"Most complex set of rules" Topic

Not fussed if it is board / miniature or RPG (though you may like to nominate in each)

I'll go for:

Board – Star Fleet Battles including supplements
Mini – HOTT – just cannot get my head around the language on my own
RPG – Has to be Chivalry and Sourcery

Andrew

Never played it, but I've read Tractics was super-detailed. And there was some Napoleonic rules that had flow charts 4-5 pages long to resolve combat.

HOTT? Hordes of the Things? Complex? I don't think so, the problem is your end I reckon

Board – SPI: Campaign for North Africa. It's insane

link

Miniatures – Challenger 2000, Empire, Harpoon all leap immediately to mind

RPG – it's a toss up between C&S (and its Japanese brother, Land of the Rising Sun) and Aftermath

Republic to Empire and General de Brigade, both Napoleonic rule books are about as complex as I have come across.

I remember playing Tractics. It gets my vote for the miniatures category.

I'm with Connard's choice in the board game category: SPI's Campaign for North Africa.

Rick

Rollmaster, or RoleMaster if you prefer.

SPI's "Air War"

boardgame- SPI Campaign for North Africa, also had it. You have to keep track of POW's. One game trick was to put POW camps on a Wadi, when flooded they were destroyed so you didn't have to worry about supplying them. 1200 hours to play w/six people…definitely insane. Great maps at 5 miles per hex.

RPG design books:Fire fusion &steel, T4, Megatraveller with all the errata could be 'overwrought'.

Harpoon(the miniatures game)seemed difficult for me.

Tractics was not difficult, just time consuming, no more so than Fletcher Pratt Naval rules. Or Car Wars.

Star Fleet battles, they just kept designing the fun out of it. As with Starfire.

C&S, Space Opera and Aftermath-Minutiae without gameplay return. Great ideas.

SPI the Next War-WWIII without a combat table that worked. Nato Division Commander-almost a rpg.

Mostly boardgames were overly complex in the '70's and '80's. They all had to prove something.

Advanced Squad Leader-I would strip the historicity and use it for roleplaying WWII-almost worked.

I'm not complaning, it's a neccessary phase of the hobby.

Chef de Bataillon

Board – Advanced Squad Leader
RPG – Phoenix Command
Miniatures- Chef de Battailon

Board game War in the pacific
Miniatures too many to choice
RPG Aftermath 3 hour to make a character has to be a record

Starfleet Battles it seems more of a simulation than a game. Written before the days when computers could have handled most of that record keeping.

Federation Commander is a much more playable version.

Star Fleet Battles was the most complex that I played. It became like playing tax law. I actually still like the game, but went back to the first boxed edition and the three little supplements.

I don't remember which version of Empire I had, but I started reading it and had to check and see if it was written by the IRS. Advanced Squad Leader kind of struck me the same way.

Back in the 1990s, a company in the NE USA came out with a WW2 skirmish set of rules. Very detailed and complex. Each turn lasted only 5 seconds.

Completeness implies compexity and high detail which often makes them unplayable.
Chivalry and Sorcery did have some nice and detailed supplements. The one on the Vikings was super.

Board games with heavy rules on logistics can often be very complex. But how can you not consider one of the Monster games on WW2 from the 1970s-80s like War in the East or GNO.

I have said it before and I shall say it again…

Advanced Squad Leader

Star Fleet Battles has the reputation, but like ASL, adding the rules included in the expansions can make for a headache.

ASL was fun to play, but these days with kids and work, it does make things a challenge.

I don't know if Phoenix Command was an RPG or a wargame, I just remember trying to struggle through the two games our group tried. It took four hours to get in as many turns.

I couldn't even understand the basing system for Chef de Battalion.

I always thought Tractics was, if not really complex, very tedious.

SPI's Air War has to be declared the winner as the errata for the game was the same size as a small town's phone book! Phoenix Command as mentioned above was very complex and I recall my group a long, long time ago playing a five on five shootout that was a scale two minutes, but it took 8+ hours to play. Other candidates would be Attack Vector Tactical, GMT's A World at War, and Harpoon 4 is complex, but at least you can play it.

Chef de Battalion, while complex, was actually a pretty good game once you got playing and through the first few turns. I think we need a new thread called, "Rule books that are so bad that they make the game overly complex".

The mention of Harpoon reminds me that there's a whole category of games that could be called:

"Games that are reasonable to play with a very small scenario, but which encourage you to try them for massive battles, and thus they bog down."

Pretty much every naval game I've ever endured falls into that category: fine, if you're doing Dogger Bank, but everybody wants to play Jutland. (And let's face it: the designer usually claims that his game is perfectly fine for [insert name of massive battle here.]

Empie IV or V, can't remember what number. Just how many aspirins I had at the end of the 1st turn… not that the game went much farther though.

Challenger modern combat rules
ASL
MBT

Star Fleet Battles for the win.

Leopard II boardgame from Japan – terse, overly detailed, command span was too big, PLUS all of that translated from Japanese to English.

Tractics and Air War pale in comparison to SFB, Harpoon, and ASL……

Mini: add another vote for Chef de Battalion and Harpoon.

Boardgames: I remember several VG I bought and never played, since I got lost in the rules: Gulf Strike, Central America. I found Vietnam 1965-1975 marginally more playable.

ASL is in a category to itself: not a game, a lifestyle.

Advanced squad leader

I don't think Aftermathi was that complicated, but I agree with Phoenix Command.

Campaign For North Africa
Drang Nach Osten
ASL

Land of the Rising Sun wasn't that bad , Space Opera was pretty complicated though ( the sci-fi cousin of C&S ).

SFB

Star Fleet Battles
Advanced Squad Leader
Air War
Harpoon

(Not necessarily in this order)

Ted

Go Johnny Go Go Go Go.

With a French deck.

YouTube link

i found harpoon fun, interesting and easy, but i liked the period, the rules and we always played with a referee.
Chef de bataillon, i really wanted to play it, but i wasn´t able to read it

Messed up the post. I'll record my thoughts later. <:-/

Hard to choose just one – there are several for a variety of reasons. I'd have to agree with ASL, Chef de Battalion and SFB.

Actually, I played ASL for years and while it was complicated, it was understandable. Same with SFB and Tractics. CdB is complicated, but not understandable. Perhaps it is like Empire in that I started to understand it making a very close reading for the fourth or fifth time.

ASL or Advanced Third Reich for boardgame.

Never seen tractics so I can't nominate that for Miniatures, have to go with Command at Sea from Microgaming – or maybe I just remember the fact it appeared to take up a whole basketball court in order to play.

RPG – GURPS in number of rules (plays easy though), Runequest for a game that seems complicated.

Seekrieg. Ick.

the problem is your end I reckon

@Connard – Agree totally – for some reason the high faluting 'correct' English turns me so far off I fall asleep! So much so I'm rebasing the figures for Mighty Armies

I was always put off From Valmy to Waterloo because of its 10 page Quick Reference Sheet.

On the other hand, the Compendium that came with it was more than worth the price of the rules – I still refer to it quite often today.

Warship Commander and Sea Command – great if you're interested in the intricacies of pulse dopplers and conical scan.

Just about every air combat boardgame that uses simultaneous movement and 3D plotting of the manouevres.

Thank goodness for PC flight simulators !

RPG: ICE Rolemaster

At sea, Warship Commander. Harpoon's a walk in the park by comparison.

On land, Blue Light Manual (ACW). I mean, come on, some 8-10 steps to determine a RAW casualty number (that is then modified)??!!

Board game, Campaign for North Africa. Spillage and evaporation, extra water for the Eyeties for their pasta, ditto, ditto, ditto, and et cetera.

Boardgame: "Air War": What a joke.
Miniatures rules: "Road to Osaka". More complex to play than to learn, as they required WRITTEN ORDERS FOR EACH FIGURE.
RPG: Bushido, Second Edition. The game that gave the world "subdual" damage. ?!?!!?