Difficult rules or concepts
Matthew Bozarth
United States
Seattle
Washington
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A game that has fairly simple rules, but there is one aspect that is often difficult for new players to grasp.
After playing Evo with a number of people, the climate never ceased to confuse. I personally have no trouble understanding how it works, but I always have to explain it several times in different ways. Once someone understands it, it is easy and the rest of the game poses no problem. I am just getting started collecting games so I haven't played that many. This list will rely on you all to contribute. I just thought it would be an interesting list.
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1.
Board Game: Evo
[Average Rating:6.88 Overall Rank:756]
Matthew Bozarth
United States
Seattle
Washington
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This game inspired the list.
After playing Evo with a number of people, the climate never ceased to confuse. I personally have no trouble understanding how it works, but I always have to explain it several times in different ways. Once someone understands it, it is easy and the rest of the game poses no problem.
Although I must say explaining how the "one less gene tile than number of players" bidding works can be difficult too.
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2.
Board Game: Carcassonne
[Average Rating:7.43 Overall Rank:139]
[Average Rating:7.43 Unranked]
Matthew Bozarth
United States
Seattle
Washington
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I am not sure this is entirely fair. My friend must have been half asleep when I explained the rules. More than once I had to explain that you couldn't place a piece if another piece was already on that "area."
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3.
Board Game: Samurai
[Average Rating:7.44 Overall Rank:172]
♪ Isaäc Bickërstaff ♫
United States
Greer
South Carolina
Entropy Seminar:
The results of a five yeer studee ntu the sekund lw uf thurmodynamiks aand itz inevibl fxt hon shewb rt nslpn raq liot.
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I still have trouble with the concept of how to score your pieces, and Lord help me if I ever have to try to explain it to anyone else. I can read it and understand it, but in the end, I can't ever seem to figure out how to balance it all out.
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Tiny Epic Trickster
United States
Colorado Springs
Colorado
Down along the creek, I remember something
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Expropriation!
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Joe Shea
United States
West Orange
New Jersey
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In all my years of playing this game, not one person has ever grasped the concept of "Reverse Cone" the first time they play. In fact, we have some veterans in our group that still have to ask what it is every time it comes up.
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United States
Aventura
Florida
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great idea for a list. this is the first game that comes to mind: a light game with a heavy learning curve. i don't know that there's any particular concept that is especially challenging, but explaining this game has always been particularly challenging because of the number of unrelated details.
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United States
Aventura
Florida
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another light game with a concept that many have a hard time getting for some reason: the scoring of the advisors.
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Patrick Cotrona
United States
Atlanta
Georgia
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The wheels on the bus go round and round, but only score points for the houses on the leftover stop, or the nearest stop on the same lines, and when matching the color of an earlier stop, the entire route, but only the stops at interestions, including every adjacent stop, meaning a stop could be scored twice.
Not only are the scoring rules hard to explain, they can be very error-prone to calculate.
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9.
Board Game: Civilization
[Average Rating:7.52 Overall Rank:225]
[Average Rating:7.52 Unranked]
Nate Sandall
United States
Portland
Oregon
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I've never been able to successfully explain the Civil War to any first time player in Civ or ACiv. Usually it's the newbie who is the first victim as well. This makes the first Civil War take about 20 minutes.
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John O'Haver PhoDOGrapher
United States
Louisville
Kentucky
Pet photographer, that's me.
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At least for that era, a mapless war game was mind bending enough and flinging terrain cards on the moving enemy was so abstract at the time BUT having to digest the concept that range five is a lot closer than range zero confused one newby to exasperation...ok, it was my wife, the backgammon queen.
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Rick Granger
United States
Unspecified
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The giving and cutting of support. This is easy to get wrong in complex situations. Hopefully there is a rules Guru in your game that can cut through the most entangled set of orders.
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Martin Ethier
Canada
Gatineau
Quebec
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I played this game two or three times. Rules are explain in 30 seconds or so. But the strategy is hard to explain. You just have to understand that the cards you have, you will never have for yourself. You have to make the best offer to the active player if you want to be picked first. Otherwise, you end up with no choice at all. So if you are not the active player, offer the best card you got for him. If you are the active player, play the crappiest card you have and get rid of it.
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13.
Board Game: Oasis
[Average Rating:6.73 Overall Rank:1244]
Martin Ethier
Canada
Gatineau
Quebec
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Maybe it's because of my experience with Nicht die bohn (see previous entry where they share a similar mechanics), but this one was hard to grasp the bidding mechanism. The order in which you are chosen and the order of play are two different things. If you have the 5th place in choosing but your offer is chosen, you'll still play last for this turn, but you pick first next turn. Once you get it, it's alright but we were all struggling at first.
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14.
Board Game: Go
[Average Rating:7.66 Overall Rank:121]
Nasty McHaggis
United States
Columbia
South Carolina
I'm pouring all of my points in sarcasm.
Box next to hand.
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The basic set of rules that makes Go "go" are very simple. However, the endgame can get rather tricky as the board gets smaller and the number of available plays narrows. Sometimes the safety of a particlar group may not be readily apparent, and therefore the game is played out, sometimes to the detriment of the player attacking that group (throwing away stones in an attempt to rescue a mathematically hopeless situation).
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Matt Berlin
United States
Pennsylvania
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"Realizing that the only peices you control are the ones on your side -- not your color!"
I can't count how many times I've set up a sequence only to find, half way through, that I had planed to take my own piece.
It took a good 4 games to do a 360 from normal chess to this backwards variant.
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