How to Teach a Board Game Well

Advice abounds on teaching board games, and a lot of it is good. Not all of it is good in my opinion, but there are a lot of either common sense strategies or general best practices that can help you become a better teacher of board games.

This article walks through the steps I consider crucial to a good game teach.

What are my credentials? I’ve played nearly 1,000 board games in my lifetime. I’m also routinely deferred to in my social circles when it comes to teaching games. It’s something I enjoy and something I believe I do well. Comments to this effect from my friends corroborate this belief.

It’s not rocket science, but it does require a plan. So let’s break down that plan.

CAVEATS:

1. There are board games that will break the rules outlined below. No guide on this subject can cover every possible exception.
2. This isn’t the only way to teach games well.

That latter one bears repeating, since plenty of people have their own successful methods for teaching board games. My intent isn’t to say this way is always right, or the only right way. It’s not. Rather, it’s intended to give you some ideas that will hopefully make you a better teacher.

Step Zero (Optional): Designer, Publisher and Historical Context

I’ve been told by at least one person that a teach should always include the designer’s name and possibly publisher as well. While I’m all about giving credit to designers, I disagree with this. I’m not recording a Youtube video with a game’s specs. I’m at game night with friends.

The box presumably lists this information for anyone interested, and the game has already been purchased. The designer and publisher have your money and the free marketing that comes with teaching it. If you want to list them in a teach, fine, but you don’t owe them this.

I say this as an aspiring commercial designer as well. I don’t expect my name to be read before any teaches of my games. Just get to the fun, please.

However, where I do agree with this is where the game’s history and origin can create excitement for a game and engage the players.

An example: “Acquire is a famous game all the way back from the 1960s. In his lifetime, designer Sid Sackson had a game collection that I believe was over 10,000 games. He was an inspiration to tons of designers that came later, designers who went on to make world-famous titles like Catan and Carcassonne. A lot of people still think it’s Sackson’s best game.”

If you didn’t know that, that’s interesting, right? Maybe not for everyone, but often people are interested in learning some history. If I can add something small to this effect, I do.

Step One: Get Everyone Excited to Play

Games are meant to be fun, exciting, and to move our minds in interesting new directions. So why not tease that?

There’s another more practical reason I do this as well: people pay better attention and learn more easily when they’re excited about what’s about to happen.

This seems like common sense, but what are you doing as a game teacher to stoke that excitement?

Here’s the other part, though: this shouldn’t take long to do. Like, I’m talking 2-3 sentences, max.

Some people call this “The Hook” for a game. Or an elevator pitch. You have 30 seconds maximum to get someone excited about a game. What do you say to them? This quick pitch is your intro to a game’s teach.

1B. Use Humor

If you get people laughing, even better.

Step Two: The Broad Thematic Premise

Who are we in the game? What are we doing? Not in mechanical terms yet, but in narrative or thematic terms.

Are we traders? Warlords? Spies? And what is our ultimate goal? How are we working toward that goal?

Two things here:

1. This shouldn’t take long either.
2. The thematic premise and Step One’s “get everyone excited” can often overlap.

These first two steps are occupying, at most, around a minute, and usually less. For simpler games, it’s probably 15-20 seconds, but they’re also steps I never knowingly skip.

An Example: “Strike is an intense game of gladiatorial combat where we’re vying to prove ourselves as the most fierce…ok, that’s a lie, we’re really just hucking some dice into this circle here, but if you imagine it as gladiatorial combat, you’ll be in the right mindspace for the game. These dice are kind of like our fighters, and they’ll be getting eliminated throughout the game. You want to be the last one standing at the end, which means you’re the only one left with dice in front of you.”

This would take me maybe 30-40 seconds at most, and it covers Step One (including some light humor), Step Two, and also covers Step Three below.

If it helps, imagine me hamming it up during the first sentence with a bunch of melodramatic theatricality. It makes the “ok, that’s a lie…” comment hit harder, inducing smiles from everyone.

Step Three: How Do You Win the Game

There are people who will say that this should be step one. I disagree. I can’t count the number of teaches I’ve sat through where the teach starts with “You want to win the game, and to win you get the most points. Ok, so on your turn…”

In this scenario, I’m not excited, I’m not invested, I have no sense of theme or setting, and you haven’t told me anything I didn’t probably already assume.

Yet, victory condition is important. What are we all striving toward? What does that look like mechanically?

We’re about to learn the fiddly bits of rounds, phases, turns and actions, and we all want to know what those things are working toward.

Step Four: Game Flow and Turn Structure

Here’s where we dig deeper into the mechanics of the game, but it’s still with a sense of giving people an idea of how the mechanics fit into the whole structure.

It’s easy to get lost in specific rules details. Knowing where they exist in context can help.

I’ll explain how the game will progress. Are there two halves? An indeterminate number of rounds until we hit an endgame condition? And how do these rounds break into smaller chunks. Gaming is replete with phrases like actions, phases, rounds, turns, and more. Knowing how they piece together makes absorbing the whole easier.

Example: “Santiago plays out over 9 rounds. Each round plays out identically, which means you’ll see the entire game flow early on. Each round has a handful of phases that play out in the same order. Let’s walk through an example round to see how it plays out…”

Step Five: Individual Turns/Actions

Now you go one level deeper to let them know exactly what they’ll be doing on their turns. What are their options? In what situations? And how does each action work?

Having established how these actions fit into the larger whole, the mechanics of individual turns should make a lot more sense.

Step Six: Exceptions

Lastly, I talk about the stuff that breaks “general” rules. Many games have rules that are true most of the time, but a specific card, power or ability allows someone to break that rule.

This can also include rules that are specific to one player. For example, any game that features variable player powers – usually tied to a specific faction, guild, or similar entity that they represent – will often have rules that apply only to one player. Go over these last, once everyone understands the basic rules that apply to everyone.

Step Seven: Summarize and Ask For Questions

At this point, I’ll quickly – as in, within 10-20 seconds – reiterate the game’s structure and game flow for everyone, and remind them of the victory condition(s).

This is the end of the formalized teaching. It’s likely there will be questions, so I open the table to questions at that point before starting the game.

Step Eight: Rolling Teaches and In-Game Guidance

There’s something called a “rolling” teach wherein you leave some of the more granular details of the rules until they come up in a game.

This can work, but there are some considerations I take into account before deciding to do a rolling teach.

If everyone is treating the session as a “learning game” and is unconcerned about full strategic competitiveness, rolling teaches are great. However, some players can feel cheated if they are missing information as they begin to form their strategy.

Communicate with your group to establish a consensus of whether or not you all want to do this. There’s no right or wrong answer for everyone, but there are right and wrong answers for each individual situation.

In-game guidance is another along these lines. It’s often acceptable, but you don’t want it to feel as though you’re telling people how to play. I’ll often offer small considerations early in a game, then stop once everyone has gotten used to gameplay. I’ll also remind people of frequently-forgotten rules, but only once, because otherwise it can become annoying, as though you don’t trust players’ ability to remember the rules.

Even better, I’ll often explain the strategic considerations on my own turns, so it doesn’t come across as dictating how anyone else plays, while still granting small insights into the tactics and strategy of a game.

Again, though, I only do this once or twice, and only when I think there’s a valuable aspect of the game I can highlight by pointing it out.

Many games don’t require this at all, but if there’s a lot of complexity, it can help to reinforce the rules you just taught.

General Notes: Memorization and Practicing

Teaching games is more artform than science, and so it’s rare that I teach a game exactly as I outlined above. But that’s also my general rubric.

I also try not to memorize intros or portions of the teach. Sure, my introduction for Strike – for example – is always similar these days. I’ve taught it dozens of times, so it almost feels like a script. But it’s not a script. It’s just me talking about something I’m excited about.

However, that doesn’t mean I don’t work on teaching games. I do. Practicing your teaching can be an incredible way to improve.

I used to practice teaching the games I brought to game night on the car ride to the gaming venue, for example. This was extremely valuable to me.

Stumbling over your words is fine. Having to rephrase something that doesn’t quite make sense is fine. Nobody’s being judged on this. Be forgiving with yourself, and you’ll be fine.

General Notes: How and When to Use the Rulebook

Don’t just read from the rulebook to teach a game, unless you have no other choice.

Ideally, you know a game well enough that the rulebook is only needed to reference specific rules.

However, the rulebook is still your friend. What do I tend to use the rulebook for during a game?

1. Setup. I rarely remember the details of setup (e.g. how many cards each player is dealt, how much money you start with, etc.). This is the kind of specific detail that the rulebook exists for.
2. The exceptions and tiniest rules, usually those that exist in card text or that are specific to one faction or player.

Teaching Board Games: Conclusions

Does every teach go exactly like the above for me? No.

Does every game need every step? No.

Are there other valid ways to teach games? Yes.

Eight major steps and sidebar considerations might sound like a lot, but my favorite games are often those that can be taught in 10 minutes or less. Thinking about teaching in this way doesn’t mean the teaching time has to be long.

With all of that in mind, I hope this article has given you some ideas of how you might better structure your teaching. Have fun out there!