So this is not a revolutionary new topic and I am sure it has been discussed at length before I ever joined this community … and yet here I am asking because old discussions are lost to time now.
It came up yesterday when I told my partner yesterday that I had won another round of Beyond the Sun and reminded him my paper copy was arriving sometime this week.
„You know the game so well already, I am not going to have fun losing against you. Can’t you devise a handicap?“
And I find myself agreeing with him that it might be a good idea to start with some kind of disadvantage for me or an advantage for him. So the questions are several:
- do you consider handicaps or why not?
- how to devise a good handicap?
- is an initial advantage for the newcomer better or a disadvantage for the expert?
- do you have concrete examples?
- what games are ill suited to a handicap despite having a strong skill component?
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The classic one is Twilight Struggle, where the standard is to get +2 influence as the US.
I know that bidding points for turn order in Great Western Trail is a thing although I’ve never done it.
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For Beyond the Sun I am thinking of forced taking of the Verlegenheitsaktion for a round or two to allow my partner to get his bearings. On the other hand the action accumulates resources so may not be that much of a disadvantage. I am also looking for a way to even out the Sunday duel (she was short one ore of a lvl 4 tech though and that would probably have given her the victory…) and BGA doesn’t give me a lot of options to tweak the start of the game.
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I handicap Galaxy Trucker a lot, because the skill ceiling is so high, new players really don’t have a chance, and it’s more fun to lose!
We use the Rough Road cards from an expansion. Since they were meant to apply to everyone, a couple of them don’t work, but most are very suited to this.
What I don’t do: timer handicap. Never could work out a good one - limited time wouldn’t affect me much, and the total time is supposed to be contingent on how much the fastest player rushes.
Go, obviously, has a very good well-established handicap system of starting stones for the weaker player.
Other than those, I don’t tend to do handicaps. Most people seem quite resistant to the idea, and it’s hard to come up with good ones anyway.
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It’s a good question. Depends on the people. A good handicap would give an advantage without cheapening any possible victory.
Not too familiar with beyond the sun but I would think allowing the advantaged player to draft cards at setup/extra starting resource than the disadvantaged player.
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Given the constraints of BGA, is it workable to have output handicaps? E.g. I have to beat you by 10 points to count as a win, not just have a higher score?
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For a physical game of Beyond the Sun you could give your opponent a Level 2 tech - either on the board or as a private tech.
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The most I usually go is, if setup or role/faction selection is asymmetric, I will take a more challenging or higher complexity role/faction to try to level the playing field.
Sometimes we play games just knowing that one person is probably going to win… and we try to make the win as marginal as possible.
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I will sometimes “handicap” myself in the sense of trying something different and odd in a strategy game. For example, if teaching Feast for Odin to several new players I might decide to never raid during the game (my usual go to) or do no animal breeding while still talking about those spaces and making sure the new players realize their value.
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Going for weird moves is a good thing but it can backfire when the weird new move is really good.
Did that last night, discovered the weird tech I had never tried before was incredibly good 
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Oh, that’s a very good point. I will often try out a “far fetched” strategy to see how it pans out. There is a counter-point in that if you do succeed with the oddball strategy, it may feel like showboating to the other players.
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In general I think it is better to put the “expert” player at a disadvantage than giving the newbie and advantage.
My reasoning goes like this: the newbie will never learn to properly play the game and be scrambling again if they lose the crutch. F.e. giving someone more resources at the start of Beyond the Sun. The whole game is balanced quite closely around the juggling of the resources, skew that and the game may change so much they miss out on a major element of gameplay.
So I’d rather screw with the expert’s game.
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The expert has to play the game with a cat on their lap?
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Or in some cases: a toddler
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Given how highly allergic I am to cats, that would be a serious handicap indeed. 
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Chess is generally played with a turn clock, and a clock-based handicap works really well to balance skill differential. It’s very hard to use this sort of handicapping in other games, which is kind of a pity. We have used something a bit similar in Game of Thrones, not to boost new players but to add stress to those who are ahead. When the first player has finished placing their order tokens, they turn an egg timer. When it’s run out, nobody can place orders any more. Those doing badly have less to do, so can easily do it fast, and then put pressure on those doing better.
In general, I reckon that if you can manage to make a time-based handicap effective, it would help in a lot of game situations. It’s hard to know how to implement, unless maybe you just say to yourself (assuming it’s you who is being handicapped) ‘I’ll just play immediately and suck up the mistakes’ as a balancing mechanism.
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That would seem to depend on how much interaction there is in the game. If I can think through all my options while my opponent takes their turn, I need very little time. Beyond the Sun is one example I think wouldn’t work because while my opponent can obviously block the action slot I want to take that rarely means there is no quick alternative that I haven’t had time to plan through while they choose their production for the round.
In the game yesterday my opponent once blocked me in a way so unexpected that I had to completely rethink my turn. And even so I found a way out quick enough.
In our recent game of Pax Pamir (different set of players) a timer would have been a true handicap because in that game the decision space is so wide open that by the end of the previous player’s turn I was usually dumbfounded… however I am also not better than the others by any margin so not necessary. A timer is also just about the only kind of handicap I can imagine would work in this game because of how tightly money, VP and cards are balanced.
Edit: BGA has this thinking time stat after a game. I usually think I take my turns quickly but we have one friend who barely seems to think about his moves at all and then wins most games…
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It is tricky. I mainly try to handicap myself when playing with family and friends (besides Splendor, which they love to kick my ass at). On Root, I try to play with my less liked factions, like the Alliance or the Eyrie (although my daughter loves them, and I do help her a lot with them). When playing Oceans, I go for being first but without the bonus points. And if the modifiers from the ocean sections are nasty, re-draw.
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I think we mitigate for knowledge by playing a “fake” game. This can be shortened or just not counting the full game.
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