Ordered by time to competence, shortest first, because that single figure has turned out to predict more about how an opening feels than any other measurement we take.
Four minutes from launch to competence. A broken object, the tools beside it, and no instruction of any kind. Eleven of the fourteen rules in this opening are shown rather than told, which is the highest proportion in the file and not by a small margin.
Eighteen minutes, most of them spent receiving explanations of systems that will not appear for another two hours. At the ten-hour retention check we could restate two of the four rules, which is a failure of ordering rather than of writing.
Twenty-six minutes and an opening skirmish with a single winning line. It teaches the rules cleanly and simultaneously teaches that the game has correct answers, which is untrue and takes about six hours to unlearn.
Thirty-one minutes, six of them spent turning a crank by hand. That deliberate tedium is the whole argument for automation delivered as an experience rather than a sentence, and nothing in the opening is wasted.
Forty-four minutes to competence and three destroyed aircraft on the way. The landing tutorial does not exist until the game has watched you fail, which is either the boldest decision in the file or a support ticket waiting to happen.
Two hours and eleven minutes, forty-three text panels, eleven scripted hands and not one point at which a mistake is permitted. The longest and most defensive opening we have logged, sitting on top of a genuinely good deckbuilder.
