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[Lammetje]

I'm organizing a dominion evening for my student association coming Friday. I expect that most people that show up will have played 1+ games, with a number having played over 20. I suspect that most people that show up will at least have some affinity with strategic games but only one or two of them are really diehard.

I decided that we would explain the game to the people that have never played it and maybe advice the players that have played only once or twice a little bit if wanted. For the players that have more games under their belt I wanted to give a small workshop and I'm wondering about the best way to approach this. I have looked as stefs articles but I fear this is much too advanced.

I would love to teach them some stuff about engines and how to build them. Maybe prepare some boards on handouts and ask if/ how they would build the engine. It is my fear however that alot of people will lose interest because this is theoretical. I could also just prepare a number of interesting board and just let them play those 1 vs 1 and discuss the boards afterwards.

The sets we're most likely going to have available is 3x base, 3x intrigue, 1 prosperity, 1 seaside, 1 alchemy and 1 dark ages.

Does anyone have experience with this? Advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.

[AdamH]

shameless plug

I know this is pretty generic advice, but I've had a lot of success with letting them play a game and then asking them a lot of questions about what they're doing, especially "why?"

[-Stef-]

Just out of interest: where is this going to be?

I wouldn't be afraid of showing some engines. I would never have started liking Dominion if it wasn't for engines. But a lot depends on the people that show up and what they want. If they just want to play games, I'd let them. If they want to learn, sure teach them some engines. Usually the best way to find out what they want is to just ask.

So my advice would be... be flexible.

[Lammetje]

In Nijmegen, the netherlands. I'm part of the games committee and I introduced Dominion on our monthly games nights and made sure we bought the game + 2 expansions. Right now it's probably the game that is being played the most.

The reason I'm a little bit hesitant because I tend to give alot of unwanted advice with games in general, which not all people like. Also there has been some annoyance of playing against me where I'm getting megaturns while they sit there waiting. I want to prevent the situation of me showing everyone how much I know about the game. One of the main things I hope to teach them is to "pick a strategy" and not buy a little bit of everything and see where it goes from there.

[AdamH]

+1 for "be flexible."

Well, I think you're on the right track -- if people are getting annoyed that you beat them all the time then I think the approach is to offer them advice. If they don't want to take it then there's really not much else you can do. They seem to still want to play, so if they want to compete with you they'll have to get better somehow.

I'm sort of starting a similar thing in my area where I have a semi-regular Dominion event. Granted, it's part of another board game night so other things are going on, but it's been doing well so far. I'd like to have people get much better at Dominion, but that isn't my main goal (the main goal is just to keep a continuing interest so that I can have regular tournaments).

I hope this isn't the case, but it may be that they don't want to play competitively. I hope that isn't the case, but if you find things that are making people fall in love with the game, certainly let me know. My second session of this is tonight so if I get any gems, I'll share them :-)

[AdamH]

Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to make some smart comment like

"Dominion Workshop advice? Well Workshop is usually best when you want lots of cards costing $4 or less. Main synergies include Highway, Gardens, and Villages. Usually you want to open with it LOLOL"

Now I will get all of the +1s

[jsh357]

If they are annoyed playing against you, one thing you could do is bow out of playing and supervise the games. This makes it easier for you to coach the other players too.