Depends on the game. I actually have a success story at this sort of thing: I went to a board game convention this summer where I learned a game called Galaxy: the Dark Ages at a demo. That same week, I actually made it to the final round of the Galaxy tournament (and may have done even better if I hadn’t made a rather terrible careless mistake).
I think the reason this happened is because a lot of the complexity of Galaxy is just due to interactions between players: the rules themselves are very simple. Diplomacy may also be like that (I know the rules, but I’ve never played, so I don’t know what it’s like in practice). You can use your existing knowledge of how
Other games—Dominion comes to mind—would be harder to pick up in half an hour because
Depends on the game. I actually have a success story at this sort of thing: I went to a board game convention this summer where I learned a game called Galaxy: the Dark Ages at a demo. That same week, I actually made it to the final round of the Galaxy tournament (and may have done even better if I hadn’t made a rather terrible careless mistake).
I think the reason this happened is because a lot of the complexity of Galaxy is just due to interactions between players: the rules themselves are very simple. Diplomacy may also be like that (I know the rules, but I’ve never played, so I don’t know what it’s like in practice). You can use your existing knowledge of how
Other games—Dominion comes to mind—would be harder to pick up in half an hour because