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Finally fixed my heavily unbalanced board game group with a timer trick
My regular group has 5 people and one guy always takes forever on his turns... like 5-7 minutes each time. The rest of us were getting bored and checking phones. I grabbed a cheap 2-minute hourglass from the dollar store last month and said we'd try it just for one game of Terraforming Mars. First game with the timer took 2 hours instead of 4. Now everyone stays focused and we get through 2 games per session. Has anyone else tried a timer for their slow players?
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blake_smith5mo ago
You're missing the point of a relaxing game night. Some of us actually enjoy the deep thinking and table talk that happens between turns. Terraforming Mars with a timer turns into a frantic race where nobody gets to enjoy the thematic elements or joke around about someone's bad play. My group tried this once and it killed the whole vibe, the guy who was slow actually felt rushed and made worse decisions all night. Not every game session needs to be speed optimized, sometimes the journey matters more than getting to the finish line faster.
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