In games with turns, who goes first can makes a difference to how likely you are to win. Getting to go first is exciting and important to children, whilst having to go first can be intimidating to first time players. In some games, first player advantage has compensations, and in some it’s deemed irrelevant, and in others it’s a strict disadvantage.
So many possibilities and implications, and technically, the game hasn’t even started yet…
First, first first, and first last
When thinking about who goes first, there’s a big difference between games with turns versus games where turns occur in rounds, and there are multiple occasions on which someone will go first. In terms of first player purpose, advantage, and balance, each round works like a game, though there are additional opportunities rounds offer (that I’ll come back to later).
Once a game (or round) has begun, players will take goes in order (usually clockwise but I throw no shade if you’re a widdershins kind of person), circling the table until the end of the game (or round).
Every game you remember from childhood (Ludo, Cluedo, Heroquest-O) works this way, but it’s not a negative; simple turn order is easy to understand, and leaves room for focusing on the unique and important things any given game is bringing to your attention. Games are all about interesting choices, and keeping some things simple so that unique and fun choices stand out is good design.
So then how important is going first? How do games balance its strengths and weaknesses? Are there outside factors that matter? Design hats on, people: let’s explore.
The value of going first
Players, I’ve great news: if you’re playing a game casually, in terms of balance, it will almost certainly not matter who goes first, and if it does, the game will have compensatory mechanics in place. If you’re playing at a tournament level, the game will be so well analysed that any imbalance left [from first player attribution] will get handled by tournament structures.
Designers: it’s on us to make this true.
How much [dis]advantage is there to going first in my game?
Unsurprisingly, there’s no simple answer to this question. But there are a number of obvious key factors, and these also help us recognise what compensations we could give, to balance it out.
The more randomised elements there are to a game - the less going first will matter. The more outcomes depend on dice rolls and card draws, the more this luck will affect the game’s outcome. In fully strategic games (Chess, Go, and the whole GIPF project), going first will matter more.
A short game with few turns will emphasize a first player advantage more. Essentially with less time to recover or stabilise a game state, the more likely it is going first leads to a win.
Following naturally from both of the above, the more players there are in a game, the less likely first player is to have a major advantage. More players correlates to more turns and more randomness, but it also probably means more ability as a group to compensate against anyone who gains an early lead (political compensation).
The more shared the game-state is, and the more each player’s turn action[s] change it, the more turn order will matter. If a shop only has one copy of an item everyone wants, who gets there first to buy it is super important!
Deck-builders with random shops (like the beautiful Mistborn) are more vulnerable than fixed-shop deckbuilders to players getting an early high-money turn, and cascading success from it. This is a parallel to the first player advantage problem ~ whoever gets the right shop/right time has a random advantage.
Highly shared game states are also most likely to be the cause of first player disadvantage. Having to make a move first gives your opponents more information than you had.
How the game end affects the importance of the start
If the game is a race, then getting to go first is naturally important. However, if the game gives every player the same number of turns, then the problem can either vanish or be magnified.
In Calico and Cascadia, each turn you have a choice of a few tiles drawn from a bag. You don’t use all the tiles in a game, and the knowledge of what is left in the bag versus getting a pick a little earlier is pretty trivial compared to all other factors. By making sure every player gets the same number of picks, who goes first is unimportant.
By contrast, in games of attrition and survival, getting to take actions that your opponent can’t respond to, because they have no turns left, is immensely powerful. Getting to go last in such scenarios is a huge advantage.
Compensating for first player advantage
So we’ve worked out that going first is good or bad ~ and thus we need to provide compensation to account for this. Happily, diagnosing why this discrepancy exists, gives us the tools to solve it.
Where being first player means getting access to choice first, we can give other players slightly better access via more gold or goods. Having an additional coin to spend, means if my first action is a tiny bit less efficient than the player on my right, then this loss has been balanced out by my having a little more to spend.
In Catan, every player starts with two towns on the board. These have to be apart from every other player’s town, but there are advantages to certain areas, and in proximity to your other town. First player chooses one town location, then the next player round the table; once every player has placed one town, the last player (and then proceeding in reverse order) places their second town. This simple “wheel” action is a good balance for what starting locations each player gets.
In Smallworld, where you create mystic armies to grab and control territory, the last turn advantage of getting actions undisturbed is used to compensate for the first player getting the fullest and finest choice of armies.
Just don’t be third of four ~ you get the same bonus as second player but less than fourth?
Asymmetry (beyond starting resources) in games can solve first player problems entirely. When the goals and actions of players are different, then balance can come from a fixed solution. In Netrunner, where one player takes on the role of vile mega corporations, whilst the other player is a runner, attempting to break through their ice in cyberspace, the Corporation always goes first.
You can also make this asymmetry player controlled - for example by bidding to be first player. Before the game starts, players can auction the role, based on how many victory points or resources they think it is worth. Whilst this initially sounds like a fun and self-selective solution, it will inevitably lead back to the same problem. The “correct” bid is worked out, and everyone always bids that amount...
Appearances can be deceiving
From our designer’s perspective, one additional concern is that going first be perceived as an advantage, even when we know it isn’t. Giving a compensation that seems insufficient may make a player more unhappy than getting nothing, if that would lead them to assuming there is no disadvantage. Is the difference enough to be worth the hassle of differences in setup..?
Playing in rounds
When a game has rounds, there are sets of turns, and thus an opportunity for first player to change. Within any given round, all possible advantages and hinderances with going first in a regular turn based game exist, which initially sounds like a design nightmare if first player advantage/disadvantage is notable! However, we can also use rounds to solve such issues. When a game has rounds, either:
Everyone gets a go at going first (using this to balance things out)
Making turn order a part of the game
Each round is the same as the last (ignore the issue)
Having rounds also does many other things to a game like set pacing, force new global conditions, or regulate combat actions…
Everyone gets a go at going first
In terms of first player advantage, this basically just says “yup, it matters” but rather than compensate for it in any other way, the solution is to just let everyone have a turn at going first. This is the model that team-based sports use (a round is a “half” in football).
Be warned designers: if the rounds are not symmetrical (the game accelerates or expands round to round), then this can still lead to an advantage of getting to go first in the first round (or last in the last round).
Everyone getting a go also means the game’s length will vary if player count does.
Going first means gaining possession, a pre-requisite for being able to score. The first team advantage is thus larger the fewer possessions per scoring action there is.
Making turn order a part of the game
Rather than having a set first player per round, the order players get to go in is a property that changes round to round.
This is a common buddy to the worker placement mechanic, where each round there is limited access to certain actions, and not actions are equally valuable. Thus one of the actions is to become first player, guaranteeing that next round, your options improve. The following turn order spots can also be obtainable, either as a whole action or part of another weaker one. How quickly people choose the advantage of turn order in the future versus other options now provides an interesting tension in games like Terra Mystica.
In Waterdeep, first place can be obtained, but play then continues clockwise. Theoretically this should push whoever is currently last to want first place, doing so with their last, otherwise weak, action. Thus the expectation is first place moves counter-directional to each round’s turn order.
Variable turn order can also be set not by direct player action, but by their current status. Thus it can produce a cascade mechanic, or some rubber banding depending on whether the turn order is set with or opposite to who is winning. In some games this opens advanced play options to purposefully try and limit your scoring rate to set up for better next turns: a delicious little bit of design space.
Design Exercise
Can you think of a way to make a game that’s explicitly about getting to go first? Why would you want to go first each round? Is it directly how you win? In such a game, how do you balance for whoever goes first, first? What is your theming?
Rubber banding refers to a mechanism that gives players in worse positions more advantages to help them keep up, and hindering the actions of the winners. In Mario Kart - the blue shell hits first place, and can only be gained whilst in 4th place or lower. High level players also engage in “bullet smuggling” ~ purposefully dropping positions for better power ups then holding them until they advance to use them unexpectedly.
Each round is the same as the last
In this instance first player might never change, it might rotate or even randomise, but is not considered an advantage. Rounds in such games are doing something else mechanically (perhaps a simple as being a clock), but because going first in a round doesn’t provide a notable advantage or disadvantage, the game makes no frills about it.
In Wingspan, each player takes the same number of turns each of 4 rounds, and the first player changes each round (moves clockwise). This means with 3 players, there are 4 rounds (so someone goes first twice). 5 players: 4 rounds (so one person never goes first). It’s not deemed important enough to add a balancing action, and I suspect the only reason first player changes is so they could make a nice big token of the pretty bird from the box cover.
There are some minor differences to play depending on turn order ~ pink bird abilities are slightly better the earlier you are in the order (but mostly just improve with player count). Going later you’ve slight odds of another player’s “all gain” action happening before you. But all is embedded in the rest of the games randomness.
Outside the box
However balanced (or not) a game might be to first player power, it’s worth noting a couple of other elements that can make selecting the correct first player incredibly important to a game going well.
Youngest goes first
When a game says that the youngest player goes first, that’s the rulebook using a secret code to sneakily tell you that going first is advantageous. You’ll normally only find this kind of rule in games designed to be played with younger participants. Similarly the opposite setup, “tallest player goes first” is a way of letting you know it’s a disadvantage. In these games, the imbalance is almost certainly intentional, not lazy design.
When playing with little ones, winning hopefully isn’t your main concern anyway.
There is of course a point where children need to learn play fair, and how to lose, and this lesson is often taught by otherwise loving uncles.
Going first when learning a new game
As players, in our first game we’re either hyped to go first because the theme is cool, there’s all the pretty dice and shiny coins and beautiful cards and let’s play now!
Or, not uncommonly, we’re still trying to digest a wealth of info laid upon us, are desperately scanning the board to try and remember what “income” means in this game, and it really wouldn’t hurt if 3 other people did things first so we can see things in action rather than making a woefully wrong decision.
The Emberleaf rulebook is very easy to parse. Paul (the other Lynx) is the master of teaching games, and will be doing his best to reveal his secret sauce with us all over time.
However excited/anxious you are, a completely open board state can be the ultimate source for analysis paralysis. Thus there is another issue around going first. It’s not an issue of balance, but everyone has to play a game their first time, and anything designers can do to grease the rails helps.
If your game cannot balance everyone perfectly, lean towards making first player the weakest slot, and suggest that whoever’s played the game the most (or owns the game) goes first. As players, even if a game doesn’t do this for us, we can of course do the same ~ go first, explain clearly what we’re doing and why.
Some games now also give a tutorial, a quick start guide. My favourite is those that provide a structured start that really helps those of us who learn better by doing, rather than by listening/reading. A walkthrough first turn with suggested next steps can be the perfect helping hand from a designer to first time player.
Keeping first player selection in theme
How first player is selected can really help people tune in to your game. If not determined by role or age, then yes: you can just roll a die or cut a deck, but having a selection method that’s not so abstract is a great way to pull your players in to your theme, getting them ready for this game’s experience.
Azul, whose theme is around making Portuguese mosaics gives it to the last player to visit the country. I’m not sure how this works for players living in Portugal, perhaps you go by whoever last ate Francesinha? Whilst I love the flavour on this, I have been designated first player amongst a few groups simply by fortune of having been to Lisbon (sadly not recently), so whilst I give full marks for theme, I deduct a few for practicality.
Going even more extreme on theme over function, Dinosaur Island (a game that is definitely not based on Jurassic Park in any way) has “whoever last synthesised DNA” go first. I do happen to have one friend who actually works in a laboratory and has done this, but mostly it feels like a cop-out; it opts for a joke that’s funny once, rather than a lead in that works each time you play.
Lords of Waterdeep assigns first player to whoever last visited another city. An action that is frequent and varied, this is a neat way of picking a random player. Less great for families who probably travel together, and a little loose thematically when the game takes place within a single city, but a good and unique selector.
In Calico, where you make patchwork quilts for kitties to come sleep on, first player is whoever last pet a cat. I’d point out the obvious bias to this not being random, but the game does somewhat self-select to feline-friendly folk.
Top tip: there is no rule against bringing a cat with you to the gaming table, if you need to go first.
Cards Against Humanity: it’s the last person to poop. If this is already too much info, this game isn’t for you anyway.
If you’re building a game, and you can find a nice thematic tie-in to an action that everyone does, use the opportunity!
First Exit
Thinking about all the above, even in a perfectly balanced game, who goes first can really matter. You know you’ve got it right when players either don’t care who goes first, or it in itself feels like an interesting choice.
Finally: Who is on first
If you’re not familiar with the classic Abbot and Costello sketch that gave it’s name to this entire article, please, treat yourself: