Board Game Arena

When we play a training game to teach a new player, the system invariably manages to choose them to be first player.

It would be helpful if we could choose who goes first, so we can demonstrate how it works. Ideally it could automatically choose someone who has played it before within BGA, but for the game in question, some of us had played it in real life (but not within BGA) and would probably have been quicker at figuring out how to use the interface.

Really like this idea!

Added to bug database as #27393

Link to make it easy to vote for:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=27393

There might need to be a slight tweak to the current system, to differentiate between "I want an unranked/untimed game to show how the game is played" and "I want an unranked/untimed game because I am playing with friends" (which is what the current training mode is often used for, intentional or not). But that tweak shouldn't be too hard to do.

Yes, being able to set first player will help a lot, so that the over-eager learner doesn't make a move with a random click that haunts them for the rest of the game. Not that that's ever happened when I was teaching a game...

Perhaps using the player that launched the game would only be for the case when no-one has played before on the site.

Otherwise. it chooses one of those that have played before at random. So for the case of friends playing, where all have played before, it's a random first player, and there is no net change. If only one of four is new, it will be one of the other three at random.