They're including setup and explanation for new players. That seems rather silly, tbqh.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Setup counts, imo.
Setup counts. But setup is in most cases significantly slower for new players.
imo the time on the box should show the time you need when everybody knows the rules and has played before.
people who have played enough to know the rules probably already have a good idea of how long the game takes!
Clean up for subsequent rounds I could get behind.
Yeah, the article seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding about what the times on boxes indicate. With the complexity of modern board games, I actually think it would be fair to inckude a reference to setup time for games that are more intense. We spent 2.5 hrs learning Scythe. For our fqmily this was a huge put off for replay value.
2.5 hours to learn? Yea, fuck that.
If you can't explain how to play in 15 minutes, then you need a simple/intro mode.
“Okay, so this object is a card. They have numbers on them…”
It's no more complicated than any other strategy / war game in the same genre. 2.5 hours teach would be mainly if the players were absolutely new to a significant number of concepts that would be considered standard.
15 minutes also seems weirdly short, most games ranked 3.5 - 4 or higher on BGG complexity definitely have a longer teach than that.
Checked the article just to see if campaign for north africa was listed. It was. 10/10
The problem with Betrayal at House on a Hill is the editing of the rules. Some haunts reference a rule that isn't explained anywhere else and the players are left to guess what it's supposed to be. There have been a few times where we ended up in a draw because something in the haunt was broken. If they had edited the haunt sections of the rule books and made sure that all rules were referenced in the main rulebook, the game would go more smoothly.
If everyone is familiar with the game, Twilight Imperium can fit in the time frame. However, I'd they aren't, that can be 16 hours from the time you start figuring out the rules. Even longer if you read the rules, rather than watch a video (nine of which I've seen are comorehensive).
If I have to watch a video to play a game, I ain't playing it.
That aggravates me to no end. Learn to fucking write, or hire a tech writer.
Not saying that you have to watch the video, just saying that it can be faster than a first time player reading the rules to everyone while figuring out how the game goes. Its a lot of information and the game has a lot of steps to it.
A video can be helpful, but a good rulebook and somwone who knows the basics of board games are an amazing combo
I fully disagree. I am one who hates to watch video's and would much rather read something. Especially with my ADHD and not retaining spoken words as well as written words. But when it comes to learning to play a board game I first look for the existence of video instructions before reading. I always use the two in tandem when possible.
Our real problem with Twilight Imperium is there's a lot you can do. We have a couple of players with option paralysis, so each round of turns goes like "2 minutes, 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 40 minutes, 2 minutes, 30 minutes". Makes the whole game take about twelve hours - four players don't enjoy it since they spend 95% of their time waiting, and the two OP players get really upset if they're "rushed" and don't enjoy it.
It seems to combine the "game is over for you if you messed up the first couple of turns, but you'll be playing it for a long time yet" aspect of Settlers of Catan, with the interminable dice rolling combat of Risk. If that combination, but slowly, sounds perfect to you, then it might be your new favourite game. To me, there are much more fun games that you could fit into the same timescale.
Yeah, analysis paralysis really slows the game. The first time I played was with 3 or 4 players over 12-14 hours, mostly because we didn't know what we were doing. Then we played again about a year later and the game lasted about 8 hours with 4 people and another time a couple months later, we played a 4 hour game with 5 people.
One thing in that game in particular, would be to give everyone a little notebook so that they can write down what they think about their next turn. Sometimes it crawls so much that you forget what you were going to do by the time of your turn. It definitely helps when you play the game a little more frequently and don't have to relearn everything.
My problem with Betrayel at House on a Hill is that the exploration part is fun, but often has very limited effect on the haunt. It's so random, you cannot "go" for something, and the haunt can happen basically any time. Handing out a couple of random cards to everyone and laying out some tiles would have the same effect.
My group has been hijacked by someone who, against my advice, bought Gloomhaven and now we're required to play it whenever we get together. I have no problem with Gloomhaven but the other 3 are relative newbies to the modern board game scene so every time we play I have to explain the same things and setup takes a year and each game lasts all night.
Please let's just do Cosmic Encounter again or any of these new games I've bought and are still in the wrapping! Then you can get out of my house before 1 am next time!
You should bring it up to the group, maybe others feel the same way? There's plenty of days to play both gloomhaven and other games
I have, they all love it for some bizarre reason. It sounds like I'm complaining, and I am, but only a bit. Playing a game you only half enjoy with friends is still better than not doing it at all.
Weird. Yeah still worth it
So the wargaming style games takes the longest time.
It is honestly such a hard task to make complex, easy to follow mechanics and still somehow explain it to players in short amount of time. Another takeaway from this is that when player led decisions/interactions aren't easy to account for in the time estimates.
I think that another thing that is common in some games is some stalemate situations where some equilibrium with no winners is achieved and it just drags on.
Wait, you mean munchkins is supposed to be winnable?
I'm surprised Zombicide (first edition, though I'd be surprised if it didn't also apply to 2e) isn't in this list. The tutorial mission has an estimated play time of (IIRC) 30 minutes. In reality, I find that it's approximately one hour per newbie, or half that per player who knows all of the rules. Plus 30 minutes of setup time.
I only played A Feast for Odin extensively but I disagree on that one: our playtimes are much closer to the 90-120 minutes on the box than the 3-5 hours claimed by the article. I don't think that we ever had a game go over 3 hours. Once everybody is comfortable with the basics and at least one player knows the rules well enough to quickly clear up any details the game flows very smoothly for us. The number of meeples is not a problem at all, the article neglects to mention that most worker placement spaces require multiple meeples so the 5-12 you get per turn are gone after a few actions.