Swapped from teaching new players to just letting them figure it out

I used to spend like 20 minutes explaining every rule in depth before we even started a game of Terraforming Mars. But after my group sat through a 3 hour game night with barely any actual playing going on, I stopped that. Now I just hand them the rulebook, say "let's learn as we go," and we jump right in. It's way more fun and nobody tunes out halfway through. Has anyone else ditched the whole pre-game lecture for a more casual start?

2 comments

2 Comments

sarah5318d ago

Hard disagree on this one. Teaching as you go just leads to confusion and bad habits that are a pain to fix later. Every group I've seen try this ends up with someone playing a card completely wrong and then getting frustrated when they find out three turns later. Terraforming Mars especially has a ton of moving parts, so skipping the rules explanation means people don't understand the flow of the generations or how to plan ahead. Totally get the pain of a long lecture, but a ten minute overview beats a whole game of constant rule checks and arguments.

vera3087d ago

60% of the rule errors I see in Terraforming Mars come from people not understanding how the heat track works or when you can actually use the standard projects. @sarah531 nailed it with the frustration part. In my last game, someone bought a card that gave them titanium production but then spent it on the wrong phase for three turns straight. Their whole strategy collapsed because they thought they had more titanium than they actually did. A quick overview of the turn order and the phases would have fixed that completely before we even started.