CW: article contains swears
Each one of these items and tokens and sheets is important. Each one of these pieces have been carefully considered by brilliant designers. Their role is clear. If I looked right now, I’m sure every token is explained somewhere in a game manual that unfortunately reads like a VCR repair guide that’s been run through Google Translate eight times. ‘Remember to put the second deck over the initial deck so the last piece from the regular meeples pool does not cross into the irregular meeples pool before the dice rolls a zero’. That’s not an actual line in the manual; I’m too lazy to dig through a board game box that’s larger than the ones I use to move furniture. Someone will get mad at me about this and, honestly, they are right.
I can’t recommend enough to write your own rule summary. Write it once, and reorganize it as much as you can with the goal to teach it in a fluent way. Teaching also means giving few components to players when you explain them, simulate actions physically (When you say I draw a card, you draw a card, When you say I push ressource A token here, you push the token, etc.).
With heavy games, players expect the owner to be a teacher. Not everyone is good at this. The owner role is to ensure peoples don’t spend a bad time with the game. Teaching the rules in a engaging way is part of owner responsibility.
This is how I take it. I have few heavy game but I try to learn rules and learn to teach rules as much as I can so players feel confident after first turn.