I just watch a game or two, focusing on a specific player (so I can see their cards) and learn way better that way than someone telling me the rules. Especially since most of the time, unless they are reading them off the manual, they forget things (or even purposely omit them) that then come up later when you try to do something and everyone is like “no can’t do that!” 😖
This is part of the reason I don’t play tabletop games, my brain absolutely refuses to parse their instructions.
Start with something simple like Twilight Imperium, and work your way up to Cones of Dunshire.
Or try Tsuro. It’s very simple and quite nice.
JFC, that was me trying to learn MTG. I’m leaving the table!
It’s super easy, don’t worry. Now, each turn has 5 phases, each of which is further divided into multiple steps…
“Here, just use this easy quick-reference PDF.”
It worries me that the first rule specifies that a two player game is a game that begins with two players.
What do you mean, begins? Are there mechanics that add more players to the game?
Oh, that just pissed me off.
Couple weeks ago I was at a bachelor’s party, to which a number of people had brought Magic decks. I knew nothing about the game (never even watched a video), made this clear, and said that I just wanted to watch everyone else play.
Someone handed me a deck and said, “no buddy, you’re playing!” I protested, but it was fruitless. I’d been roped in; and I was excited! A group of people excited to show a new player their hobby.
The guy that handed me the deck then proceeded to explain nothing and get increasingly frustrated when I had no idea what he meant when he’d say “uh, no you have to UNTAP your cards first… ok now tap them… yeah I know you just untapped them but tap them 😠🙄” (I still do not know what the point of turning my cards sideways for two seconds was but I guess it’s super important?)
The other two players were fairly intoxicated and probably didn’t pick up on the toxicity, but the whole table was frustrated with how God awfully slow the game was taking since the new guy just wasn’t getting it. I just wanted to watch.
Up until now I thought homeboy had just oversimplified a few rules in his head and forgot a thing or two, but seeing that the actual instruction manual is 500+ pages, I’m furious that he had the audacity to forcibly rope a drunk person with zero interest in playing into the game, just to treat them like a moron for not instantly getting it.
\rant
Lmao, as a long time player, you really got me on the “turning my cards sideways for 2 seconds” part. It really is like that.
I would never throw someone into a group setting to play like that on their first time. Total madness.
The game was originally designed to be played 1v1 and group play was meant to spice that up by adding chaos and leading to wildly complex scenarios.
In all fairness, the instructions you actually need to know to play the game could be summarized in a single page (with the caveat that there will be a lot of edge cases that won’t be adequately explained there); tournament judges and, to a lesser extent, tournament players are the only folks who need to know the majority of what’s in that PDF.
That said, the game is super archaic and hard to learn, and any player who thinks otherwise is probably either playing only at a super basic level, or just isn’t considering how long they’ve been playing and how much nuance they’ve accumulated. Sorry you had a shitty experience; your friends absolutely should not have tried to throw you into the deep end like that. You sound like you already know, but to reiterate it, this was absolutely not a failing on your part and was 100% your friends’ fault.
If you actually want to try the game (and I completely understand if you don’t), you can go to a game store that sells MtG products and ask for a (free) intro deck. They’re small decks with simpler cards and a booklet explaining the basic game rules that can be helpful to learn the game.
There’s also Magic Arena, the computer game version, which really does a pretty good job of teaching the game. If you don’t mind that format, I’d absolutely start there.
It’s honestly a really fun game, but you have to teach people way slower than that. I have a couple training decks without all the card types to teach the basic concepts before ever getting into the complex stuff. Throwing someone in at the deep end like that just seems like a good way to make sure they never wanna play again.
I taught my mom to play by using a couple of starter decks, giving a short overview of the objective and what the parts of the card meant, and then played a couple of matches with our cards revealed to each other. You just need to be patient, willing to explain anything, and be generous with allowing take backs and reminding about any rules they missed. And remember that if you want someone to keep playing with you, they need to be able to have fun too.
“Professors hate this one weird trick to become a lawyer without studying for 7 years!”
I’ll see your “Cones of Dunshire”, and raise you this actually real, published game: https://youtu.be/bE7f0ehPUAM
Wow. If you told me this was satire, I’d 100% believe you.
No, look – it’s simple! Now, let me explain how The Stack works…
:(
How I look when my friends won’t even listen to me for 10 seconds trying to explain a card game that isn’t that complicated and I know they can get if they let go of their prejudice that card games are always going to be confusing to them.
“First you n…” “Oh my god this is too hard!”
Not even three words in. Every fucking thing. Every fucking time. Not even exclusive to card games.
Wait until you get to how to count to ten using 2 and 3 cards in Euchre.
Not an expert but this looks more like counting to nine than to ten to me
I’m with you up until 9. Seems like all logic went out the window at the end.
What is this goddamn UP Michigander bullshit? You count to ten with a six and a four, like any civilized human
I love learning new rules. It’s honestly almost as much fun to me as actually playing the game.
It’s like dirty talking for board games
I legitimately think they’re impossible to explain. Not impossible to understand, mind you, but to explain. The only way to ever learn to play a board game is by playing it, preferably open-hand, and learning it step by step in practice.
What I see when I try to explain the difference between “when” and “if” in yugioh
put and get a counter in magic
Or any interaction that requires understanding layers.
I usually say just tell me the object of the game and then tell me what to do whenever it’s my turn. After a few turns and just observing the game and asking a few questions, I can manage on my own. Way more enjoyable than trying to parse even the instruction booklets.
As a frequent teacher of tabletop games, yes, this is often what people look like when I’m halfway through my first sentence.
“OK, the point of the game is to deal 20 damage to your opponent.”
“what 🫠”
“My sibling in Christ, you asked me to teach you”
For games with any sort of “victory points” system, I always start off teaching them with the exact same sentence: “the goal of this game is to score points.” Sets the stage nicely for explaining the rest of the-- ah, nevermind, they’ve already glazed over
Make an app where balatro joker teaches you other card games
Tabletop/card games seem inexplicably complex like bruh.
Something about the teaching method of some guy explaining something to you haphazardly, while sitting physically across from you making facial expressions and body language gestures and whatnot, something about the societal pressure to understand the rules in a given time limit as to not hold up a game, yet also make sure you actually do understand it and not come off as an idiot in a group which often features people you don’t know that well, meaning you’re now vulnerable in front of strangers, the way it’s explained purely in the abstract without any relation to the real world which just makes the rules seem extremely arbitrary… It just makes for a rotten stew of incomprehensibility.
On the one hand I actually like it because how much of a challenge it is to my brain and the sheer novelty and shock to the system that the experience brings.
Most of the time games you play either have a commonality with others (genre i.e. FPS) or simulate a real world activity (i.e. shooting people) that have a certain logic to them that’s just self-evident (point at target and pull trigger) and speak a sort of shared language that’s designed to be as ergonomic as possible and on top of that, teaches you as you go with contextual instructions.
Even very complex games like HOI4 (or any Paradox or Paradox-type game) with enormous amounts of intertwined highly complex systems still simulate a real world activity to some degree, I don’t actually have to have any game-specific knowledge to understand that if my government budget is in the red my immediate solutions are to cut costs or increase income (tax) and borrow to invest in infrastructure to increase income long-term and if the menu is intuitive enough, (e.g. Victoria 3), you can just find it.
And games with just absurd amounts of knowledge required like Warframe don’t necessarily expect the player to actually know all, most or really any of it to play at the most basic level, and it’s kinda understood that learning the ins and outs of later content takes hours and hours of periodic wiki perusing and game progress.
So board games that force completely abstract thinking among arbitrary rules going on half understood words of someone with an ever-thickening accent instead of the safe warmth of wiki text on a screen are actually a fun challenge, if you’re the kind of person that likes to blast yourself with ice cold showers to wake up (me).
On the other hand - unfortunately I feel apprehensive about it due to past experience where sincere engagement probably gave my gf’s friend circle the impression that I’m a stunted or something, it kinda sucks to feel like my game performance is judged, when obviously such things are intended more as a mutual activity to stimulate conversation and alcohol consumption rather than some cutthroat assessment of skill. I don’t even know if it’s the case, but I felt that way, so now I’ve just learned to say no completely out of hand to any and all interactive things at any social gathering for the most part.
