CW: article contains swears
Each one of these items and tokens and sheets is important. Each one of these pieces have been carefully considered by brilliant designers. Their role is clear. If I looked right now, I’m sure every token is explained somewhere in a game manual that unfortunately reads like a VCR repair guide that’s been run through Google Translate eight times. ‘Remember to put the second deck over the initial deck so the last piece from the regular meeples pool does not cross into the irregular meeples pool before the dice rolls a zero’. That’s not an actual line in the manual; I’m too lazy to dig through a board game box that’s larger than the ones I use to move furniture. Someone will get mad at me about this and, honestly, they are right.
Something I’ve always found difficult about these large games is getting the rules across to the others. My regular group are all gamers - we’ve all dabbled in the bigger games and can parse dense rulebooks. But the onus always falls on one of us to learn the rules and try to teach the others. I’ve sent “How to Play Oath” videos to countless prospective players who see the 30 minutes runtime and give up on the idea. Those that didn’t watch the video said the game only started to click after 4 plays. Which is a hilarious amount of Oath.
You need to learn to teach games you own. Rules vids don’t work for me even 10% as well as a decent teach at the table. You have to be prepared, as even a midweight game like Cosmic Encounter takes 15 mins of monologuing. SU&SD have a good vid on how to do it well.
I’m not asking everyone to learn the game off the bat - but if I can point them to someone who’s rehearsed, edited and highlighted important rules before it even hits the table then that’s all I need. Just some level of exposure so I’m not being torn 5 different ways by a Q&A session over which components are what.
It’s not unreasonable to ask your players to do some of the rules legwork if at all possible.