Component Usage Analysis for Board Games

Every card, tile, upgrade, or resource type in a game is a promise that it is worth including. When a component is picked in a handful of games out of hundreds, or picked every single time regardless of situation, that promise is not being kept — the component is functionally dead or functionally mandatory.

How we frame it

We track selection rate for every component across archetypes, player counts, and game stages, then separate genuinely dead components (rarely worth taking under any strategy) from situationally narrow ones (correct only in specific circumstances, which is healthy design, not a flaw). The fix for each is different, so the report does not lump them together.

• Which components fall below a meaningful selection-rate floor across every archetype tested?
• Is low usage universal, or does it disappear for one specific strategy that actually wants that component?
• Are any components picked so consistently that they function as a mandatory tax on every turn?
• Does component usage shift in an unexpected way after a rules or cost change elsewhere in the game?