Best Engine-Building Board Games

“There can be economy only where there is efficiency.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

Engine-building board games offer players the opportunity to not only strategize but to create as well.

Our Top Picks for Best Engine-Building Board Games

In a hurry? Check out our favorites below.

06/05/2023 03:30 pm GMT

Before we go further, let’s answer the question, “What is an engine-building board game?”

In certain games, players will build their own “engine” throughout the course of the game. Players typically start out from scratch and build up the engine by adding different combinations or add ons to the “engine”. 

What does the engine do, though?

It’s like building an economy. The engine starts out small and becomes a resource generator by the end of the game. It could be any resource, victory points, or materials. You’re really only limited by the game.

It’s similar to an incremental game like a civilization builder. First, you’ll manually gather some wood and then you’ll build a logging camp with that wood. Your logging camp then gathers wood for you. That wood can then be used to make more logging camps or other buildings. 

This continues forever until you’re not really doing anything but watching your glorious resource engine spit out stuff for you to turn into other stuff.

The fun comes with perfecting your engine, making it as efficient and useful as possible.

Terraforming Mars

 You better believe that terraforming an entire planet requires an engine. 

Terraforming Mars takes my top spot for an engine-building board game, due to its awesome mechanics.

Each player takes on the role of a corporation tasked with terraforming Mars. It’s a great small group game, working best with 3+ players.

Each player’s corporation is represented by their own player board and as the game progresses, they’ll build up the infrastructure necessary to change the Red Planet into a much more livable green and blue one. 

The early stages of the game can be difficult, especially for new players that won’t understand the upgrades and bonus synergies, but they’ve built a pretty incredible starter scenario that helps jump-start play.

You’ll also be struggling to play a few cards at the beginning stages, but once the engine is built, you’ll be powering through high-powered cards and abilities.

What we Liked

Terraforming Mars is one of the best engine builders out there. There is loads of variety and every game will have different combinations. 

What Could be Better

Overall the gameplay is excellent but the start of the game is slow and unexciting. There just isn’t that much to do because you don’t have enough credits to perform many actions. 

Terraforming Mars is a bit fiddly with rules and components, but for a solid sci-fi, engine-building game, it’s damn hard to beat. 

Caverna: The Cave Farmers 

Caverna is the spiritual successor to Agricola. Instead of the traditional farmstead, players will instead set up in a cave, taking on the role of a happy dwarf family. 

Designer Uwe Rosenburg took the lessons learned from Agricola and basically made a 2.0 version of Agricola. 

The rules are easier to manage and the complexity of the game gets amped up. There are a lot of new things to do and even to explore in Caverna. 

The engine portion comes in the form of your personal homestead/cave. Each building produces something or upgrades your abilities. 

Each player will start out with the same generic cave with a needlepoint “Cave Sweet Cave” hanging over the doorway, but that’s where the similarities end.

How far you expand, what resources you try and monopolize, and how you convert your rooms to make your cave/homestead create a completely customized resource engine by the end of the game.

What we Liked

Strategy is everything in Caverna. By choosing one path, you sacrifice another. And there are so many choices. Other players will also cut you off so having backup strategies and being adaptable is also key to victory. 

What Could be Better

Although the components in general are great, the dwarves themselves are actually the worst part. This is quite surprising, seeing as the game centers on dwarves.

It’s one of the finest examples of eurogames you can find and for that, Caverna sits high up on our list today. 

Underwater Cities

While we often think of our future as interplanetary, and it is only a matter of time before we colonize or terraform Mars, there is another possibility. Why not build underwater? After all, 71% of the Earth’s surface is ocean, and 80% of the ocean is unmapped and unknown. 

In Underwater Cities, players will try to tame the vast depths of the ocean in order to establish liveable and prospering cities. It’s a worker placement game where every choice has consequences.

Over 10 rounds players will vie for deepwater dominance by developing their economies and founding epic cities. 

To expand their marine metropolises, players choose cards from their hands to trigger an action. There are a lot of choices in Underwater Cities and it can be easy to get lost in all the details. But it’s an excellent engine-builder that rewards strategy and patience.  

What we Liked

Underwater Cities is perfect for gamers who love engine-building and planning ahead but also like to adapt their strategy in real time. 

What Could be Better

Underwater Cities is quite complex and will definitely appeal to those who love Eurogames. But it is very long and players can suffer from analysis paralysis.

Race for the Galaxy

Oh galactic conquest, my old friend.

In Race for the Galaxy, players will attempt to out-colonize and out-expand their opponents. Players all simultaneously choose a card/action to perform on their turn. The tricky part is that whatever action you choose, it can be duplicated by an opponent.

If one player colonizes a planet, all other players will have the opportunity to follow suit and colonize. The original player will get the bonuses, but you could also inadvertently give an opponent a solid advantage. 

As players expand outward throughout the galaxy, they’ll have access to more planets, building economic infrastructure, and military might. 

What we Liked

The overall design of Race for the Galaxy is phenomenal. It lets you experiment with a huge variety of strategies and tactics. Every game is going to be unique. 

What Could be Better

Scoring can be quite confusing because it is tracked in multiple ways. During the end game when it’s important to know how well others are doing, a more intuitive or visual scoring system would avoid any confusion. 

If you haven’t played Race for the Galaxy, you’re seriously missing out on one of the best engine-builders, and also one of the best card games. 

It’s a Wonderful World

Engine building and imperial expansion are a match made in heaven. It’s a Wonderful World is an excellent addition to this genre. It’s a card-drafting, engine-building board game where players aim to expand and develop their empires faster and more effectively than their opponents.   

Over four rounds, players draft cards, plan their desired strategy, and produce resources key to realizing their imperial ambitions. Efficiency is rewarded so building the best engine is absolutely essential for achieving victory.

And this is where the game excels. The combination of card drafting and engine-building means there are a lot of meaningful and absorbing decisions to make throughout. 

What we Liked

Though the concept is hardly novel, the mechanics, artwork, and overall gameplay set this game apart. 

What Could be Better

It’s a Wonderful World is named badly. Based on the name alone the first thing that comes to mind is the classic Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. The name alone can evoke strong emotions and expectations. It’s a Wonderful World fails in this regard. 

Power Grid 

After living in Vietnam for a few years and experiencing many a blackout, I’ve come to appreciate the efficiency of power companies and their power grids.

In Power Grid, players will be competing to power the most cities. It’s a euro-style board game in which players participate in an auction to receive new resources and materials necessary to power them. 

The engine-building portion of Power Grid comes in the form of the power plants and the grid itself. Each power plant built provides income, which in turn, allows you to buy more plants and materials to run them.

This inherently creates some questions as to whether or not this is an actual engine-building board game. The power plants require constant upkeep in the form of materials to keep producing, unlike other games that require no input to create resources.

For a German-designed eurogame, the engine isn’t all that efficient. It requires constant upkeep, sorta like an American car…

What we Liked

Power Grid allows you to try out many different strategies and no two games are going to be the same. This makes it very rewarding and gives it great replayability. 

What Could be Better

Power Grid can result in runaway winners and abject losers. Once you’re ahead you get rewarded more, and if you fall behind it can be impossible to catch up.

Either way, Power Grid still hits the top of this list, simply because it’s fantastic and does provide that satisfying feeling when you see your well-crafted power grid. 

Dominion (Second Edition) 

I love Dominion. 

Deck-building and engine-building basically go hand-in-hand, so most deck-builders will have some elements of engine-building built into the mechanics.

The original deck-builder is no exception.

As players buy more valuable cards and add them to their deck, they’ll be able to purchase bigger cards and perform more actions.

This is especially true after you start to add the Dominion Expansions to the mix. Kendra’s mom actually refuses to play with certain cards with me because my turns can last several minutes with multiple “+1 Card, +1 Action” or “Rats”. 

What we Liked

The replayability factor is incredibly high in Dominion. There are so many variations, so you can play hundreds of games without repeating the same combination. 

What Could be Better

The artwork is pretty underwhelming and inconsistent. Some cards look great and others are not as attractive. 

Star Realms 

Star Realms is one of my favorite 2-player games. 

It’s perfectly sized for travel and it’s an awesome dueling card game, all in one tiny box. 

It’s incredibly easy to set up and start playing right away. As with all deck-builders, there’s an inherent engine built into the rules. Players will start with the same setup of generic cards in their hands and purchase more powerful cards as the game goes on. 

By the end of the game, players will have space stations built in orbit, specialized cards for multiple factions, and a ton of different ships in their deck.

What we Liked

One of the best things about Star Realms is its accessibility. It’s cheap, portable and quick, and easy to play. This means you can play it anywhere with anyone with minimal set-up. 

What Could be Better

Luck plays a big factor in Star Realms. Although strategy is important, some cards can swing the game and that can be pretty frustrating.

It’s an extremely tight Sci-Fi game, that’s perfect for two players or travelers. 

Scythe 

Set in a futuristic alternate history of the 1920s, Scythe does a little bit of everything. Most impressive, however, is that Scythe does a little bit of everything extremely well. 

There’s warfare, politics, backstabbing, area control, economy/engine-building, and, of course, giant friggin’ robots.

Scythe is pretty open-world about how players can go about winning and every faction starts slightly predisposed toward a certain aspect. It’s extremely well-balanced, however.

Players can build their economy and focus mainly on trying to get their giant robots back online for conquest, or they could hide in the corner farming while winning the hearts and minds of the people.

What we Liked

Scythe offers a little bit of everything and manages to do an excellent job at it. Engine-building is essential. War is an ever-present threat. Area control matters a lot. There’s so much you can do, and so many strategies you can employ. 

What Could be Better

Though there are many ways to win, some paths to victory are much easier to achieve than others. Why wage war when it’s not the most efficient path to victory?

It’s an incredible achievement to see a game offer so much variety like Scythe, while still being a cohesive overall game. 

Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization

Through the Ages is one of the quintessential civilization-builder board games.

Players start out with just a handful of workers in their pool and manifest destiny in their hearts. 

Throughout the three ages (phases) of the game, players will build up their civilization with resources, technology, and troops. 

Is your empire lacking some necessities?
Build up a few quarries to gather more resources.

Is your neighbor researching gunpowder?
It may be time to upgrade your science output to keep up with the arms race.

What we Liked

Through the Ages is an epic civilization builder. Its scope is huge and it’s one of the most expansive board games on the market. Overall it’s just incredibly rewarding. 

What Could be Better

The complexity of Through the Ages can make it off-putting for beginners. There is so much to take into account that it can seem overwhelming until you get used to the mechanics. 

It’s incredibly rewarding to watch your civilization grow from nothing to a full-fledged empire. 

Fantastic Factories

In the not-so-distant past, manufacturing was slow and inefficient. Before the Industrial Revolution, products were made by hand, one at a time. But now, factories are the beating heart of the global economy.

In Fantastic Factories, players aim to out-manufacture their rivals. This is done by developing the most efficient and effective factories. This theme fits great with the engine-building mechanics of the game.

Each round involves two phases. In the Market phase players draft a contractor. In the Work phase, players assign their workers to key tasks. 

As the game develops, factories will become better and more efficient. To win, players need to outproduce their rivals. The first player to produce 12 goods resources or construct 10 buildings wins. 

What we Liked

At its core, Fantastic Factories is a fairly simple engine-builder. It’s also great fun. You can teach new players the rules quickly. It’s also great for experienced players who want a more casual experience. 

What Could be Better

If you’re looking for a complex engine-building game then Fantastic Factories may disappoint. For a general audience, it works. But for hardcore Eurogamers, there might not be enough going on to keep you engaged. 

Great Western Trail (Second Edition)

Most games set in the “Wild West” are gunslinger extravaganzas that would probably be right at home in a gift shop in Tombstone, Arizona. 

The Great Western Trail (Second Edition) takes a different and very refreshing approach to the Old West. It also includes a few cool updates from the original.

Just like the original, you’ll have to hire work hands, invest in your ranch, and even improve the rail lines, all with the end goal of selling the highest quality cattle stock. But the artwork has been improved and there are new player boards, new breeds of cattle and new buildings. 

What we Liked

One of the drawbacks of the original was the artwork. This has been upgraded for the 2nd edition and includes more representation as well as better quality artwork. 

What Could be Better

The rulebook has not been improved and is still long, convoluted, and confusing. Once you get the hang of the game, it doesn’t really matter. But it can be time-consuming when you’re starting out. 

It’s a refreshing theme in a world of gunfights and banditos, and not only that but the engine elements all fit together to make a compelling and thoughtful game.

A Feast for Odin

Yet another Uwe Rosenberg board game makes it on our list of best engine-building games and for good reason: A Feast for Odin.

Experience the Viking way of life: exploring, raiding, and providing for your warband in this engine-building, worker placement, epic saga. Your goal is to collect the largest and most valuable horde of goods and treasure by using your Viking workers as efficiently as possible. 

To emerge victorious, you must achieve balance in this game. Vikings can’t raid, build, or pillage on an empty stomach, can they? Use your resources wisely to make sure your clan is fed and cared for in order to complete your ultimate objective: hoarding more shiny stuff than your opponents.

What we Liked

A Feast for Odin blends a lot of strategic elements that take a long time to master. As such, the replayability factor is huge as it will take a lot of sessions for you to explore all of the different strategies within the game. 

What Could be Better

A Feast for Odin plays better with fewer players. As you increase the player count, the board becomes congested and gameplay slows down.

Blending tile placement, puzzle elements, and worker placement mechanics, this one is sure to be an epic story for the ages.

Terra Mystica 

Terra Mystica is a beautiful full-information game.

In this fantasy-themed board game, there’s a war for control of the land, but there won’t be a single shot fired. Players will control one of fourteen different fantasy races and attempt to terraform the landscape into one more suitable for their kind. 

As players build up their territory and upgrade their settlements, they’ll gain access to each race’s special abilities. Players need to be efficient when settling territory because terraforming a desert wasteland into a region of lakes takes a lot of effort (and a lot of money).

With the entire world at your fingertips, you’ll need to make smart strategic decisions if you want your race to come out on top. 

What we Liked

Terra Mystica is a quintessential eurogame. It is very complex and strategy is rewarded above all else. If you play well, the overall experience is gratifying and fulfilling. 

What Could be Better

Given that strategy is so fundamental in Terra Mystica, players can spend a long time obsessing over each move. This can lead to a lot of downtime and extended turn length. 

Wingspan

Wingspan was super hyped up when it was first announced. It also won the 2019 Kennerspiel des Jahres award (complex or connoisseur game of the year). 

In a world where every other board game promises a host of intricate miniatures, monsters, and wars on an epic scale comes… a game about bird watching.

Okay, so Wingspan isn’t the typical theme you’ll see in a board game, and that may have been why it was so well-received when it was first announced. Being different, especially in board games, is a good thing.

In Wingspan, players will act as bird watchers but the birds are cards that can be placed on a player board. The further along the player board you go, the more actions and resources (bird eggs & bird food) you’ll be able to receive on your turn.

On top of that, each bird played will have a different ability.

What we Liked

Everything about Wingspan is fantastic. The artwork is gorgeous, the components are high quality, and most importantly, the ruleset is SOLID with fun gameplay.

What Could be Better

Honestly, the only thing keeping it low on the list is that the engine-building mechanics are light. Either way, Wingspan flew into the board game scene riding atop a great golden eagle and you really can’t go wrong by checking it out. 

Concordia 

Let’s take a trip back to the Roman Empire. Unlike most other games, however, you won’t find any legions here. 

Concordia is a complete economic game set in the Roman Empire. Players’ engines will come in the form of economy-building. 

Each player starts out with the same number of resources but that quickly changes as everyone spreads out to every corner of the empire, building trade routes and making sacrifices to appease the gods. 

There’s a lot of commercial expansion in Concordia and it’s rather refreshing to see the Roman Empire represented as a flourishing part of history, instead of just focusing on its military prowess. 

What we Liked

As a Eurogame, there is more focus on economic and commercial expansion than military might. This is a novel approach to a game centered on the Roman Empire and it makes a welcome change.  

What Could be Better

The artwork could be much better. It looks cheap and does not capture the epic nature of the Roman Empire at its height at all.

Anachrony 

Travel through time to save the world!

Anachrony is a unique worker placement board game that has one of the more interesting time travel mechanics that I’ve seen. 

After the world was devastated by a cataclysmic event that ripped holes in the very fabric of time, the world is splintered and humanity’s last bastion is struggling to survive. Through the time rift, however, a message manages to come through. 

There is a worse calamity coming. Be prepared…

You’ll need to rebuild your faction’s economy following the wake of the first calamity, but you’re not alone. Future you is there to help.

As you progress into the later parts of the game, your resource engine will produce more goods than when you first started. You may even have a surplus. You could always potentially send them back in time to yourself at the beginning of the game where they would be much more useful.

What we Liked

Anachrony combines awesome artwork, worker placement, and time travel to create an excellent eurogame that is a really immersive experience. 

What Could be Better

The game requires a lot of forward-thinking. You need to plan quite far ahead and this can slow overall gameplay down. Plus, someone can just block your plan which is frustrating. 

Seriously, time travel is a crazy beast. 

San Juan 

San Juan is the card game successor to Puerto Rico. Both games put players into the role of governor of this tropical territory. 

In each round, players will take charge as governor and determine what actions happen during the round. Everyone will benefit from the action, such as building or producing, but as with all governments, the one in charge gets a bonus. 

If you’ve played Puerto Rico, you’ll be familiar with a lot of the themes of San Juan, but pleasantly surprised at the portability of the card game and the depth of strategy involved. 

What we Liked

If you’ve played Puerto Rico, you’ll be familiar with a lot of the themes of San Juan, but pleasantly surprised at the portability of the card game and the depth of strategy involved.

What Could be Better

There is quite limited interaction between players and it can feel like solitaire at times. There is only so much you can do to influence other players, and you spend most of the time focusing on your own development. 

San Juan has been a must-have on many a gamer’s shelves for years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. 

Everdell

Everdell is one of the newer games to explode onto the board game scene in 2018 and it’s kept pace with its own hype. 

Players will manage a group of adorable woodland critters, getting ready to expand their realm outward into the valley of Everdell. 

This is quite possibly one of the prettiest games I’ve ever seen with incredible production value. 

Players will need to manage their critter tribes by building up new facilities and hosting events for other animals. 

Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?

It has an adorable theme that holds up to scrutiny when you take a look below the surface at the drafting, worker placement mechanics, and engine-building elements of the game.  

What we Liked

Everdell’s theme is both incredibly enchanting and excellently executed. The production value is high and the components are beautiful. This really adds to an immersive experience. 

What Could be Better

The game is played over the seasons of a year, which sounds great. But, players can advance at different speeds, so one might be in Autumn while another is still in Spring. It can feel a bit odd when you’re all sharing the same board.

Le Havre 

Next, let’s head to the French port city of Le Havre. 

Players will need to flex some nautical knowledge muscles to successfully run their own shipping business dockside.

Le Havre packs a lot of strategy with its management style. Players can commission their own buildings and receive rents from other players that use them or use them to produce goods.

It’s not all profit, however. Players will need to ensure their engine is efficient because they’ll need to feed all their workers. 

What we Liked

Le Havre is an accessible heavy game. At the start, there aren’t many choices to make so players won’t be frozen by the tyranny of choice. By the end, there are a lot of decisions to make, but the player has been eased into the game. 

What Could be Better

By the endgame, turns can take a lot longer as players weigh up the best option for their turn. Overall gameplay will be dictated by the speed that players can make up their minds. 

It’s a simple theme, but it’s also one of my favorite worker placement games. 

Imperial Settlers

Imperial Settlers is a civilization-builder with adorable artwork, but don’t be fooled. There’s a lot of strategy and city razing to be had here. 

Players will take control of one of four factions. Every building they add to their civilization grants different bonuses but just like in real life, real estate is a very limited resource. You may find that a civilization’s initial buildings just aren’t producing efficiently enough. 

There’s an easy fix to that. Burn the whole thing to the ground and start over.

Players will have a limited set of actions and will need to build an efficient civilization if they want to come out on top. 

What we Liked

Imperial Settlers includes awesome artwork and an excellent engine builder to create a riveting civilization builder. The game involves a lot of strategy and can be very exciting when two or more players are close to victory. 

What Could be Better

Strategy is key to victory but you also need to draw cards. This introduces an element of luck that players may find frustrating. 

The Manhattan Project

Of all the mutant alien games, zombie games, Kingdom Death games, and violent games this is probably the most horrifying board game theme I’ve ever come across.

In The Manhattan Project, players will be in control of their own government-funded project to create the biggest and baddest bomb that they possibly can.

For a game about the A-bomb, there’s actually no nuke flinging going on here. Players will build up their facilities and resources to outperform each other in a nuclear arms race. 

There’s a lot of strategy involved with creating an atomic bomb. Where do you spend your limited resources (workers & money)? What facilities do you build? Do you devote time to sabotage or espionage? 

The choices and consequences are yours.

What we Liked

The game rewards a well-planned engine. You can spend the first few turns developing your engine, and laying all the groundwork for developing the bomb. Then you can unleash the full power of your engine and develop the bomb in no time. 

What Could be Better

With more players, the overall gameplay slows down considerably. This is especially true if players have analysis paralysis and take a long time deliberating over each move. 

Splendor

Splendor is probably going to be most players’ starting point. 

It’s extremely accessible and very easy to learn, making it an awesome gateway game.

In Splendor, players control every aspect of the gem industry from sourcing to transportation and artisanal processing. 

Players will draft different gem tokens of 6 colors from a common pool and use them to purchase cards on three different tiers. Each card purchased counts as a permanent gem to add to your stockpile.

In the beginning, you’ll only be able to afford cards from the lowest tier that aren’t really worth any points, but by the end of the game, you’ll have a massive fortune in gems stockpiled. 

It’s a nice lightweight game that I play a lot with family and friends (especially non-gamers) and everyone really seems to enjoy it. 

The problem that many “serious” gamers run into is the lightweight nature of the game. The theme itself is basically nonexistent and distracts you with pretty pictures and nice production value.

It’s not a hardcore game, but it’s an excellent gateway game or family-friendly game. 

What we Liked

Splendor is such an easy game to learn and to play. This makes it accessible for any gamer, and also a perfect gateway game to the engine-building genre. 

What Could be Better

Splendor can end very abruptly. You can just be getting into the swing of things, strategizing and planning, when out of nowhere someone declares victory.

Wrap-Up

Engine-building games are incredibly satisfying. To see something you created and built churn out an endless amount of resources is a huge aesthetic/confidence boost for me. 

To quote Hannibal from the A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Did we miss any of your favorite engine-building board games? We’d love to hear what you think. Drop a comment below and join the conversation!