Dale Yu: Techniques for Teaching Dominion to my Kids

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve talked about the kids and gaming – but that’s because I’ve been so busy working on games that I haven’t been able to spend as much time playing games with the kids (or other adults for that matter!) However, the kids’ birthdays have recently come and gone, and the immediate aftermath of the celebrations are a closetful of new boardgames for the kids.  And, with this new stack of games comes the daily requests for me to teach them new boardgames.  The funny thing is – they don’t want to learn the games that they were given… They want to learn the games off MY shelf!  So, as I am starting to prepare for a spring filled with teaching games to the kids – I’m reviewing my guidelines that I try to follow when teaching the kids any new game.

1) Only teach the kids a game that they want to learn

I’m a proud parent, and like most parents, I think that my kids are smart.  They can understand concepts in games that I would never guess that they could grasp.  While they often don’t see advanced strategies or subtle points in games, their young minds are able to pick up the basic idea of most games quickly.  That being said, if the kids aren’t interested in playing or learning a game, not a single idea will enter their minds.  I’d have a better chance of teaching our new guinea pigs a game than a disinterested child.  Therefore, I will only try to teach a game to my kids once they ask about it or ask to learn in.  I’ll admit that I’m guilty of conspicuously leaving games in places where the kids will “run into” them and hopefully become entranced by the cover art so that they will ask me about it – but this has to be the first step.

So, much to my surprise, the kids have been asking all week to learn Dominion.  Which I was thrilled to hear because I’d been waiting for about a year for the kids to ask again.  They had tried to learn last summer, but the game proved to be a bit too much for them at that time.  I’ve been wanting to try to teach them again, but I had tried to wait them out until they asked.  And, this week – they finally asked!  They have also recently asked me to teach them Clue F/X, FITS, and Risk Black Ops.  (They weren’t thrilled with my answer that Risk Black Ops was not to be opened!)

2) Start with the basics

Well, many of the games that we play can be complicated.  I find that the methods that I would normally use to teach other gamers simply don’t work with a 7-year-old and a 9-year-old.  Most importantly, I find that I can’t just rattle off the entire ruleset at once and have the kids follow me along.  Usually, I have to break the game down into different parts and go over each part until they get it.  This might lead to a few aborted turns as we learn portions of the game, but I’ve found that this is the most successful way to go about it.

So, for Dominion, I’m going to start first by giving them a pre-built deck.  I’ll show them the 10 cards they always start with and go ahead a throw in a few easy Action cards (say Smithy, Village and Woodcutter).  We’ll just start playing the game with me explaining how to draw a hand, play an Action card if it comes up, and then redrawing a hand at the end.  This scenario will also help me illustrate how to buy a card, how much those cards cost, etc.  It will also let the kids figure out how and when they need to shuffle their discard piles.  As we start, I’m not going to worry about telling them about victory point cards or game end conditions.  I just want the kids to get a basic grasp for what goes on in each turn.

3) It’s OK not to teach them everything at once!

Once we’re good with that, I’ll likely move on to explaining the different action cards.  Again, I’ll likely take a stepwise approach to this – probably starting with 5 or 6 cards from the starting 10.  At this point, we’ll try playing a few rounds again just so the kids can get used to the different cards.  In addition to Smithy, Village, and Woodcutter, I might add in Workshop, Militia and/or Moat.  Once the kids are comfortable with these cards, I think it would be a good time to finally introduce the victory point cards and the game end conditions.

4) Try to shorten the initial games to keep their interest high

At this point, I think that we’d be ready to play a game.  Well, not a full game – while I’d like to keep the endgame conditions the same (Provinces gone or any 3 piles) – I have had a lot of success with non-gamers in cutting down the size of the piles.  Maybe 5 cards in each of the Action card and Victory card stacks.  Yes, this totally cuts down the length of the game, but that’s what I’m trying to do here!  I’m fairly certain that the kids’ decks will be chock full of actions and/or Estates, so this will be a way to make the game run a bit shorter while still giving them the flavor of the tension of the game ending with three piles gone.  Until the kids get a little better idea with what they want to do with their decks, I’d likely keep to the smaller card piles to keep the length of the game in a range where they won’t lose interest. 

5) Finally move onto the full game as they master the smaller parts

After a few of these games, it’ll be time to move onto the full set of 10 Action piles, and then give the kids a few games to learn the new cards… And hopefully, before I know it, we’ll be able to play the Starting 10 in a full game!  After that, we can swap out two or three cards at a time so that they can learn the rest of the cards in small doses. 

So we’ll see how this works, as I’ll be trying it out with the kids over the next few weeks – of course, trying to find time amongst the multiple soccer practices, playing with the new pets, and all the other things that keep us busy each day!  We’re around step 3 right now, and things are going as I have foreseen… Bwahaha!

Scrabble Puzzle Answer –

No new puzzle this week, it’s been too busy at work to come up with something suitable for here… But, here is the answer to the Scrabble challenge from a few weeks back…

My high score of 267 was created with the following words

STORMED – 33
OXEN – 38
QATS – 52
BEATINGS – 72
LIPOID – 36
FOAMING - 36

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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