Our first playthrough of a new board game usually ends up being 2x longer than the average game time listed on a box, mostly due to how long the rule book is.
My thought is that you basically need every rulebook to have an MVP - what is the fastest way to get players to start their first game. If that takes longer than 45 minutes, it's a pretty big drawback. If it takes an hour - it's a game design failure.
It's also the reason why we keep coming back to the same classic board games - Marvel, Battlestar Galactica, Carcassonne, Terraforming Mars, Race for the Galaxy. We already know the rules and it's so much easier to pick it back up with a simple refresher.
Our first playthrough of a new board game usually ends up being 2x longer than the average game time listed on a box, mostly due to how long the rule book is.
My thought is that you basically need every rulebook to have an MVP - what is the fastest way to get players to start their first game. If that takes longer than 45 minutes, it's a pretty big drawback. If it takes an hour - it's a game design failure.
It's also the reason why we keep coming back to the same classic board games - Marvel, Battlestar Galactica, Carcassonne, Terraforming Mars, Race for the Galaxy. We already know the rules and it's so much easier to pick it back up with a simple refresher.