I’ve been trying to get a few friends into board games recently, and I’ve realized that choosing the first game matters a lot.
For complete beginners, I usually avoid anything with a huge rulebook or too many moving parts. Games that are easy to explain in 5–10 minutes but still give people interesting choices seem to work much better. Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne have both gone over pretty well for me, and party games are always useful when the group is larger.
One thing I’ve also started doing is taking photos of the board at the end of a good game night. Some setups look surprisingly great once everything is spread across the table. I recently tried turning a couple of those still photos into short motion clips with [PicWav](https://picwav.com/), mostly just for fun when sharing the night with friends.
I’m curious what everyone else uses as their “gateway” game.
What board game would you introduce to someone who has barely played anything beyond Monopoly or Uno?
For complete beginners, I usually avoid anything with a huge rulebook or too many moving parts. Games that are easy to explain in 5–10 minutes but still give people interesting choices seem to work much better. Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne have both gone over pretty well for me, and party games are always useful when the group is larger.
One thing I’ve also started doing is taking photos of the board at the end of a good game night. Some setups look surprisingly great once everything is spread across the table. I recently tried turning a couple of those still photos into short motion clips with [PicWav](https://picwav.com/), mostly just for fun when sharing the night with friends.
I’m curious what everyone else uses as their “gateway” game.
What board game would you introduce to someone who has barely played anything beyond Monopoly or Uno?
