"Most complex set of miniatures rules" Topic

Very curious as to what this forum thinks is the most complex set out there. I define complexity in 2 areas which are the amount of rules to be learned for effective play and complexity of game mechanics. For example, the 2 games that come to mind are of course Four Horseman's ancient rules "Warrior" and the napoleonic set "Revolution and Empire"

If possible provide reasons why.

Flint and Steel (AWI)

reasons why?

I know of few games that supply a multi-page PERT chart to assist the player to follow the over-complicated turn sequence. One in particular does spring to mind, however.

"Warrior" is a comparative doddle. I can play "Warrior". *It* does not give me blinding headaches.

Allen

I have to say I don't get the whole "Warrior is so hard" or "Warrior gives me a headache" line. They are not as complex as others touted to be simpler….

Soldat is by far the most complex rule set I've played

Harpoon…..

What set's require a pert chart?

Don't want to be too pedantic but couldn't complex often be good in a game while it's complicated that is usually bad.

Is soldat a miniatures game?

What's so hard about Warrior? Even I can play it.

Some games due to its complexity are inherently complicated. However im not really addressing the issue of good or bad games.

Are we taking about the same warrior? Im referring to the WRG reincarnation. Most people believe this is a very detailed set that is tough to get into. What sets are more complex? Give me names..

Well, there's Star Fleet Battles and Advanced Squad Leader, although those are both primarily 'boardgames that can be played with minis' rather than exclusive minis games. Otherwise Command Decision seemed to be me to be full of an excruciating level of detail (and I play ASL!)….or what about SeeKrieg, that needs a computer to help play it.

One day: one . You're off to a good start.

Yes it is one and the same..

I have to agree with star fleet battles (with its 400 pages of rules) and advanced squad leader. Those are fine examples. However are the game mechanics as tough? True, you need to remember a great deal of rules but do you need for example to be concerned about si-move or be involved with written orders that are open to interpratation? (ie R&E, Empire)

Many of you have mentioned Warrior but what about Revolution and Empire? Anyone familiar with this set?

"Tractics"

Playing it with micro armor in the '70s.

Any rules that come with three (3) books in a box is trouble (smile).

Dan

Bob Runnicles, Seekrieg isn't that bad. Even in it's 5th edition my understanding is that its still pretty simple. Rich Sartore decided on the CD format for 5th edition because it was cheaper in the long run for the end user. As to the issue of "Ohh a big book of charts! This must be super-complex and overly complicated!" I'll address that: Each book is designed to cover the gun calibers of a specific fleet. Those charts cover all you need. The neat thing about the computer format is that you can go through and print just the charts needed for specific gun calibers and run with just those. I like the concept.

BTW I thought Seekrieg was a complex mess until I played a few games of seekreig 4th edition and actually saw how the charts worked. Now I'm sold on the idea.

As to the topic I'll second Tractics. I just scored a copy on Ebay and want to read through them to see if they are truly as Satanic as I have heard. :')

I do agree with SFB, and Harpoon. But, no one has mentioned Empire V, or the dreaded Empire Campaign System.
BWW

from the late 70's early 80's. By the Sword. so complex it had a two foot long flowchart. one turn took almost an hour to get thru the flowchart.

Yes empire 5 is a good choice. Please note that revolution and empire is a revamping of empire 5 utilizing the same game engine. I believe, however, that R&E is a bit more complex.

Empire had one of those tree decision flow charts. The rules were impossible to learn. Revolution & Empire is the next generation of Empire, so I would imagine that it is just as difficult. I watched Todd Fisher running a game at this year's SYWA convention and I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on.

Jimmy Hoffa started playing a game of Advanced Squad Leader and nobody has seen him since. Experts believe he only has three more turns left before the meeting engagement they started playing finally ends.

Wow!!! I completely forgot about Scott Bowden's "Chef De Battalion" An almost unplayable super detailed tactical napoleonic game utilizing a few battalions per side at a 10 to one miniature ratio. Anyone have experience with this?

Empire II wasn't hard at all. It was the III+ that caused all the trouble.

There are some air plane games (who shall not be singled out) that are so detailed it takes days to play a small game. Detailed does not equate with complex in my book.

Actually, good old D&D with all the bells and whistles is pretty complex. No one I know plays with all the bells and whistles so . . . not all that complex simply because people refuse to make it complex.

I will second Tractix. Only for a true tread head.

There are also a slug of Ancients rules from the good old days that added a great deal of complexity without adding much game.

Any game that uses more than three acronyms is complex in my book.

mjc

Yes i also have a copy of tractics which was, believe it or not, co-authored by Gary (D&D)Gygax. There are 3 booklets which are… tank/antitank, infantry, and modern. A Very detailed but quite understandable hit location procedure. "Battalions in crisis" published in the 90,s which I also own was based on tractics and is a revamped version.

One of richard berg,s (famous game designer and critic) greatest reviews was on a game called "early pacific battles" which came with a few hundred sheets of mimeographed paper that contained the Actual floor plans of various battle ships. I believe his cat mutilated half of the rules which were spread out on his room floor. Very funny article.

Empire IV. The Elan chart alone with the factors and exceptions on various pages is enough to drive a man to tears. Then put the whole mess in the hands of a rules lawyer and insert explative.
T

Challenger, Challenger 2 and Challenger 2000. First roll to spot, then roll to hit. If you are using a chemical round roll to see how well the perpetrator forms, lastly roll for damage.

Chef de Battalion wins for me hands down. Any rules set where you have to practice moving your figures to get it right is too complicated.

Harpoon was complicated, but I had the good fortune to play with a guy who lived and breathed it.

The latest edition of Warhammer fantasy with its army books. So much contradiction and rules which can be interperated different ways… Yet to see a game where there hasn't been a 'discussion' about at least one rule!
Mick

I can't say I found Challenger to be complicated, a bit tedious perhaps, but the mechanisms are all very simple. There are just so many of them. Same goes for SFB.

I would second ASL though as so much of it are bizarre workarounds for the abstractions imposed by the hex grid, so the rules are hard to remember as they don't relate to real life concepts. Just thinking of bypass movement makes my head hurt.

what this forum thinks is the most complex set out there

Attack Vector Tactical by Ad Astra.

Star Fleet Battles, at least when I tried to play it in the early eighties.

I always found Harpoon playable but it just felt a trifle silly to spend three hours gaming an event that covered 15 minutes of actual time.

You guys covered all mine except one" Ancient Empire. Not that hard once you got through the rules but too long of a read.

As for other Era's I game here are my resident evil games:

ACW
JRIII I love the game but it is the most complex ACW rules I can think of.

Napoleonics
Revolution and Empire, followed by Chef du Battalion and Legacy of Glory. All too much in the weeds for me to enjoy.

WWII, ASL for miniature hand down. I played ASL for years while in Germany as they were easier to transport and use very few figure on the game boards. But if I did not have four years to do it I would have never mastered it.

Many other WWII games seemed too complex for me to even attempt. I would also put FoW in this catagory just because there are so many add-ons that I would have to have just to have the entire system. Heck I can't even figure out what is the basic set!

VR
James Mattes

Sci-Fi: Attack Vector Tactical-It could take you several readings of the rules just to get down the basic maneuvering, let alone combat. Very well done, but not for the faint of heart.

Modern naval: Harpoon 4-Setting up a scenario and then running it, particularly if there's subs and aircraft involved will leave a burnt out, haggard looking referee.

Modern Land Combat: Combat Commander by Enola Games-When there's optional rules for vehicle ground pressure and each weapon has it's own table you have a recipe for a ten hour game to do about five minutes of real time combat.

I gotta go with Star Fleet Battles or ASL myself. Although as an avid fan of Seekrieg, my opinion might be scued.

-W

Another vote for "Tracktics."

There were not only 3 booklets, but the firing procedure could involve up to SEVENTEEN different steps PER shot!

I did know a pair of Gents who knew the system backwards, so that the game actually could play quickly and still be fun--but only with them running it.

Anothr excellent nominee has to the four volume set "Once Upon A Time In The West" that required a thoughtfully included circular slide rule for calculating practically everything in the rules, but which still took forever.

Maybe the best set of Western Gunfight rules ever written so far as covering EVERYTHING, and probably only the second set of rules to pointedly declare it was about the MOVIES, and most especially the Sergio Leone "Style." A delight to read, a resource to keep on the shelf, a distress in the fundament to play.

TVAG

I have never encountered "Column Line and Square", but I have heard legends about it.

I managed to co-author one of the most complex rulesets I've ever played along with a friend at school. It was a space combat game set in the Asimov 'Foundation' universe. The combat mechanisms were ripped off from AHGCs Wooden Ships & Iron Men, which was pretty simple, but the movement was thrust vector based in 3D…. so you had to plot the ship positions in multiple dimensions on graph paper and you couldn't work out their movement without the aid of a programmeable calculator. Now THAT was complicated!

Luckily we were both studying maths, which made it a bit easier. SPIs Battlefleet Mars and IIRC one of the numerous GDW Traveller spin off games used vector movement, but only in two dimensions.

When I got to University I discovered hyperplanes, so we could have modelled time travel as well….

FWIW this is a somewhat subjective question in my opinion. I'm quite willing to deal with detailed rules in some periods while wanting only high-level, fast rules in others. For example, I'm a Napoleonic buff, so I'm willing to deal with the detail in Legacy of Glory, but the same level of detail in an ancients or WWII set would probably make my eyes glaze over. This is why I can't get into Field of Glory or Warrior/WRG7th.

So, some people see certain rules as complex because they aren't willing to do the work necessary to understand them. Another reason is that the rules are complicated in areas that may or may not make sense to the reader.

Another Napoleonic example: Legacy of Glory is a detailed set, but much of the detail is put in the command/control system. The combat resolution processes are pretty simple once you go through them a few times to understand how it works. The Empire family of rules, on the other hand, puts a lot of detail into the tactical combat systems. Both rules have a lot of detail, but in LoG you hit much of that detail only when changing orders at the divisional or higher level whereas in Empire you have to run through the tactical combat system many times in a turn.

I'm willing to play either rule system, but prefer LoG for the reason mentioned. I'm interested in learning more about the decision points that a higher-echelon commander had to grapple with in the period. Anything that goes outside of that area is useless chrome for me.

As always, YMMV… which is why some posters in this thread defend Seekried while others decry it.

Yeah ASL was a real slog. I think this thread itself is complicated. Or maybe "complex". Not sure which.

Anything naval I really struggle with.

I think most rules will have some that love them and some that hate. Which means its probably more about the players than the rules themselves. What one finds complicated may be totally logical to others. And what one finds too simply will be not simple enough for someone else.

Its all relative just like anything that requires an opinion based answer.

For me, I find Empire V and the Campaign rules quite easy and logical. Picked up 80% of the rules in 1 game. But then I was reading a lot of napoleonic history at the time. Maybe that made it easier. I have brought in a few new players over the years and they have found it fine also. The only guy to have trouble was a guy who mostly read warhammer fantasy novels and played the same and he ended up going to FOG anyhow.

So as I said, "I" struggled with ASL and naval rules such as Harpoon. Buts not to say they are too complex and should not be looked at by others.

How about a positive thread for a change like "what mechanisms we like about a set of rules" rather than just another negative thread?

David
wardepot.blogspot.com
6to20painting.blogspot.com

The latest edition of Warhammer fantasy with its army books. So much contradiction and rules which can be interperated different ways… Yet to see a game where there hasn't been a 'discussion' about at least one rule!

That's a different problem, though. The rules are not that complex, but are complicated by loose writing (a perennial GW problem). Most of the other games under discussion are complex on their face.

Jagdpanzer! As to why, the rules 'singlehandedly' caused me to abandon the twentieth century entirely as a gaming option. The up side is that I focused on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and never looked back.

(six hours of real time for two minutes of game time is, yes, i'm going to say it: stupid)

WRG WW2 rules-can't recall the exact title but I got them I think early 90's.I'd previously used their infantry/armour rules for years quite happily.
Totally wrecked my enthusiasm for 1/300 WW2.Just too fiddly,too much to absorb---though they are not the only WW2 rules to fit that description.One can understand the swing to rules like "Rapid Fire" that followed.

One word, EMPIRE!!

Bob

We're being a little harsh with Scott Bowden. Empire makes no claim to be a quick, easy abstraction of Napoleonic warfare. It requires thorough familiarization with the rules and, in my opinion, absolutely demands playing an "instruction game"; a short scenario with a few pieces representing the different arms. After this effort my reward was playing a Napoleonic miniatures game that gave me a feeling of historical immediacy with the warfare of the period seldom found in other games.