This week I got in another play of Gentes: Deluxified Edition, this time with my home group.

Of course, the big thing that happened this past week was the Origins Game Fair down in Columbus Ohio, but I’m going to talk about that in a completely separate post. Here I’m talking about the Monday before I left for Origins.

You have also probably noticed this is a day late. Sorry about that, we decided at the last minute to stay an extra day in Columbus.

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I continue to really enjoy Gentes as I play it more often:

Last week I talked about my first couple of  plays of Gentes from Tasty Minstrel Games. The first was at the local game store and the second was just with Deanna and I. Last monday I got in another play, this time with Deanna and my friends Sean Hamilton (not Sean from Hamilton) and Mike Murphy. It went really well.

At this point I’m pretty confidant teaching the game. The one thing that has become evident now that I’ve played the game more is what the game is all about.

When I first got the game, after I did the unboxing video for Gentes, I sat down and read the rules. While they were written very well and everything in them seemed clear, I just wasn’t sure what to do with them. Here was a book that did a good job logically explaining the various mechanics of the game, however reading it I just didn’t see how all of these things worked together. I understood how, but not why.

Now having played more times, I realize that this game is all about the Civilization Improvement cards. The main goal of this game is to get victory points and the main place those come from are the improvement cards. All of the other actions are there to just help you get more cards out on the table. Knowing this I am now much better at teaching people how to play the game. This goes back to our teaching games article where I talk about people better understanding the rules of a game if they know why those rules exist.

Knowing this, and being able to use it when I taught the game, made this Monday’s Gentes experience even better than the last two. Having everyone at the table realize what they need to focus on really helped and made for a much tighter, more fun game.

Overall I’m enjoying Gentes more each time I play it. I’m enjoying it so much I’ve even signed up to run and teach the game at Queen City Conquest, coming up in July. If you are going to that convention come play with me, the last time I checked I’ve still got a couple of spots open!

So that’s it for this week’s #WhatDidYouPlayMondays post. What hit your tabletop this past week?