I like printed manuals ... but I never really read them. To be honest I generally look at them for the artwork. I generally expect the game to give me enough information to play the game 'in game'. Also later patches can make many parts of printed manuals inaccurate, and thus useless.
Maybe a little side-demo shipped with the game that a first time player can use to figure out the workings of the game. A five minute tutorial like this beats the heck out of a huge paper manual. After you've done the demo once, just go straight into 'New Game' from then on out.
