That special sauce

We've been thinking about the design hook that grabs players' attention and gets them talking about a game. In Mike Hayes's Apocalypse (originally The Warlord) it was the way you set a number on a dice that the opposing player had to guess -- a fiendishly simple but utterly involving mechanic. In Dune it was the combat wheel and the way it interacted with each player's special power. Intrigue's limited number of positions meant that you had to think carefully about appointments. The mix of different cards in Condottiere meant that you had to bluff, especially when your hand was running low.

Realizing that clever and original mechanics are the only way to get noticed in a crowded market, we're been working up a new idea for a series of games, tentatively called Too Many Cooks, based on some ideas Dave developed when he was a consultant at the American Film Institute. To our knowledge there hasn't been a game like this before. Of course, it also has to be good fun, which is what we'll be working on next. As soon as we have a playable prototype you'll get to hear more about it here.

In the meantime, what are the boardgame rules that most delight you? Tell us why they make a good game great.