As a matter of fact, I am struggling to think of any boardgames which have a 3d component. I am sure they exist, but a robust 2d representation feels easier and would still be applicable to 99% of existing games.

Checkers traditionally does... but that's not a good example.

The entire Icehouse set of games. https://www.looneylabs.com/rules/icehouse (see especially Zendo - https://www.icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Zendo )

There's a genera of games that I'm quite fond of. Pueblo https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3228/pueblo and Aztec https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1071/aztec are two of the ones that I'm most fond of in that because of the abstractness. I've also got a first edition Santorini somewhere ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/194655/santorini ). Cityscape is another one that I'm quite fond of ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4980/cityscape ).

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamefamily/5607/components-3-...

These aren't necessarily games that "everyone knows" - but it is a very rich subset of games with a lot of interesting entries.

And if you really want a head scratcher... https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/820/axiom

Ha, Axiom is certainly the perfect rebuttal.

Stacking mechanics happen a lot.

Stacking mechanics are typically where you want the engine to defy physics, though. For example picking up a stack of cards, the stack is typically treated as a single object rather than 52 individual objects that can fall apart.

Playing virtual poker, you probably don't want to have to manually manipulate individual poker chips or move around wobbly stacks of chips (yes that can be fun in itself, but there will be someone who struggles to move their chips around intuitively and inevitably delay the actual game at hand).

Having said that for games like virtual Jenga, you absolutely DO want to keep those wobbly blocks of wood.

I was hoping to slide by with 2d + zordering, but by any other name, that is 3d.