First off, the “Luck” thread ran for two weeks. There were a few last subtopics and only a few thoughts on it - maybe go back and check the end of that thread if you’d like.
Since that is sort of still open, something lighter in this thread:
What are the favorite rules you’ve encountered for selecting first player or for breaking ties? Seems like a place the community likes to have fun.
Any first player selection houserules you fall back on?
What “non-game but game-y” rules have you set up in your life? Rules for who has to do a chore or task, or perhaps for who gets dibs on a limited privilege?
I admire a well-crafted first player rule, but in practice I almost always use Fingers (com.ModernAlchemy.Fingers on Android), which does the same job as the better-known Chwazi but I find it prettier.
Three modes: pick one finger (the one I almost always use, and then play order is round the table), divide fingers into evenly-sized groups, put into order.
Particularly if I’m teaching a complex game, I’ll often take the first turn just to show how the options work.
We always randomise who goes first unless the table wants the teacher to go first.
With tiebreakers: Arboretum remains the most fun one. From purely gameplay angle, I dont get the obsession with tiebreakers and someONE has to win the game.
Isn’t Container the last person to have captained a sea vessel?
Yokohama is the last person to have visited a port
Gingkopolis is the last person to have planted a tree
Flamme Rouge is the person who rode a bike most recently.
I’m pretty certain the CGE games have fun with this as well.
Kate and I always pass the ‘first player moose’ whatever game we’re playing (thank you A Feast for Odin). So we have a 3D printed moose we use with all our games.
Us too! We sometimes lay out London or Burgundy on the table and take turns asynch. The Moose tells you if it is your turn, and we usually place it on top of what we did so the other person can keep up.
I like “least of a thing” as a tiebreaket, i.e. you did a better job of converting your intermediate resources into points than the other pkayer wuth the same score.
I do like Tindahan’s tiebreaker, which is that all tied players lose and Alexander Pfister Peer Sylvester wins.
In real life, I’m thinking of a game we used to play. For some reason (read: being a boy) I always wanted to touch the car first. Eventually my Dad and I were always watching the other, seeing who would break, and eventually we’d be sprinting to the car.
Later, when I was the driver, passengers would usually yell “shotgun” to claim the front seat. Standard rules, whoever says it first sits in front. These two got wedded in my mind, and I eventually told people, “No, first one to touch the car gets shotgun.”
It was great.
14 year old me and my old man running out of a restaurant was one thing. Watching three 20 year old college buddies careen through a parking lot was a whole 'nother level.
I’m astounded when I play a hobby game and see something like youngest/oldest goes first. When I play with my husband, our relative ages will never change. One of my biggest pet peeves.
My favorite first player method that I remember off the top of my head is in Archaeology. There are two options given. First is the fun way, last person to step barefoot in sand. Then is the gamer way, whoever has the lowest total value in their start hand (got the worst random deal). The choice here allowing people to go with what works best for their group and sort of setting the tone for how seriously to take the game overall makes this shine.
According to Reddit:
Everdell has the “most humble” player going first (which means you can’t claim it’s you?)
Then some unlikely ones:
Regicide says…”last person to commit regicide”
Escape Plan: “person who most recently robbed a bank.”
Beyond The Sun has “the player who has most recently been to space”?
But my favourite is definitely 2017’s Dinosaur Island which says:
When playing with my partner I always go first unless I know there is some advantage to it and I make him go first. He hates having the first turn for … reasons.
Other than that we often have the person teaching go first to showcase how a turn works, or have the person who is new to the game go in the middle so they can watch. Again unless we know there is some advantage… then the people who know the game best go last.
If everyone knows the game, it’s kind of random what we do. Sometimes we do the first player things from the rules or we make one up.
Ark Nova has to be who was at the Zoo recently, right?
Terraforming Mars is who made fun of Elon recently
Libertalia would also be easy: who played Sea of Thieves most recently.
Mischwald: who was in a forest recently
In general, I teach a lot of games and I tend to forget little details like who goes first or when does the game end or what are the tie breakers in favor of the bigger rules. This is really annoying me and I wish I could remember those details better.
I sometimes find it difficult to drop one piece without having any idea what colour it is (when they are too large, or different shapes, for example). Dropping all of them seems very marginally faster and fairer.
Rock, paper, scissors is standard across Japan for resolving disputes, like who gets to sit on which seat on the bicycle, or who gets to choose where we eat out.
(Of course, this barely works at all with many participants, but with three kids you tend to get a result pretty quickly, and I’ve seen fairly fast resolution even with six.)
I like Oceans for first player and tie breakers: first player to whoever holds their breath longer, and tie breaker to whoever becomes a fishing boat captain in Alaska… although I think it is geographically non-important wherever you become a captain. If it was in the Bay of Biscay I’d give you the win too…
Also Azul comes to mind: last player to visit Portugal goes first.
For first player rules, I like a simple one like in Pandemic, where the player with the biggest population in one of their cards goes first.
As a rule, I don’t like going first on a game I just learned. Sorry, it’s not that I don’t like it, I hate it. I’m always like… “What the f… do I do now?”.
What I like is having rules for tie breaks, but only reading them if needed. Surprise, all those coins you were keeping unused on your last turn gave you the victory! Takes away the edge and in the end I find ties very amusing and satisfactory, anyway.
