Board Game Arena

Hi, I've been a member since June, and have played over 200 games on BGA. So I am not a complete noob, but I can't figure out a better way of starting games. I have the 3 drop-downs set to SIMPLE GAME, TURN-BASED, and FRIENDS. All of that works well, the people I play games with all (much) prefer not having a timer per move. The one thing I cannot figure out is how to best start a game without making it a race to turn off Training Mode. What I do each time is I select the Friends I am going to play with, then find the game below and click PLAY NOW. It works, but the top setting on the left side is always set to Training mode. Is there any way to auto-set this to Normal mode?

If I am a bit late in changing it, someone will join and then I can't change it after they have joined. We all like the rankings you get, even if we have no intentions of joining tournaments. It gives us a better idea of whom among our little gaming group is best placed to answer game-related questions. So we would like to auto-start all games in Normal mode if that is possible. Is it? Thanks!!

I've set the drop-downs to Simple Games, Turn-Based, Manual. Then I configure the table, restrict access to Friends and send the invites.

I haven't tried the method you mentioned, so I don't know if mine's better (I suspect it takes more steps), but it doesn't require racing.

Thanks. That's interesting, I tried setting it to Manual. It's definitely more steps, but the default is Normal mode! That'll work, thanks.