"Let's just start, I'll learn the rules better that way."

Once around 2000, a friend invited me over to play a tabletop game called Talisman. When I got there, we made drinks and then settled into setting it all up. He had the core game plus a lot of expansions in large bins. Two hours later, we had the board and all the expansions set up. I was exhausted by then, but gamely agreed we had to play now that we set it all up. Four hours later we called it a night but we had not actually determined the winner of that game.

So yeah... been there.

I do find that the rules explanation really speeds up when everyone has died of old age and no longer interrupts it for bathroom and snack breaks.

There are YouTube videos that do a better job of explaining the rules very briefly. Better to just put that on the phone.

Ah yes, time for some Campaign for North Africa

I feel this in my soul... sometime around when Catan got popular I lost all ability/patience/interest to learn new tabletop games.

I can't imagine board-games surviving the age of rotted attention spans.

Maybe they'll be kept alive in some form for the small subset of autistic gamers who love to arrange and lay out thousands of little markers and plastic troops to stage an invasion on cardboard Poland, but they'll likely be print-out plans and 3D-printer files you can download for free.

The days of opening up a shrink-wrapped box of tiny markers and dice and gameboards all arranged in a commercially pleasing tray with a thick rulebook are likely going to come to an end.

Played superfight the other day and the 1 minute explanation was delightful. “Draw x cards, pick one of each color, grab a random one from the draw deck, you each have 30 seconds to convince the table that your character is the best.”