more asynchronous games played over larger time scales.

A whole genre of card games - trick taking games, also lean in to the memory element - especially those that deal out an entire deck. Something I like about this is there are clear tiers to the memory element of trick-taking games. For example, if you don’t try to remember anything about where any card is in a full deck card game like Tichu or Hearts⁴, you can improve buy at least just paying attention to whether all 4 Aces have been played. As it gets harder to remember more and more cards, the return on that investment gets smaller and smaller. A related memory trick is in the wording of the elements in Panda Spin - there are 5 elements, they all have some variation of win a trick if something something has happened, but can you remember all 5 conditions, which elements they are on, and which of those have been played this round?

Memory can benefit your play in a longer term sense between games too - play any game that contains a hidden deck of cards and you likely will play ‘blind’ the first time - you won’t look through the deck to see what cards exist before playing your first game. Remembering what does exist in the deck and so might come out in a future game.

Finally, for this discussion anyway, let’s being ol’ Grandpa back to the table - is Chess a memory game? In some ways, played at the highest level, yes it can be. There are 20 legal opening moves for the first player in chess, but many of them aren’t really used. Some lines have been analysed down to 20 or 30 moves, so if you and your opponent stick to that opening sequence are you even playing chess at that point? Or just memorising the moves of great chess players that came before you?

This explains the 960 in the name, instead of 1 static and very analysed opening position, there are 960 available - far too many to analyse any one of them in particular, placing the emphasis for actually playing well squarely back on the calculation and strategic skills required to actually play chess.

Is memory a welcome thing to have tested during a boardgame? Would you prefer that a game had no memory elements, or is it OK if memory is useful if the game warns you in advance of what it will be useful to remember? Tell me in the comments here, or join our Discord and tell me there!

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