Six great games you can teach in five minutes or less
Spending time with family? You might need something you can teach quickly.
Like many of you, playing games with friends and family is one of the most rewarding parts of the hobby. It’s not always easy, of course, and I’ve definitely taken a bag of games to family gatherings knowing full well that it’ll just take too long to teach everyone the rules. That’s not to say that they couldn’t learn the rules or aren’t interested in learning a game. Often, it’s the contrary, but time is at a premium, and catching up, preparing food, or wrangling children gets in the way of getting a game moving.
It’s with that in mind that I’ve put together this list. For those moments when a game’s in order, but you have a limited time frame, you need something you can teach in five minutes or less, and you need something for people of different backgrounds and interests. A limited scope of rules, an approachable theme, and a style of play that seems at least slightly familiar.
Spots, a great dice-rolling game
“Dogs have spots. Dice have spots. Place your dice on the right spots.”
That’s how the rulebook opens, and it’s honestly it’s the best start to a rulebook I can remember. Spots is a push-your-luck, dice-chucking game. Each turn sees you taking one of the available actions, which might have you rolling two dice, three dice, eight dice or even 12 dice — there’s a lot of variety here. You might also take treats or pick up new dog cards. If you ever roll dice you can’t place on your cards (each dog has spots that show a standard die face on them), you have to bury them — and if you ever have more than a cumulative value of 7 buried, you’ll bust and lose all your dice, including the dice on unfinished dogs.
It’s a game that takes just a few minutes to teach, and I’d recommend reviewing the short summary on the back of the rulebook so you don’t miss anything — it’s short but descriptive. And once you get going, the fun’s right there. Everybody loves rolling dice, and this game has you rolling so many dice. So many.
Sushi Go, a great drafting game
There was a time when drafting games like 7 Wonders were the standard fare for teaching new players. But a glut of symbols and some slightly complex scoring situations made that game a longer, more involved teach. Enter Sushi Go, a drafting game in which all players are collecting sushi (and sushi-adjacent items, like chopsticks and wasabi) and earning points along the way. The gameplay loop is simple: Play a card from your hand, then pass the remaining cards. Scoring’s simple, too, because everything’s shown directly on each card, no reference material needed.
Qwixx, a great roll-and-write
If you know how to play Yahtzee, you’ll know how to play Qwixx, at least in that you’re going to roll dice and mark off numbers on a sheet. That’s obviously an oversimplification, though. In Qwixx, the active player rolls four colored dice and two white dice. Every player then gets to cross off any number that’s the sum of the two white dice, but they’re importantly not obligated to. The active player must also cross off a number that’s the sum of one of the white dice and one of the colored dice, and they have to cross off a number in the corresponding row. Simple enough, right? Roll the dice, cross off sums. But you have to work from left to right in each row, and and you can never cross off a number you’ve skipped. You earn points for the numbers you’ve crossed off, lending this game a little bit of a challenge.
Second Chance, a great flip-and-fill game
Uwe Rosenberg has designed practically games for basically anyone at this point. From crunchy, thinky worker placement games to quick-playing polyomino games, the legendary German designer has an uncanny ability to iterate on an idea repeatedly without the games feeling overly repetitive.
Enter Second Chance, a game that features one of Rosenberg’s preferred design mechanisms right now: polyominos. (You know — Tetris shapes, but not tied to just four squares.)
This is a flip-and-fill (or flip-and-write, or roll-and-write-but-with-cards) game in which everyone’s drawing polyominos on 9x9 grids. One player draws a card, and everyone draws the pictured shape wherever they choose on their grid, so long as it’s not overlapping with another shape or falling off the grid. Your goal is to fill as many squares as possible. But there’s one major twist: If you can’t draw a shape, you’re not done for. You’ll draw another card — your “second chance” — and if you can draw that shape on your sheet, you’re back in the game. It’s a simple premise, but that’s sort of the point. It’s dead simple to teach and fun to play — and even more fun to play with colored pencils.
Point Salad, a great set-collection card game
This one made my 2022 Board Game Gift Guide, and it’s making an appearance here, too. But rather than tell you all about the game again, I’m going to quote myself to start things off.
Point Salad is a great little card game that can be taught in just a couple of minutes. The premise is simple: Collect fruits and vegetables, or collect point cards that give you points for those fruits and vegetables. It’s an easy teach, a fun play, and a great game for the whole family.
The Crew, a great almost-traditional card game
I love cooperative games. I also love trick-taking games. The Crew is both. It’s easy to teach, especially if you’re playing with anyone who’s played a classic trick-taking game before. Lots of people have played Hearts, Spades or Pinochle, and teaching new the new pieces of The Crew (it’s cooperative and there’s a trump suit of just four cards) layers atop the concept really smoothly. Unsurprisingly, this one also in my gift guide.