Struggled with teaching new players until I tried the 'pass the first turn' trick

I was at my local game night last month trying to explain a medium-weight euro game to three new people. They kept getting overwhelmed by all the rules upfront and zoning out. After the third failed teach, I remembered a tip from a guy at my shop in Denver: just start the game and tell everyone to pass their first turn without doing anything. It let them watch the board state develop naturally and ask questions as they came up. Has anyone else tried this approach or got a better way to ease folks into complex games?

2 comments

2 Comments

kellyr181mo ago

Whoa, hold up a sec. That "pass your first turn" trick is actually a pretty common variant, but it's not really something you should tell new players to do without explaining a bit first. The problem is if they pass and then watch you do a bunch of stuff they don't understand, they might feel even more lost. I've found it works better to just let them take their turn normally but explain each small step as they go. Like "okay, you have three actions per turn, so you could take a resource or build something, pick whichever sounds less scary." That way they're actually playing instead of just watching you play by yourself. Passing their first turn kinda assumes they'll learn by observation, but most people learn better by doing, even if they mess up.

gray_perez521mo ago

Yeah, that's a really good point. When you just tell someone to pass their first turn, they don't get any of the "why" behind anything, so they're just sitting there waiting for the game to happen to them. I've messed this up before with lighter games and the new player just looked bored and confused, not engaged. The step by step coaching you described works way better because it builds their confidence one action at a time. Even if they pick a bad option at first, they learn way more from that experience than from watching you play alone for ten minutes. Taking their first turn and messing up is a million times better than taking no turn at all and learning nothing.