Newbie Game Night

Last night I had the first (of many?) Newbie Game Night... something I've been meaning to do for a while. Some of my frisbee friends have expressed interest in playing strategy games, but don't want to play with me and my friends because they've never played and are afraid they wouldn't do well, etc. So I invited some of them over to just play against each other.

It went pretty well. Nate, Karl, and Weike came over and played Puerto Rico, which is generally considered to be the best multiplayer strategy game of all time (multiplayer meaning "more than 2"). They played a learning game, and by the end of it they all had a pretty good grasp of what to do, so they played another game. Both games were very close, and I could tell they all picked it up because their scores in the second game increased by 50% over the first.

It was fascinating watching people learn the game and develop strategies... I haven't played Puerto Rico much lately myself, but when I started playing these types of games I played Puerto Rico a couple times a night, a couple nights a week, for a whole summer - it's that good.

I hope to do it again soon. The big question is whether to have the same game again, or teach people a new one.