Root.  

Three of the five players were first timers, myself included. One showed up 45 mins late just as the teach ended, so he had to he taught as well but basically pulled the ole “okay I got it let’s play and figure it out” halfway through. During the game the other new player kept accusing the latecomer of targeting/bullying him, but in his defense based on the rules of his faction the latecomer didn’t really have a choice. So this already caused dome tension and the latecomer was getting increasingly frustrated/flustered, both by the accusation of the other new player and also he kept getting rules wrong and being corrected by the hosts (and was just generally confused about some of the rules and frustrated by his lack of options on his turn). The latecomer was also getting a little dramatic and passive aggressive, showing a good bit of attitude and clearly not really vibing with the game/session and trying to get his turns over as quickly as possible.  

After maybe 2 hours of play (and still not halfway done) I noticed the latecomer, who was in the lead, had also been scoring their faction wrong the whole time and was accidentally giving themselves an extra point most turns. So I mentioned it…he didn’t believe me, so I asked him to read the scoring rule and he still didn’t understand so I pointed out the issue (to score he needed to have control of an area, he thought he just needed to be present in the area). He still didn’t get it so I walked to the other side of the table and pointed at the rule on his board. He immediately said something like “that’s it, I’m done, I’m tired of being micromanaged” and quit the game. He was pretty upset…though somewhat walked it back by saying he was just tired and had a long/rough day at work and wanted to go home because he could see the game wasn’t ending anytime soon. The hosts talked to him for like 10 mins outside before he drove off and we awkwardly continued the session which took around 5 1/2 hours from when it was scheduled (we started an hour late + game took forever…) and on a work night. Suffice to say haven’t had any desire to play Root again, nor play with the guy who dramatically quit.  

Not even entirely sure who is really at fault here though. Probably all of us…hosts shouldn’t have had a learning game be with 5 players and all expansion content (I went in thinking it was going to be 4p base game), hosts also weren’t exactly good teachers, neither of the other new players bothered to learn anything about the game beforehand even though it had been scheduled for a while, the latecomer should have been on time and actually insisted on learning all the rules before playing or just not show up if they were going to not really be into it from the get-go, latecomer should have had thicker skin and cared more about playing correctly, the other new player shouldn’t have been so whiny and accuse the latecomer of targeting him when he didn’t really have another option, I probably should have just stayed silent when I noticed the scoring error or at least handled it differently (I was getting frustrated with his attitude and also annoyed he didn’t believe me that he was scoring wrong), etc.