alt Hacker News> I still love it, but can't play it any more since people rarely have attention to detuct the hidden rules.
I have a theory you can only induct a new player 'properly' (i.e. without them getting out their phone and consulting wikipedia) when you've got at least 3-4 experienced players.
Fewer than that and the new player won't see enough plays to figure out what the pattern is before they're buried in penalty cards. I've found this to be true even if the new player is a veteran board game player, used to paying attention to long games with complicated rules.
Interesting theory. I haven't had change to try that kind a situation. The biggest game by people was like 6 people and 2 experts.
I can see that thou. I often had to give example rules for people, thou I feel like it robs part of the fun.
With more experts it could make things better, if they go easy on start. If they go full on with super hard rules, the half attention newbies would be lost.
Thou if the newbie really wants then they could learn in that big expert play too.