I have taught two people this game recently. I have found both teaching sessions taxing on both me and the players. I have not played much yet, but I have a solid understanding of the rules. But nothing seems intuitive to the people I have taught. The game is not making a great first impression on the people I play with.

What are others' experiences teaching (or learning for the first time) the game? How long does it take for the game to really click with people?

I can see all sorts of potential with the game, but we have not hit the zone where all of us are focusing on strategy rather than rules.

It's one of the toughest games for me to teach, and equally tough for the majority of players to grok.

I think it helps to run though some cards and explain some of the synergy, perhaps even playing a game where you help them make decisions and explain why you made those choices.

I've had success using Chris Farrell's guidelines in his teaching article found here. I'll also talk through things as they happen, so new people can understand why I drew a card at the start of the Develop Phase (Interstellar Bank) or why they get to draw two cards upon successfully Settling when they called Settle instead of one (Terraforming Robots), etc..

If you already own it and don't mind a slow ramp up teaching San Juan first can be a very useful introduction.

Unfortunately I don't have San Juan. I just hope the others will be willing to give this a chance. I have not played it much but can see the great potential.

I LOVE playing it, I HATE teaching it sums it up quite well.

I too have taught it to two people recently. Perhaps I am a better teacher than player, because they both picked it up in the space of one game (one of which I lost!). FWIW, I don't think there are many "intuitive" games - each game is just an arbitrary set of rules, after all, and, anyway, the concept of what is, or is not, "intuitive" is very much a personal perception.

I've discovered that how long it takes for the game to really click with people is very, very much dependent on how much narration is done *during* the first game.

If you teach people the rules, and then just jump into the first game without comment, then people will take about three games to "click". But if you talk through every individual phase, slowly and methodologically during the first game, people will start understanding during their first game.

E.g.,

"Okay, we've chosen phases I and III and IV this time. So, let's start out by doing phase I, Explore. John here doesn't have any special Explore powers, so he does just the normal action, which is to draw two cards and keep one of them. Andrew here chose Explore with his action card, so he gets a bonus, plus-one-plus-one, in addition to his normal action. So, he gets 2 cards, plus 1, making a total of 3 cards to look at, and he keeps 1 card, plus 1, so keeping a total of 2 cards from those three. Chris here has Expedition Force, which gives a plus-one bonus on Explore, so he looks at 2, plus 1 -- 3 cards on Explore, but only keeps one of those three cards. Everyone done Exploring? Okay. We skip phase II, because nobody chose it as their action, and move onto phase III, Settle. This phase, everybody chooses a world from their hand and puts it out. Uh, John, you play it face-down, unless you want everyone to know what world you're putting out. Good. Everyone decided on a world? Good, now let's all flip the worlds over, and pay for them. John, your world has a cost of two, so you pay two cards from your hand. No, you don't get a discount for choosing Settle, you have to pay two. You'll get a card draw after you pay, as your bonus. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear; would you like to settle a different world? You're fine with it. Okay. Andrew here has +1 Military from Epsilon Eridani, and he used it to conquer the Rebel Fuel Cache here. Since this is a windfall world (see the brown halo here), we'll put out a windfall good from the draw pile on it. You didn't pay anything, right, Andrew? Good! And Chris here, uh, Chris, Replicant Robots is a development. See, it has a diamond in the corner. We're currently on the Settle phase, where we put out worlds, the ones with circles. Right. You can swap it for a world if you like, I'm sure John and Andrew won't mind. Okay, Artist Colony works. Now pay one discard for it, good. Okay, now John, who chose Settle as the action, draws one card as his bonus, because he chose Settle. Great. Now, we move on to phase IV, Consume. John has a Consume power here, but no goods, so he doesn't do anything on Consume. Andrew, you have a good here, and you have two different phase IV consume powers -- one on Epsilon Eridani, the other on Public Works. You must use them, but you can choose which one to use first. Which one would you like? Epsilon Eridani's power, good choice. So, you discard your good, and you get one card draw (here you go), and one victory point chip. Okay, onto Chris. Um, Chris, you don't have any Consume powers, so playing Consume: 2x is not very useful here. Did you mean to play Consume: Trade instead? I think you probably did. Let's say you played Consume: Trade. Now, following instructions on the card, the first thing you do is sell 1 good for cards at these prices, so you sell the rare elements windfall good, from Alpha Centauri, for three cards. No, don't look at the card, it just represents a good. Discard it. And now, you get three cards from the draw pile. Now, the action card then says use all your Consume powers normally, but you don't have any more Consume powers, and you don't have any goods anyway, so you're done. We're now done with phase IV. We skip phase V because nobody chose it, so now we're at the end of the round. Does anyone have more than 10 cards in their hand? Of course not. Now we check for the game end. Nobody has 12 face-up cards in their tableau, and we have a lot of VP chips left, so the game is still doing. Great! Now we're ready for the third round..."

Unfortunately, this has to be counterbalanced by the fact that there might be veteran players in the game and they will be annoyed by the fact that the phases are taking three times as long.

When teaching new games, here is Chris' #1 top tip:

It's all about context. When you are teaching a player a new game, what you are essentially doing is helping them build a mental model of the game in their head. They have to have a reasonably well-functioning mental model before they can begin playing. It doesn't have to be a complete simulation of the game that they can run in their heads, but it does have to function reasonably.

As with building anything, it helps a lot if you can understand what you are building, and if you are building a component of the model, how that component will fit together with the rest of the model even before you've built the whole thing.

This is why I so strongly recommend the reverse-order teaching technique, teaching produce first, followed by consume, trade, etc. If you teach them explore first, they've learned that bit, which is easy, but they have no idea of how it fits in with the rest of the game. If you then teach them Develop next, they get another piece, but one that's pretty disjoint from Explore, so now they have two unrelated pieces lying around in their heads which they have to hook up later. The whole thing doesn't come together until you get to Produce, when they now have to assemble all the pieces you've taught them, essentially having to figure out how to put everything together themselves.

On the other hand, if you do Produce first, followed by consume/trade, followed by the purchase phases, you build up the connections much more naturally. At the end, you have to remind them about the order in which things actually happen in the game, but that's much easier to get past then having taught things in an order which tells them how the game plays, but gives them no inherent understanding of how the game actually works.

Different folks learn different ways of course, but I'd disagree with Wei-Hwa to some degree. If you teach it properly - in reverse order - Race for the Galaxy is actually not that hard a game to teach or learn, and you should be able to get people up and running quickly and should have no need to beat them over the head with the process of playing the game repeatedly. I've certainly taught this game many times and have never felt the need to constantly remind people how it works after the initial explanation. Exploring the game and the interactions is a good part of the fun here, so let them experience it without overbearing them.

This is a standard top-down approach. It works well for certain personality types, and works well when the model of the game actually makes sense with the players and fits in their head.

On the other hand, the top-down approach is not optimal when there is "too much going on". For example, Le Havre would be a horrible game to try to teach top-down, starting with the luxury liners and the big victory-point combo earners, then going to shipping and steel and furs and energy. That game works much better with a bottom-up approach, which is to tell players what they can actually do, and not worry too hard about how it all fits together.

One game where I went back-and-forth on which approach is better is Puerto Rico. The top-down approach says you talk about VPs first, which means you talk about Builder and Captain, which segues into Craftsman, which segues into Mayor, which segues into Settler, with Prospector almost added as an afterthought. The bottom-up approach would have you listing the actions in the way they would actually get chosen by players (Settler, Mayor, Builder, Craftsman, Captain, Prospector), which is how the rulebook presents it.

I taught the game multiple times, in both ways, and for the most part which way
I taught was based on my guess as to what sort of thinker the player was.



While you raise a good point here, I think there is one special thing about RftG that has led me to make a conscious decision to not teach the phases in reverse order:

It is possible to play a perfectly competent game without ever choosing Produce and rarely choosing Consume.

In general, players will assume that what you teach them first is more important than what you teach them later. RftG is a complicated game to learn, with already some trickiness involving that Military thing that you can't avoid, so I'd rather have them get the basics than try to fit everything in their heads in their initial game. Besides, for a lot of people it is much more fun to discover the nuances Produce/Consume strategies on their own.

This isn't to say that I don't do a top-down approach. I think it's very important to mention early on that you need VPs to win, and that VP chips that you get from Consume and Produce can be a substantial part of your victory. But most new players will be sufficiently overwhelmed by the logistics of Develop and Settle that trying to talk about Consume early will just make them more confused. They probably won't even come close to depleting the VP pool on their first game -- if you start with Produce/Consume, their brain focuses on that, they can't absorb what you're telling them on Develop/Settle, and they end up not knowing what to do at all. You might have given them a mental model of what their overall goal is and the major steps to get there, but they don't know what the first small step is. Whereas, if a new player just plays Explore +1, +1
every turn, that's actually not a horrible strategy.

Because of this, I tend to teach RftG via a meet-in-the-middle approach: Give them an overview of the whole game and cover the general story and what the goals are; talk about the individual components and what the "language" of the cards are; and then finally go into the actual details of what the phases are

Now, for the more intelligent players who can handle the full gestalt, starting at Produce and going back probably does a better job at giving them full understanding. A couple of days ago I was teaching the game to a friend of mine who was very intelligent, and I used my normal teaching technique. He was a bit hesitant in the first few rounds, but eventually discovered Produce/Consume
all by himself. He even beat me by 2 points, and we depleted the VP pool! If I had done a more P/C-focused teaching method, I'm sure he would have "gotten" the game faster -- but I'm not sure he'd have enjoyed it more, since it would've robbed him of the chance to say, "Hey, I think I know how to use this 2x thing now!"



I agree with you that there is never a need to remind people how things work after the initial explanation. However, just because there is not a need doesn't mean there is not a want. The slower players, I've found, greatly appreciate the play-by-play commentary, because it helps reinforce what they think the rules are and also helps them to be aware of what the other players are doing. It also makes the game feel more interactive.

I've occasionally had new players ask the group to slow down and explain a bit about what's going on in the game. Very, very rarely have I had a new player find the commentary annoying and request that everyone just play silently. I think that's a pretty strong indicator that I'm doing the right thing, or at least not going overboard with the commentary.

With all due respect, I disagree.

Let's assume I'm playing game with you (yes you, the person reading this). Suppose before a game started, I announce "this game, I'm not going to use my Consume/Trade action card" and put it to one side. Immediately, I'm looking at a card disadvantage situation (not so bad if I start with EE, I suppose). Now I compound it by announcing further "I won't Consume x2". Congrats, I just threw away any P/C strat. "I don't like the art on this Settle action card either. Sayonara!" Anyone still fancy my chances?

Change "every" to "most" and I suppose it's a passable strategy. Or add in the qualifier "for the first few turns" and I'd agree it's not a horrible strategy.

I've printed this out for myself.

When I think about teaching RfTG to someone, I just read this, and the need passes quickly.

This is a terrible, horrible thing to suggest. What you're saying is, a player can play the game without understanding it. Sure, they could, but what would the point be? How could you play Race without an understanding of how Produce/Consume work? In order to understand the game, and therefore in order to have fun playing it, you have to understand Produce/Consume. And if you have to understand it, the way to teach it is to explain it first. Why is that? Because Produce/Consume is essentially all mechanism, no player choice. As you go up the turn order, from V to I, the choices the player has to make become more difficult and broader. Produce involves essentially no player decisions. Consume involves minor decisions. Trade involves some choice. Settle more, Develop more, and then Explore requires a lot. In fact, Explore is the single most complicated phase when you look at it from the perspective of a player having to make actual decisions. So explaining it first makes no sense. You teach it to them, they have no idea why they would want to do it or what cards they might want to keep, and they retain nothing. You teach it last, when they understand what the cards do and why they might one instead of another, and they have the context for it to make a difference.

Race for the Galaxy is not a particularly complex game, even for someone relatively inexperienced with games in general. The difficulties come primarily from two things: the iconography and the simultaneous nature of the phases.

One suggestion would be to initially teach a simplified game: use only phases I-III and trade, to get the new player sufficiently comfortable with some of the icons and with the general nature and flow of the phases. Of course, you should warn them that this is not going to be indicative of the whole game.

Once they are feeling comfortable with that, you can add in produce and consume, or just produce if you are taking it really slow. These tend to have the most complicated icons, save for the 6-point buildings.

Not quite. I'm saying that a player can play the game without understanding it fully.

Generally, I separate people into two types.

There are the types who want to understand everything before they start on an endeavor. When they learn a game, they want all the rules explained in detail before they begin. They expect to have a chance at winning their first game. They don't mind sitting through a half-hour of explanation. What they really hate is to have a rule be "sprung on them" during gameplay.

On the other side, there are the players who don't learn well through instruction, but only learn from experience and actually "going through the motions." Give these people a detailed explanation of the rules, and their brain glazes at the ten-minute mark. They wish you would just start the game already and let them figure things out as they play. They don't mind when rules are taught to them on their first few plays, and they also don't expect to win their first game.



I agree with you here...



...but I don't agree with you here. Some (and I daresay most) people won't fully understand Produce/Consume until they've actually experienced it through about 3 games. I think that a detailed explanation of Produce/Consume is usually a waste of time.



But setting up for Produce/Consume is probably the most complex player choice in the game. To generate points from a Produce/Consume process, (1) you need to have the world with a good, (2) you need to have Produce chosen to receive the good, (3) you need a card with a Consume power that generates points, and (4) you need to have Consume chosen so that that power can activate. That's a four-step process to get just a single VP chip, and with lots of exceptions (step 3 can be done before steps 1 and 2, step 2 can use Settle with a windfall world instead of Produce, and step 3 needs to involve a Consume power that generates points). Furthermore, at least two of those steps need Develop or Settle. The process has many linked parts, so there's no way you can just dump the whole gestalt on a learning player. The teaching process has to end up being one of:

(a) "Let me teach you about Produce/Consume. Don't worry yet about how those cards actually got into your tableau, I'll cover that later."

(b) "Let me teach you about Develop/Settle. Don't worry yet about these symbols next to IV and V, I'll cover that later."

Neither approach is inherently simpler than the other, IMHO. So which is better? My belief is that it's much better to cover the simpler processes in the game (for example, Investment Credits is a very easy card to teach), which means that approach (b) is superior because you can ramp up to it.

If the game had many cards that did their produce-and-consume all by themselves (like Earth's Lost Colony and Prosperous World), I would consider (a) superior. But they're only two cards in a giant deck.



I agree with you that Explore should not be taught first, for exactly the reasons you cite. I also agree that Explore should be taught after the concepts of goods and sales and Consume powers.

But you're laboring under the assumption that you're teaching people the five phases of the game, in some order or another. I think that before teaching the phases at all, it's better to teach people about card attributes and card powers. Covering Produce powers naturally falls when I talk about haloed windfall worlds versus production worlds, and covering Consume powers naturally falls when I talk about goods and what they're good for. Only after those discussions do I actually talk about the phases themselves in detail, and then it's more useful to talk about them in the order in which players will actually encounter them.

... Plague World, New Earth, New Vinland, Secluded World, New Survivalists...

Sorry, I meant "cards that produce and consume 1 good for 1 VP", that is, the simplest sort of Consume. Throwing different complex consume abilities into the game at an early teaching stage would be even worse.