Getting Started in Gaming
Playing boardgames is great fun and is an experience to share with others, be it family, friends or other board game enthusiasts. Though when getting into the hobby it can be quite daunting finding where to start, we have built this page to help you with finding the Gateway Games to help you get into the hobby.
Where to Start
As with many new hobbies the easiest place to start is with the simpler tasks and then improve your skills over time, tabletop gaming is no different. We have an expanding range of Gateway Games that teach you a variety of game mechanisms in bite size chunks so that you can learn them quickly and apply them to other games that use the same type of mechanics. We have broken down some of the mechanics below and some of the games that help you learn them easily.
Where can I learn how to play Tabletop Games?
The best way to learn games is with a friend or being demonstarted the game at a gaming show or friendly local gaming store though you can also learn new games by watching 'How to Play' video and reading reviews. On our website many of our product pages have a 'How to Play video in their images section to help you learn the game and we also have covered many games in our reviews. We also showcase games on our social media which is always a great place to reach out to us, and we will be happy to help.
Push Your Luck
This mechanic is quite straight forward and mostly depends on how lucky you feel. In games with this mechanic players must choose between settling for existing gains or risk it for a better reward, with the reward being determined by randomness or luck. Some games that show this mechanic off well have been listed below:
Drafting
Drafting is used in games where you will be choosing cards, tiles, resources etc. from a shared pool to gain some advantage over the course of the game or to create collections that meet the objectives of the game. Some of the games which are a good starting point for this mechanic have been collated below for you.
Tile Placement
Tile Placement games are a very popular type of game mechanic that has you placing pieces to score points or trigger actions. The scoring is often based on pieces being adjacent or grouped together, or scoring off non-spatial properties like colour, cluster size or "feature completion" etc. Below are a few games which do this well in an easy to learn way:
Deck, Bag and Pool Building
With this mechanic players play their turn using their own individual deck or pool of cards or tokens, though over the course of the game they can acquire new cards or tokens to add to their pool. This then improves and upgrades your pool of options and can eliminate cards or tokens that are no longer useful. In these games they usually have a random draw mechanism to form a pool of options for the current round and the pool is reset once the draw pile is exhausted. Some games that you can learn this mechanism from are given below:
Worker Placement
This mechanic is a form of Action Drafting where you place a token (often a meeple) onto a space on the board to trigger an action from a set of actions available to all players usually done one at a time. You will usual only have a limited number of tokens to use on your turn so you must think a head to work out which option will help your strategy. Some games that are a good starting point for this mechanic are below:
Dexterity
These games revolve around testing your motor neuron skills pushing you to challenge your dexterous nature. These games are usually games where you are placing or stacking components in a controlled manner to avoid the structure collapsing causing the end of the game. Some games that are a good starting point for this mechanic are below:
