Debate: should you learn a game by reading the rulebook first or diving in?

Last Saturday me and my group spent 45 minutes trying to set up Terraforming Mars because nobody read the rules ahead of time. Halfway through we realized we'd been doing the whole generation phase backwards. So which side are you on - study the book for 20 minutes first, or just learn as you go and expect to screw up?

2 comments

2 Comments

hunt.nora20d ago

Actually Terraforming Mars doesn't have a generation phase, it has rounds and generations are tracked differently. You might have been mixing up the turn order rules from another game. For heavy euros like this one, skimming the rulebook before play prevents that kind of confusion.

the_mila20d ago

We had a rough first game of Terraforming Mars too, honestly. The thing that saved us was printing out a quick reference sheet from BoardGameGeek, the one that lists every action and phase on one page. It's way easier than flipping through the rulebook every turn, you know? Having that cheat sheet right there stopped us from mixing up the research phase with the action phase, which we kept doing.