Pallas and I have had a standing date on Sunday afternoons to play games. In the before times we loved to go as a family on weekends to any of the great local boardgame cafes, like Tabletop or BoardNBrew. But playing at home is always fun too. Yesterday was Roll For The Galaxy, a game I've had for a few years but only played once. So I had to relearn it.

Learning a game is like jumping a hurdle- and once you are on the other side you know how to play. You get it. But there's a barrier before you can get there, and getting over that barrier can be easy or hard. The best way, I find, is to get a hand from  a friend who is already over the barrier. But friends are a limited resource in this pandemic so, the second best way is to.... well, that depends on the kind of nerd you are ;)

 I'm the kind of nerd who will download rulebooks from boardgamegeek to read for fun. I like figuring out games this way! A well-written rulebook is, maybe not a joy, but at least... I actually don't know how to finish this simile. They are not for everyone, I get it. That's why they have How-To-Play videos on YouTube. I developed the reading-rulebooks-habit when I was working at the mine where I didn't have access to YouTube.

Anyway, I would give Roll for the Galaxy's rulebook a failing grade. The game is great! Simple and engaging and lots of room for figuring out strategy and such. You should play it! Just don't read the rules, watch one of those videos.

"But Nathan, I am stuck on some kind of boat in the Suez Canal and we don't have YouTube! But there's a whole container or ten of boardgames here so we decided to bust out this one."

OK well, the rules start out with too much information and also not enough. A good, concise "This is what we're doing" paragraph- using dice and tiles to build a galactic civilization. But then it's "setup like this and this is how you play starting with roll your dice and then choose what phases you want  to do."  I simplify, but just to show how it is. I think I would have started it like this:

Same introduction. But the player board could use a detailed explanation right here. Just say, "Although dice are your workers and how you will accomplish your goals, this player board is how you will manage everything. We have two spots for tiles- one is a tech that you can DEVELOP, denoted by this diamond which has a corresponding Dice-face and game-phase, and a world you can SETTLE, which is a circle, again with corresponding Dice-face and game-phase. The numbers inside the icons show how many dice with these icons you need to buy these tiles to place in your tableau. We will explain that part later."

And explain the Citizenry and money track, and now you can go through the Round Structure.

That's how I would have done it, anyway. We muddled through a few rounds and then it clicked. We got over that hurdle! I even won. You might think it unseemly to boast about beating my young daughter but she really skunked me the night before in Voyages of Marco Polo. I have yet to beat her at that game. Speaking of, that rulebook is...