My favourite board game rulebook is Pictomania. It starts by giving a very high level view of what the whole game looks like. It's a single page in the rulebook

My favourite board game rulebook is Pictomania. It starts by giving a very high level view of what the whole game looks like. It's a single page in the rulebook and doesn't get bogged down in details. Then, it explains the small details of the scoring system. Since you know how the whole game basically works you can mentally hang the smaller rules onto the overall game system. It reminds me of Jeremy Howards Fast AI course. He teaches "the whole game" with some of the details skipped. Then, he adds details one by one so you never get lost. The analogy often used is teaching sports to children. You start with a simplified version of the sport (For soccer: kick the ball into the other goal) and then you add extra rules (out of bounds, off-side, penalties etc) when they come up.