At games night, back when games groups could meet up, you’d often see a game played once and then never show up again. I mean you’d also see quite a few repeat plays of the favourites, but I did notice a lot of single plays of games. A few had been games I wanted to play and so took with me hoping to lure some people in with the temptation of a couple of hours of “euro misery!”

My problem with “play once” is the fact there’s a lot of emphasis on the teaching. After all, you’d not want to get to the end of a game to figure out you didn’t understand end game scoring. It’s not my preference to be teaching games where everything has to get taught upfront. As for learning games where you get 30+ minutes of someone talking through the rules? Yeah, my brain isn’t good at that, as I will get distracted and my mind will wander. I’m not sure how you best teach games at games night where there is limited time.

I know what we like to do at home - Play the game multiple times. So, let’s use the excellent Brass: Birmingham as an example. Just like my post of “how many times do you play a game?”:

Game 1. All information open. Me teaching by using actions my wife can do in her turn. Allowing as many questions as needed. Sometimes suggesting a certain action.

Game 2. Open information mostly removed, but otherwise the same as the first play.

Game 3. Playing as normal, but still with opportunities for rules and strategy questions.

Game 4. Play as normal.

I guess this comes down to how we learn because the above isn’t just for my wife’s benefit. I learn by doing and watching. So whilst I’m the one who reads the rulebook and teaches the game, I learn better by watching someone on youtube play the game. That is then cemented in place by the few games played like shown above. Visually I am tying actions to the rulebook - it suddenly makes sense.

This habit of play the game multiple nights in a row has even started to fall into place for games we know, but not all of them.

Of course the above is impractical for a group games night, but it works for us. What works for you?