Latest / Pick Up and Deliver / Introducing the Hobby, part 2 – Mechanism Boot Camp
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- Pick Up & Deliver 861: Introducing the Hobby, part 2 � Mechanism Boot Camp Transcript Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step out for a walk and deliver an episode to you while I stroll around. I'm Brendan Riley. [ Intro music ] Well, greetings listeners. It's still one of the hottest days in the end of the summer, and I am finishing up my episode to you about introducing people to the hobby in the first. In part one, I talked about crowd pleasers. These are games I would bring if I were asked to come to a sort of dinner party situation with like six to eight people, what kind of games would I bring that would be accessible to people who don't really play games much, but a lot of fun, and maybe get them to want to play more games? In the second part, I'm going to talk about the next steps. So say you had you met somebody at one of those parties, they come to your game club. They're like, oh man, I didn't know games were like this. I want to try more games. What are some awesome games for me to try? Now, one approach that I certainly have heard and endorse is find a theme they like and show them a game in that theme, even if it's complicated. I have had a number of successful plays with people who are relatively new to gaming and play a very complicated game, but they're into it because of the theme. You know, with the right person, like my wife really likes obsession, the board game, for example. And that one is a very complicated game. Almost more complicated than she usually would want to play. But because the theme really fits her interests, she was able to learn it. And actually that leveled up a lot of her games. The same goes for like Ark Nova. She really likes Ark Nova. She doesn't like another. In fact, she won't even try terraforming Mars. I think those games are very similar in play style, except Ark Nova is about a zoo and I think Ark Nova is better. But that experience of learning a complex game that fits the theme you like is an absolutely great way to teach somebody about a mechanism, even if they haven't played a lot of games before. So from that regard or in that regard, I am going to talk about eight games that introduced different mechanisms that I think are excellent for somebody who is new to the hobby and maybe isn't super confident about the games that they're playing or isn't super confident about jumping in like these are. As I said, I think in the last one, I said this was going to be called baby's first mechanism. And that's a little infantilizing, infantilizing, and not really my intent. Instead, what I mean is you want to try a more complex game, here you go. Or you want to try out a new mechanism. Here you go. Maybe I'll just call it. Here you go. All right, so to start with, I was thinking about cooperative games. My instinct is to go with pandemic because I think pandemic is excellent. However, pandemic is actually relatively complicated, and if you have somebody who's a little hesitant or just getting their feet under them and they don't, it doesn't seem like they're going to be into something more complicated. Pandemic might actually be too much. Uh, it does also suffer because it is a little complicated. It really can easily suffer from the alpha gamer problem of a person who knows pandemic, trying to play it with people who don't, and those people then feeling overwhelmed and just sort of yielding their choices to other people. So instead of subjecting a new player to pandemic, I suggest you try a Forbidden Island. Forbidden Island is the same designer as Pandemic: Matt Leacock, and it was designed for gamewright with a more accessible audience in mind. I think you could easily play this with eight year olds, uh, people under eight maybe, depending on how many games they've played and how well they can sort of pay attention to systems because it's a game of systems and it won't work if you try very hard to. You have to follow the rules pretty carefully. Uh, it is a rising crisis game. You are on this island and you're trying to collect these treasures, which you do by collecting a certain number of cards and going to a place where the treasure can be and spending those cards. And then you have to get back to the helipad. Once you have all four treasures and escape before the island sinks. It's a brutal game. In terms of luck. You can just have a bad run of luck, but it's relatively accessible and relatively easy to play, so I think it's a really good recommendation for people who want to try out a cooperative game. As an alternate, I might say Hanabi would be a good cooperative game to try as well, although that one, if you're gonna do that one, you need to play a couple rounds because the first round people are just going to be confused, I think. So my first recommendation for cooperative Game is Forbidden Island. Second would be Hanabi. Next up, I was thinking about tile laying and my first instinct was Carcassonne. But once again, Carcassonne is actually relatively complicated that as people play it, they sometimes get confused. The farmers are very confusing as a rule, but I think the game is much less fun without the farmers. I think the farmers add a ton to the game, and to take them out is to take out a big chunk of what makes the game interesting. Instead, I would recommend Kingdomino. Now, I don't think Kingdomino or Kingdomino. I don't think this is a particularly hot take. I think everybody is aware of the spiel. Des Jahres winner Kingdomino. Nonetheless, this is a tiling game where you have a bunch of tiles that are dominoes and you are playing them into a little kingdom, and your goal is to score points with them. It's a pretty simple game in terms of just sort of understanding the mechanisms of tile laying, and it's pretty accessible from the perspective of trying to learn. The rule sets are very simple. I think Kingdomino also works really well because it's bright colored and engaging and short. Almost all the games I'm introducing here are short. There's only one or two on the list. They even take an hour probably, and that just depends on how you're playing. All the rest are forty five minutes or less mostly. But again, if you're trying to get people with the idea of like, you draw a tile and then you figure out where to go and where it goes matters and positionality matters. I think Kingdomino is probably your top tier bet. The alternate, I would say is Between Two Cities, which is a really interesting game, but I think it's maybe out of print now. And instead they have between two castles of Mad King Ludwig, which probably does the same thing and has a more interesting theme, but I don't have that one, so I'm less interested in it. In it. So that is Kingdomino. Next up. Worker placement. Worker placement is among the more complicated games, and this is probably the most complicated game I'm going to suggest is Lords of Waterdeep. Now, as you all know, I have a complicated history with Lords of Waterdeep because I think that the um spite cards that you can play, I don't know what they're called, the intrigue cards that allow you to force someone to do a mandatory quest are game breakingly unfun. Like, I have had more than one game where a significant portion of the end part of the game for me is ruined because I'm sort of on track to finish a big task, and someone drops one of those on me at the last minute, and then instead of being able to finish the big task, I have to do this alternate task that isn't worth very many points. Now, of course, there is an argument like, well, you should plan for that. Well, okay. But then what I have to plan for is to not do anything interesting on my last two turns so that in case someone plays one of these cards on me, then I don't know. Uh. This is a argument I have made more than once, and I seem to be in the minority in terms of people who find this a flaw in the design. That said, nine tenths of what makes Lords of Waterdeep interesting. I like and I think it's a really interesting game. I think it's fun. I, I will usually happily play it. I just get a little salty about those cards. Um, but if you haven't played it, Lords of Waterdeep is a worker placement game in which you are acquiring buildings which give more provide more worker slots onto the board. You have intrigue cards which allow people to manipulate others. There's contract fulfillment. I already talked about Lords of Waterdeep a lot in the Anachronox episode a couple back. I'll put a link to that if you want to learn more. But if I'm showing people worker placement games, Lords of Waterdeep is an excellent start. The other place I might go for an excellent start would be Demon Worker, which is a little card game that again, has workers that you're putting out and a little bit of the engine building that most worker placement games have. As an aside, I just remembered B�renpark. Oh, Barenpark is an excellent alternate for, uh, tile laying games, especially if you play the basic, the basic mode that doesn't have the achievement tiles. Now, I think the achievement tiles are what make the game interesting. I think it would be kind of dull without without them. But if you're trying to teach somebody about tile placement, Baron Park is a really good one as well. So that's Lords of Waterdeep and Worker placement. Next I was thinking about deck building. What would I show somebody if I wanted them to understand deck building? I think deck building is pretty tricky because it's about making your deck work better, and usually you're competing with other people. So Dominion is a good example. But usually when you play Dominion, you're going to win against someone who hasn't played before because they just. It takes a little while to see how the pieces come together. So instead, I would suggest a cooperative game like legendary, particularly Legendary: Marvel is excellent for this, but legendary alien. If the theme fits or. There's legendary James Bond as well. In these games, you are playing cooperatively against the game, and the game is fighting you. And so as your deck building, you can talk about choices people are making because you're not competing with them. I think it works really well. Legendary Marvel is really good because it does include things like the order that you play the cards matters. There are cards that trigger off other cards if they've already been played. So managing your hand, managing the way where you play your cards and where they discard and everything is important. So you can learn a lot of the core skills of deck building from legendary. As the secondary version, I would say Star Realms is the secondary one. This is a competitive game, so not the same, but it has all of the things you need, but it's much simpler than something like Dominion. I think it's easier to access and easier to understand. So if you're don't want the cooperative option of legendary or you want a cheaper option, Star realms is a great example there. Next up, I wanted to think about what would I show somebody if I wanted to show them auction games. I think for me, the quintessential best auction game is QE. QE is a very simple game. You are bidding on items and you if you win them, you get them. If you don't win them, you don't get them back. Now that is a blind bidding game. So it's it's maybe that part is maybe not the ideal for an auction angle. So the other option would be something like for sale, which is a reverse auction. But or no thanks. I mean, which is a reverse auction. But both of these do have the element of being relatively easy to learn, very easy to score and teaching the ideas of the auction game pretty simply. So that is QE for auction games. I have three left. The next one is contract fulfillment. Like I said, Lords of Waterdeep does this a little bit, but if you want something a little simpler, the one I would go with is canvas. Canvas is a beautiful game. Really a good, intriguing, uh, draw for people who have not played games much. It's beautiful. Uses these neat see through cards. And the idea is you're painting, you're painting paintings by adding these see through cards. And then it uses the mechanism from gloom, where you have a row of scoring icons that cover each other up as you add cards to the pile or in canvas, they use sleeves like in Mystic Vale. And so you are trying to get points based on the cards you've fulfilled and the contracts you have and or the contests you have. So there are different scoring opportunities that you get by completing paintings that meet those scoring conditions. Canvas is very accessible. It's fun. It plays in like half an hour. It's beautiful. It's an excellent game to demonstrate to people something like contract fulfillment. If I was going to show someone area control, the game I would pick is Royals. Royals is the most boring theme. You are medieval royals competing for control of Europe, but the gameplay is relatively straightforward and really develops the notion of area control. In the game you are putting your. You are putting your icons into different kingdoms on this board and. At the end of each of three ages, the person who has the majority in each kingdom scores points. It's relatively straightforward in that way. The cards are easy to understand. It doesn't take that long to teach or play like forty five minutes. So it's also a good looking game once you get past the boring theme. And I think really accessible. So if I'm going to try to show somebody an area control game, and I don't want to have to spend a ton of time on, um, rules, I think Royals is a good example. The other one I would point to is the Reiner Knizia classic Through the Desert. This is also an area control game, but a different type. Whereas in Royals you are trying to establish majorities in these different areas and you get three bites at the apple in through the desert. You are establishing majority by walling off different regions. So it's a different kind of area control. It feels different in how you play it. And the interactions are different. It also feels it's more zero stakes or zero sum in that when I close off a place then you can't go there. So it's much more directly confrontational, although I don't know that that's true because, well, it is confrontational. But also so is Royals. You are competing with other people for the majorities, and you can always see who's competing with you. So there's a rough and tumble there. So that is Royals as the area control game. And then finally, one other game I would use just to introduce people to the idea of different games being different experiences is guillotine. Guillotine. I wouldn't play with more than four. In fact, I don't think you can. So it wouldn't be a good fit for the party version that I. The first half of the the first episode, but it is really enjoyable as a gaming experience. The. If you haven't played it. The idea is you are executioners. During the French Revolution, there's a line of nobles waiting to be chopped and players take turns doing the chopping. Each. Each noble who's executed is worth a different number of points, and when you chop them, you collect them and then you get the points related to how what they're worth. There are a variety. Uh, the thing that makes the game interesting is that there are action cards that allow you to either set up point scoring elements for yourself, or remove point scoring elements for other players, or manipulate the line. When you manipulate the line, the players, the people in line move around and then you can chop the one that has the best number for you or the best number you can get at. There are also a variety of different ways that the characters score. Some of the characters give you a bonus when you chop them. It's a really fun game. It's reliably fun. I've had it for more than twenty years now, and we still bust it out once or twice a year, and it's successful every time. They do have a new version with really cool new cover art. I think the cover art is great, but honestly, I don't like the new art as much as the old art. The old art definitely feels dated by today's standards. It's not quite as lush, but the new art feels a little more grotesque. The old art was silly. It had to feel. The old art looked like the animation style you'd get from a Robin Hood era Disney cartoon, right? Look, it's thick line art with cartoonish characters that look like the characters out of Hunchback of Notre Dame. Maybe the new ones have a much more sort of malevolent feel, which isn't surprising. It is a game about cutting people's heads off, but ultimately it's a little darker. So that is guillotine. So that brings me to the end of my list of games that I would show people if they're getting into the hobby and I'm trying to show them things, I'm curious, what did I miss? Were there alternates for categories that you would pick instead? What games do you show people when they're starting to get into the hobby? To really give them a sense of like, what gaming can do? Head over to BoardGameGeek Guild 3269 and share your thoughts there? I'd love to know what you teach your friends when they want to learn about games. If you want to reach out to me directly, my username is wombat929 on Board Game Geek. You can send me a message there, or you can email me, brendan@rattleboxgames.com. Well, that's about it for me today. I want to say thank you for joining me on this journey, this two part journey of what to do when we introduce people to the hobby. I hope to hear from you about what you would do differently. Until next time. I want to say thanks for joining me on my walk today. I hope your next walk is as pleasant as mine was. Bye bye. [ Exit music ] Brought to you by Rattlebox games.