The advice in this article, hopefully, will help people be able to decide what to buy in a more responsible manner but also decide what to keep. As when I cull games, I often consider what group I’ll be playing it with as well as other factors.

The Premise

I talk about this from time to time about how I have multiple board game groups. I play with a game night group. There are times I just play with one or two people. I play with a board game club group and a campaign group. And, I play board games solo. Plus, I often play games with my family as well. So I play games with six different groups, counting solo.

Not every game I own works with every group. I wouldn’t pull out Gloomhaven and try and make that work at a board game night. First off, 8 people can’t play Gloomhaven at once, at least not well. You’d be sharing duties on a character or house ruling everything. On the flip side, I can’t play Codenames Pictures with myself. But, both games are in my collection, because they work for groups I play with.

What Are Your Groups?

So when buying, or selling, a board game, I think it’s useful to think about first what your groups are. Do you play games mainly solo and with a significant other, except for holidays? Do you have a regular gaming group? Or is playing at parties and get together how you mainly game?

By defining the group(s) that you play with, you can start to define what types of games that you might want to get or keep. Now, there is something to be said for groups growing and dynamics changing over time, but that doesn’t mean buy everything and wait for that to happen so you can play those games. Most games will be available to some extent for a long time, whether it’s new or cycling through used. So start by defining your groups.

Let me demonstrate:

• Board Game Night Group – party games, bigger group games, sometimes light to medium games if we split into groups to game
• One or Two People Group – generally games that can be played a few times in a night, a chance to pull more off of the shelf that I don’t normally
• Board Game Club Group – big thematic games, generally not campaigns but heavier ones that don’t get played during game nights, also longer games
• Campaign Group – campaign games that’ll be played over multiple sessions
• Family Group – light games, card games, and party games
• Solo Group (aka me) – campaign/thematic games, and smaller games with solo modes

Using That Information

Once you define your groups, you can start using it to decide what games to buy. You can see some things, light games on the list twice, campaign games and thematic games show up, group games and party games show up. So when I go out do I look for those types of games in particular?

Well, kind of. I won’t ignore any game when I am searching because what groups I game with isn’t everything. But when I look at a game, let’s say I were to pick up Gloomhaven off the shelf knowing nothing about it. I’d look at it and see that it is a big campaign game. So I’d ask myself, will my campaign group get to this any time soon, will I get to it solo anytime, should I put this giant box down while I think about this? And it might be that my campaign group and I won’t get to it for two years, and I still might pick it up.

Or, let’s give another example, Isle of Cats. That game is fairly light, but not light enough for family gaming. But the theme is a lot of fun So I picked that one up because I love cats, I can maybe play it with the board game club or the board game night groups, but for sure can with the small group when those happen. But that’s only one of my groups, so is the value there for me? Well, because I love cats and because I can get it played once in a while, yes.

Not Using That Information

There also are times where I don’t use that information. Tannhauser which I picked up recently is a great example. That is a complex game that is going to take some work to get to the table. I don’t know that I have a great group for that right now, or I have one person who would probably want to sit down and learn it with me. But it’s a game that I really want to play, so I grabbed it when I could.

The question to ask yourself then is, am I willing to put the work into finding a group? Do I want to try and track people down to play this game. That is going to require work on my behalf and am I willing to do it. There are going to be some games, like if I can find Battlestar Galactica at the right time and right price. I probably have a few people who I can play it with, but to get a group together will be effort.

Really, what I would be doing is creating a new gaming group. It would be a group that I could add to the list. Those people who like one day epic games. Some overlap maybe with the Board Game Club Group, but not fully. And everyone likely has a grail game that they want to get. And those games, especially, I don’t think need to fit into a group.

Right or Wrong

So I bring this up that this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Some of this question came up because the person who was asking has a game that they love but they don’t have a group for. It might not be the right time for a game, so get it and keep it if you want. And it also might not be the right time to try and make a new group for gaming that would play it.

But, for a lot of gamers who really like to buy games and try new games. I think it can be a useful exercise to think about your groups. I said use it for buying, but I’ve used it for selling as well. Cosmic Encounter just this week is one that I sold not because I didn’t like the game, I do, but because I don’t have a group. So when looking at your shelf, consider the groups you have.

I’m actually going to do an exercise, as I go through and organize my board games again soon, and put in my notes on Board Game Geek what group the games are for. That is more for me, so if I find one that doesn’t have a group and I’m not that excited about, it can be one to sell.

Do you consider who you play with when you buy board games or sell them?

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1. Don’t just read from the rule book.
   This seems pretty obvious, but the amount of times people just start reading verbatim from the rule books is way to high. Instead know the rules yourself, and be able to teach them in the order that makes the most sense to you, and in the detail that you think your players need.
2. Show and Tell is Key
   Don’t just say, there are four types of cards, pull out one of each of those types of cards and point to them as you talk about them. Maybe there is a certain way a character moves, in that case, move the character on the board so people can see how they move.
3. Have Players Help
   How can you help if you are learning the game? Well, maybe there is a deck of cards that need to be placed in a certain spot after being shuffled, give that out as a job to someone. Or maybe there are resources that need to be placed out in certain spots that are fairly obvious, once you’ve taught about the resources, have a player or the players put them out.
4. Save Special Rules
   This might be just me, but I recommend that you save rare rules until the end or until they happen. If the rule is going to be common enough, but isn’t tied into any part of the game, save that rule until the end. If the rule is going to only come up in a given situation that is rare, save it until it happens as long as it isn’t too mean. You’ll have to be the judge of what too mean is, but if it’s going to seriously hurt a player or knock them out of the running, you have to decide if you’re either going to mention it at the start or if you’re going to let them undo the turn.
5. Let them Undo Their Turn (or part of it)
   This isn’t going to be something that players can do often. Once a player has made a mistake once, players don’t get free passes any more because they’ve heard the rule while you were teaching and seen the rule in play. Also, if it’s a complex turn, don’t let players undo their whole turn just because they forgot or didn’t understand a rule because that will slow down the game too much. Just call it a practice game or first game mistake, they are understandable.
6. Explain the Theme/Story of the Game
   Do this with the game at the very start of explaining the rules. This is going to keep people interested from the start. Along with that, tie stuff in to the story or theme of the game as you go along. In SeaFall, they have information about how to do an event for exploring (forget the title of it) and you do the same thing for other events besides exploring. Instead of just call it by it’s generic name, tie it into exploring as you explain and then tell what else it can be used for at the end. Since it’s tied into theme, people are likely to remember it better.

   

These are some of the big tips that I would give for teaching a game. I don’t always love teaching games, so understand that you might not always want to. Then the decision is with you do you want to struggle through it some, or do you want to play a different game? If you’re the leader of your board game group, you’re going to have to get used to teaching. So determine what is going to work best for your group. Maybe you can get into the small details of the game and that’s fine for your group, maybe you have to play a sample game so that people can see how the game works that way, but learn from experience and expect to still have to teach as you play.

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