Tips & Strategy

How to teach Paragliders, advice for a first flight, planning the antenna route, managing altitude and the landing, and where videos differ from the rulebook.

Advice, not rules — the rulebook pages always win.

How to teach it

• Teach the Game is the script. Teach a turn in its three steps — move, adjust altitude, maybe accelerate — then the weather board (Paragliders - Quick Play, Getting Games).
• Build the map together: setup assistants make setup quicker and show everyone where the mountains are (All the Games with Steph: Paragliders - Teach & Playthrough, Steph Hodge).
• The last player keeps the clock and the weather: seat the most experienced player there.

Your first flight

• Easy Altitude Track sides and no Stunt cards, as the rulebook suggests.
• Say the four weather checks aloud every turn — thermal, sun, wind, cloud — until they are habit.
• Remember that acceleration skips the weather of the second hexagon; a classic slip is claiming a cloud you only reached by accelerating.

Planning the route

• Read the whole forecast first. All twelve Weather Tiles are open: plan the antenna order around where the wind will push you and when the sun turns west, instead of heading for the nearest antenna into a headwind (Un jeu de société de… PARAPENTE ?!, Jeux en carton).
• Antennas early. Their value drops as the day goes on, so the race starts at take-off.
• Cliffs and clouds stack. A hexagon next to a sunny, windward mountainside and under a cloud can lift you 4–6 in one move; line your route up with them.
• Stay above the mountaintop when you need to cross mountains: below it they are walls and can trap you.
• Waiting is a move. Taking off a turn later lets you follow a leader’s path without colliding.

Landing

• Don’t stay high too late. Coming down takes turns: hard turn plus acceleration is −3, and cool fields and lakes sink you more. Start the descent with time to spare (All the Games with Steph: Paragliders - Teach & Playthrough, Steph Hodge).
• The landing bonuses — rank, time, distance — go only to pilots with all three antennas: an antenna missed costs far more than a slower landing.
• Avoid forests and lakes when you come down: −10.

Videos vs the rulebook

• Some previews of the crowdfunding prototype present the stunts as personal character powers; in the rulebook they are shared Stunt cards, each scored once per player.
• One teach suggests hiding upcoming Weather Tiles; the rulebook lays all twelve face up.

Host game

Start with the antennas and landing goal, then use the map pawn and Altitude marker together for one turn. On turns 1–3, name the first hex’s weather changes before moving the Altitude marker. Ask whether acceleration leaves a legal endpoint; let players choose their route after checking altitude and orientation.

Rehearse a forest-to-lake acceleration

Set the weather so the normal move into a forest lets you gain 1 altitude. After adjusting the marker, accelerate straight ahead into a lake and lose 2 altitude. Your final altitude is 1 lower than at the start of the turn.

Do not apply the lake’s thermal value or other weather altitude modifiers on that second hex. Acceleration changes neither your orientation nor the order of the turn: move, adjust the first hex’s altitude, then choose whether to accelerate. Reset the practice position before the flight begins. Acceleration.

Sources

• Paragliders - Quick Play — Getting Games.
• All the Games with Steph: Paragliders - Teach & Playthrough — Steph Hodge.
• Un jeu de société de… PARAPENTE ?! — Jeux en carton (French).
• Paragliders: le jeu de course en altitude 🪂 — The Boardgames Society (French).