CW: article contains swears
Each one of these items and tokens and sheets is important. Each one of these pieces have been carefully considered by brilliant designers. Their role is clear. If I looked right now, I’m sure every token is explained somewhere in a game manual that unfortunately reads like a VCR repair guide that’s been run through Google Translate eight times. ‘Remember to put the second deck over the initial deck so the last piece from the regular meeples pool does not cross into the irregular meeples pool before the dice rolls a zero’. That’s not an actual line in the manual; I’m too lazy to dig through a board game box that’s larger than the ones I use to move furniture. Someone will get mad at me about this and, honestly, they are right.
I can’t recommend enough to write your own rule summary. Write it once, and reorganize it as much as you can with the goal to teach it in a fluent way. Teaching also means giving few components to players when you explain them, simulate actions physically (When you say I draw a card, you draw a card, When you say I push ressource A token here, you push the token, etc.).
With heavy games, players expect the owner to be a teacher. Not everyone is good at this. The owner role is to ensure peoples don’t spend a bad time with the game. Teaching the rules in a engaging way is part of owner responsibility.
This is how I take it. I have few heavy game but I try to learn rules and learn to teach rules as much as I can so players feel confident after first turn.
Also, it can help if you play the digital version first (official or e.g. on tabletop simulator, when it’s a scripted game). Sometimes the complexity leads to some barriers, that can be navigated easier with some help. Or it can take off some tedious tasks that are error prone.
E.g. I tried playing Gaia Project twice and was overwhelmed. Then we tried the official digital version. It’s still really complex, but the digital version just takes the burden to calculate the exchange table for the ressource types and offers you moves, that you just didn’t see because you miscalculated the costs and also makes sure you pay the right amount.
It doesn’t mean you need to plan less, as you still need to take the ressource cost of your future moves into account, but you don’t need to explain every second time you pay for a move how and why this is valid.
I totally agree. By physically preventing (or forcing) you to do some actions, it helps you to shape the rules in your mind. To confirm and invalidate what you think.
Fun fact: in the digital version of Gaia Project is a link in the alliance screen leading to a web page explaining all alliance rules in detail, as many players reported bugs with how the game handles alliances - but in reality it just implements the rules as written. They can get complicated and many players don’t realize they were playing wrong.
