Tried to teach my aunt a complex board game and it went sideways

I brought my copy of Scythe to a family thing last Sunday, thinking my aunt who likes chess would get into it. I spent about 20 minutes explaining the rules, but she just kept moving her little plastic mech around the board making engine noises (which was funny, at first). By the third round, she was using the resource tokens as poker chips for a totally different game she made up. I learned that jumping into a heavy game with someone who just wants to hang out is a bad call. How do you guys judge when to pull out a lighter game instead?

2 comments

2 Comments

reese864d ago

Your aunt turning Scythe into a weird poker hybrid is honestly kind of brilliant. I've learned the hard way that if someone asks "wait, what does this little wooden cube mean again?" more than twice, it's time to put Gloomhaven away and get out Codenames. The rulebook thickness is usually my first clue.

lunar474d ago

Remember my cousin trying to teach us Twilight Imperium last Thanksgiving. He spent an hour just on the trade agreements. My dad kept using his ships like checkers, just moving them in a straight line. We gave up and ordered pizza instead. Now we have a house rule, if the setup takes longer than the movie we could have watched, we skip it. That game still lives in its box on the top shelf.