I always say something like "Let's just play and you'll get a hang of it. Don't worry about strategy, players I teach end up beating me after the second or third game anyway." That way they can feel confident that they could beat the teacher. Not to mention, most LL games that require strategy in any form will lead to my being beat on a regular basis (Homeworlds, Volcano, etc.) Black > Recently I've started using phrases like, "it only seems difficult > for a > short time" or "it's not as tricky as it first appears" With less > applications to the Looney line of games, when speaking of the > german-style > board games I often say, "the rulebook can seem quite intimidating at > first, > but people catch on really quickly if they give it a chance" __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com