I listened to Moritz talking about games that introduce new rules on successive turns and it brought to mind the old Avalon Hill game Civilization. Civilization has 14 phases to each turn but only a very few of them get executed on the first turn as your civilization needs to build up before they become relevant. As turns progress you end up carrying out more and more of the phases (city building, trade, acquiring civilization cards) until you get into the meat of the game where all the phases are being executed. I've found that this makes Civilization a relatively easy game to teach to new players.

Civilisation was a really epoch making game (no pun intended). It was the first boardgame I can remember that required no dice, trading and interaction without diplomacy-type yawns, plus race improvements and victory points. A large proportion of todays games owe more than a passing nod to this game.

It was Civ and Talisman that got me back into gaming at the beginning of the eighties.

BTW, if i put my old Talisman game in a new box and attached a ridiculously high price to it, do you think they would buy it BACK from me? Seems only fair.

Phil.

Absolutely correct -a game ahead of it's time. I love it when games have a tension curve like that, most good games do!.