What kills a board game night is almost never the game being too hard. It is the twelve minutes where one person reads the rulebook out loud and everybody else reaches for their phone.
So this list is ordered by how little you have to say before you can start playing. For each game you get the actual teach: the sentences you would say at the table.
What a ten minute teach actually means
Forget the clock. The real test is how many separate ideas a new player has to hold before their first turn makes sense. Three is comfortable, five is a stretch, and past that people stop listening. The other thing that matters is whether the first turn teaches the rest.
The ranking
Ordered by how easy each is to teach cold. Player counts and play times are the publishers’ figures.
| Teach difficulty | Game | Players | Play time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easiest | Sushi Go Party! | 2 to 8 | 30 min |
| Very easy | Codenames | 4 to 8 or more | 15 min |
| Very easy | Dixit | 3 to 8 | 30 min |
| Easy | Santorini | 2 to 4 | 20 min |
| Easy | Azul | 2 to 4 | 30 to 45 min |
| Easy | Splendor | 2 to 4 | 30 min |
| Moderate | Carcassonne | 2 to 5 | 30 to 45 min |
| Moderate | Ticket to Ride | 2 to 5 | 30 to 60 min |
| Not in ten minutes | Catan | 3 to 4 | 60 to 90 min |
| Not in ten minutes | Munchkin | 3 to 6 | 1 to 2 hours |
1. Sushi Go Party!
Everyone holds a hand of cards, keeps one, and passes the rest along. You do that over and over, and the dishes you collected score at the end of each round.
Good for you if: You want people playing inside two minutes. The first round teaches the whole game.
Skip if: You are teaching one person. Setting up the menu takes longer than explaining the game.
My take: the game that almost never fails. Most people who try it fall for the little dishes and do not even notice they are playing a drafting game.
The one honest catch: Gamewright ships 22 menu tiles, and choosing which dishes are in play is a decision you have to make before anyone sits down. Pick the recommended first menu and say nothing about the rest.
The whole teach: Take a card, put it face down, pass the rest to your left. We all flip at the same time. Each dish scores differently and the tile on the board tells you how. Expect to explain at least one of them twice anyway. Three rounds, highest total wins.
2. Codenames
A grid of word cards sits on the table. One person on each team knows which words belong to their team and has to get their teammates to say them.
Good for you if: You have a big mixed group and some of them have never played anything.
Skip if: You have fewer than four people. Czech Games Edition lists it at 4 to 8 or more.
My take: better with a big, mixed group, especially when the people are very different from each other in age or nationality.
The first time I played I was not impressed by how it looked. It is small cards with one word on each. Then it turned out to be genuinely funny how often you realise you do not know a language as well as you thought.
The whole teach: Two teams. One person per team gives clues, everyone else guesses. The clue is one word plus a number. The number is how many cards on the table relate to that word. Find all your team’s cards first. Do not touch the assassin.
3. Dixit
One player gives a clue for a card in their hand, everyone else plays a card that could fit the clue, and then the table votes on which card was the original.
Good for you if: The people you are teaching do not think of themselves as board game players. There is nothing to be bad at here.
Skip if: You need a winner that feels earned. Dixit rewards being interesting rather than being right.
My take: more fun with strangers than with close friends, which is the opposite of what you would expect. After years of owning the base game, what still surprises me is how much is in the artwork.
The whole teach: Look at your cards. When it is your turn, say a word or a phrase about one of them. Everyone else puts down a card that could match what you said. We shuffle them and everyone votes for which one was yours. You score if some people find it but not everyone. So do not be too obvious and do not be impossible.
4. Santorini
Two to four players move builders around a small grid and stack blocks. Getting a builder up to the third level wins.
Good for you if: You are teaching one person and you want them to understand the whole game before the first move.
Skip if: You are adding the god powers on the first play. Teach the base game first, then add them.
My take: a game I am still waiting to play in person. I have only played it on Board Game Arena, against strangers.
The god powers seem counterintuitive for a few turns and then feel essential, which is exactly why they are a second game rather than a first one.
The whole teach: Move one of your two builders one space, in any direction. Then build a block next to the builder you just moved. You can only step up one level at a time. Step onto a third level and you win.
5. Azul
You take coloured tiles from shared displays and lay them into rows on your own board, scoring as each row fills up.
Good for you if: You want something that looks impressive and still explains in four sentences.
Skip if: You cannot bear watching a new player make an obvious mistake. The penalty row catches everyone once.
My take: calm, elegant and easy to teach, and it has been in my collection for years. It is one of my safest picks when the people at the table are very different from each other.
The whole teach: Take all the tiles of one colour from one of those round displays, and push the rest into the middle. Put what you took into one row on your board. Anything that does not fit goes into the bottom line and loses you points. Full rows move a tile across to your wall and score.
The rulebook adds the part worth mentioning at the end, not the start: 2 points for each completed horizontal line, 7 for each completed vertical line and 10 for each colour you place all five of.
6. Splendor
You take gem tokens and spend them on cards, and those cards then make future cards cheaper.
Good for you if: You are teaching someone who liked buying things in games they already know.
Skip if: Your group wants to talk. Splendor goes quiet fast.
My take: simple to learn and surprisingly hard to find a winning strategy for. I have played dozens of games with my partner plus a good number on Board Game Arena.
When I pay close attention to the nobles I seem to lose, and when I forget they exist it goes better.
The whole teach: On your turn you do one thing and one thing only. Usually that is taking gem tokens, or buying one of these cards with them. Every card you buy is a permanent discount on the colours you buy later. Cards are worth points. First to 15 wins.
7. Carcassonne
You draw a tile, add it to a shared map so the edges match, and optionally put one of your figures on what you just built.
Good for you if: Your group is happy to learn one rule during the game rather than before it.
Skip if: Your group insists on playing with every rule in the box on the first night. Leave the farmers out and tell them you are leaving them out.
My take: deceptively simple pieces and real end game tension. Two to four is the sweet spot with just the base game.
What surprised me is how fast people start enjoying it given how plain the components are. Cardboard tiles and wooden figures, and that is the whole box.
The whole teach: Draw a tile and place it so the roads and cities match up. You may then put one of your figures on the thing you just placed: a road, a city or a monastery. When that thing is finished, you score it and get the figure back. You only have seven figures, so do not spend them all early.
Farmers are part of the original Carcassonne, not an expansion. I like how the more recent editions handle them: as an extra rule you add once the basics feel natural.
I never use farmers in someone’s first game. They are probably the hardest rule in the box to get your head around, and leaving them out is one less thing to learn.
It also keeps new players a little closer to people who have played before. The experienced player will still have an edge, and in a tile-laying game like this that is unavoidable. Farmers would only add one more source of it.
8. Ticket to Ride
You collect train cards by colour and spend matching sets to claim routes between cities on a map.
Good for you if: You want a proper board game night feel and you have a spare minute to explain the tickets.
Skip if: You are in a hurry. The rules are easy but the tickets need a genuine explanation, and getting them wrong costs points.
My take: most of my Ticket to Ride has been on Board Game Arena with my partner. The United States map is where I have lost the most.
I travel the map in my head while I build it. When I claim the two train cars between New York and Boston I am picturing that trip.
The whole teach: On your turn you either take two train cards, or spend cards to claim a route. To claim a route you need that many cards of that colour. Your tickets are secret goals: connect those two cities and score, fail and lose the same points. When someone is nearly out of trains, everyone gets one last turn.
FOTO: una carta de destino, la parte que mas cuesta explicar
The two to leave until the second evening
Not bad games. They just do not fit the promise in the title.
- Catan (3 to 4 players, 60 to 90 min). There are at least five ideas to hold before turn one: production, building costs, trading, the robber and the victory condition. Worth an evening, but not a cold teach. I have only played it on Board Game Arena.
- Munchkin (3 to 6 players). Steve Jackson Games lists one to two hours, which puts it outside what this article is for. I do not own it and have not played it, so I will not tell you how a teach goes.
Start here depending on who you are teaching
- A big group, half of them sceptical: Codenames. Fifteen minutes and the sceptics end up the loudest.
- Children and adults at the same table: Sushi Go Party!.
- One other person, right now: Santorini.
- People who want to feel like they played something substantial: Azul or Ticket to Ride.
Of the games I cover here, the one I have taught most is Sushi Go Party!. It plays with more people than most games, so it has also been in front of the most people.
The rule I always have to explain twice is how some dishes score depending on how many you collect. Eel is the classic example: one eel costs you 3 points, but two or more are worth 7.
Tofu is even worse. One is worth 2, two are worth 6, and three or more are worth nothing. Four tofu do not count as two pairs.
Compare that with tempura, where every pair scores 5, so four tempura are simply worth 10. That difference between tofu and tempura is what trips people up.
When the game is simply the wrong fit
There are always games and people that do not click. It does not have to be a complicated game. Often it is just a matter of style.
Some people find imaginative games like Dixit tiring: coming up with ideas or words on the spot is not their idea of fun. Even Codenames, which should be simple, can be hard for people who prefer something more mechanical.
For them, Carcassonne, Splendor or Ticket to Ride work better. You can calculate and read the whole board if you want, or you can go on autopilot, collect your gems or your train routes and mostly forget about everything else.
It also depends on why people are at the table. A night planned around board games is not the same as a birthday where someone pulls out a game and not everyone saw it coming.
What to read next
- Easy board games for beginners, the main hub, with all ten games in more depth.
- Best 2-player board games for beginners, if you are usually teaching one person.
- What to play after Monopoly and what to play after Risk, if the people you are teaching already have a favourite.
How this article was written
The teaches above only contain rules I could confirm in a rulebook or on the publisher’s own page. The eel, tofu and tempura figures come from the official Gamewright rules of play.
The ordering is my own judgement, based on how many ideas each game needs before the first turn. It is not a measured teaching time.
I own physical copies of Azul, Carcassonne, Codenames, Dixit, Splendor and Sushi Go Party!, and I have played all six with real people. The teaches above come from the rules, not from a stopwatch at my table.
Catan and Santorini I have only played on Board Game Arena. Munchkin I do not own and have not played.
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