ENGN Episode 128 – How to Teach a Board Game in Thirteen Easy Steps, pt. 1

Anthony and Jason are always showing off new games for folks and playing as much of the hottest stuff as possible. Practice makes perfect, as they say, so this episode is about sharing all the tips for good teaching that have been picked up along the way. We all know what bad teaching looks like, so let’s help folks… uh, stop doing that!

Jason has organized his teaching method into thirteen easy steps that involve everything from learning the game initially, to gathering a table of people to play, all the way through the end. In this episode, after we share some teaching horror stories, we talk about the five steps of teaching games. The first four are preparatory steps:

1) Personal prep and/ or managing table expectation
2) Laying the game out and letting it do some of the teaching work
3) Giving an elevator pitch
4) Giving folks a heads up about the game – weight, length, theme, and interaction style

After that, we get into the proper intro to teaching, which starts with:

5) “In this game, you are a ____ trying to do ___”.

If that doesn’t make a lot of sense, then you’re going to have to listen to the episode in order to put it all together. Stay tuned for part two next week!

  • Anthony lives and plays games in Philadelphia, PA. A lover of complex strategy, two-player war games, and area control, Anthony is always eager to try a new game, even if he's on rule-reading duty.

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