"Rulesets You Can't Stand" Topic

Are there any miniature wargaming rulesets which, for whatever reason, absolutely turn you off?

I would rather not say…

Bolt Action

I'll leave them unnamed as well so as not to be tagged as a hater by the fanboyz.

There are rules I wont play for one reason or another, but if someone else likes them, that's their lookout. One such is Stars and Bars (Empire for ACW) because Scotty doesn't really understand the period (e.g., he ranks rifle-muskets as halfway between rifles and muskets, then adds Enfields as super weapons). Others, like Signal Close Action!, Tank Charts, and Tractics are just too fiddly for my taste. And some, like WRG Ancients and Games Workshop stuff, seem to attract people I just don't care to game with.

Black Powder and Piquet really turn me off. I won't play them.

There's a brave man!

(Piquet always seemed cool to me, but I haven't played it yet.)

I used to hate anything to do with giant stompy humanoid robots, but then I got roped into BattleTech…

Empire; Not really a fan of Flames of War. Not a fan of Warhammer or 40K.

Anything with a saving throw.

Yeah, Empire wore thin for me, too. The group I played with house-ruled a bunch of stuff (the biggest were the artillery rules) until we finally found a better set.

Most of my friends can't stand Warmaster-style games. Ending your turn right in the middle of it never sat well with them.

I'll never tell!

Hater-haters gonna hate but that doesn't bother me.

Any version of Empire after II. Also Stars and Bars from the same guys.

Field of Glory.

Johnny Reb 1 and 2. Never played 3.

I've got my asbestos jock on. Let the flames begin.

LT

Aha, I missed rmaker's read on Stars and Bars. Way back when Origins was held at Widener College in Chester PA I attended a presentation sponsored by Scotty Bowden and given by one of the Texas gamers who had playtested Stars and Bars. The first people to walk out left after he mentioned that because it was hard to devise rules for fighting in built-up areas they just banned that kind of combat from their games. The next, much larger, group to leave took off when he attempted to defend his contention that the American Civil War was fought with smoothbore flintlocks.

All in all, a badly written set of rules tested by people who knew doodley-squat about the ACW.

LT

Empire III killed me on Napoleonics.
Spend all day playing for just a couple of turns.
Then again maybe our armies were too big.

I saw a set once about Marlborough and GNW. I could never match up the scenarios with the map. Never did play it.

Newberry "Fast Play" Ancients was a set I picked up at a convention and brought home. It seemed to say "You think WRG is complicated… Let's add social class and hemorrhoids to it!" Fast play? Dear god, what could Slow Play have been like?

I played a Rorke's Drift game with Piquet. I was manning the walls, and the Zulus were rampaging behind me. But I couldn't draw the card that allowed me to turn around. So I accumulated what I guess were Volley cards. I finally drew a card that allowed me to turn around (in the meantime Surgeon Reynolds did a Raise Dead spell on Colour Sergeant Bourne) and fire four volleys into the brown.
Yeah. I "won" the game. But it struck me as a very stupid "simulation". Maybe it works. I'm not about to waste my time finding out.

Harpoon. What's not to like about launching all your torpedoes and rockets on the first turn, and then moving all your ships 3/8" per turn?

Naval games set after 1900 that use range estimation.

Piquet

Every flippin' one of them.

I'm very particular. Its easier to say what I do like. Gaming time is too precious for me to waste on trying something I know won't 'scratch the itch' for me. If I'm happy with a rule set, I'll play that rather than constantly looking for 'greener grass'.

I paint and collect both sides and so I don't run with the cool crowd, plus I have lots of local opponents.

:-)

I'm not a hater but lots I've read, or played once or twice, but would never ever try for again one reason or another.

Flames of War
Bolt Action
Blucher/Lasalle/Maurice/Longstreet
DBM/DBMM
Empire
Anything by TTG
Anything by Newbury
Almost anything by WRG
Black Powder
Piquet
Fire and Fury
Regimental Fire and Fury
Age of Eagles

Plus a real dislike of anything using a gridded surface (apart from Air games) or any skirmish or fantasy games.

Editor: Have you considered how this post might affect your advertising revenue?

There are rulests I really don't want to play. But then I play some games that others don't want to touch. Since it's all personal preference, it's probably more productive to ask what people like, and ask for reasons. As worded, this is an entirely unproductive poll suggestion.
YMMV, of course

Yep.

Seems like an odd poll topic for the Editor of a site reliant to a degree on manufacturer based advertising to want to promote…

Seems very counter-productive for all concerned. Just asking for list of things someone doesnt like, means little, especially with no context.

Wargaming is a very personal hobby, and like Marmite, one person may love a set of rules while another may hate it. Im not gonna bother to list any rules I dont like, as others do. Its an utterly personal choice and really, only applies and effects me. Its informative value, as a pure list, is zero.

Im not sure what a poll like this wishes to really achieve other than to try and court controversy and argument.

If I was an advertiser and saw my ruleset on a 'Rulesets You Cant Stand' poll on a website I paid money too, I'd probably wonder why I was paying them money…

But Im not, so ye work away.

I hate mind games.

I love Marmite so there and yeah folks is just a soft poll not the sinking of the Titanic.
Me hate the venerable WRG Renaissance rules for one but sigh! Will still play them as one of our funnest players and he cut he's teeth on them the old codger :)
Cheers really though Piquet was supposed to be the best non competitive sets out there? Perhaps its the fact that your not in control of the rules or the events that frustrates? Just like life maybe?

Bill's house,etc,so if he wants to shoot himself in the foot…..

Rules with rerolls and no flanks. Hard to fathom an excellent display of tactical wizardry, gaining the opponent's flank with a smashing attack (but no flank mods because the rules do not have them), rolling a kick butt score on my d10 while he fails miserably, only to have him pull out a reroll chit and the die rolls become reversed. That is crap on a cracker!

Lighten up, people! "List or not list, don't be angsty about opinions," to paraphrase Yoda.

There are lots of games mechanics I prefer or don't prefer, (TS&TF melee, buckets of dice, or difficult to play solo especially.) There are some I prefer (polyhedral dice and opposed roll.)

There I games I won't play (warm up the Flame Throwers… GW mostly because of the settings – have a friend who adapted the rules to settings we play and they are marginally adequate.) There are games I love (most of the THW ones.)

There are people I won't play with based on past history (including on with a "lucky dice" issue.) There are people who I play with that I am willing to play most any rules with due to camaraderie.

There are games/rules I don't like (TSATF) but will play with the right people.

And if manufacturers of war games can't handle the "obviously wrong" opinions of potential customers they need a new career. Minotaur – a bull headed man with an attitude or a war gamer. Some people need to put on their Big Boy pants.

Cold War Commander, but I would be surprised if there was anyone on TMP that did not know my opinion on that already

I forgot all about Harpoon!

There some mechanisms I dislike and aspects of presentation I am not fond of (excessive verbiage and pictures being one).

But rarely enough to put me off playing something, particularly if someone else has made an effort to put a game on.

I recall losing the will to live after reading three pages of FOG. Similar feelings arose wading through Force on Force, although I believe there is a decent game in there buried under all the unecessary text and pictures.

I am not a fan of Fletcher Pratt, a dreadful simulation of naval warfare and quite a dull game to both play and umpire, however I have happily helped run a number of FP games for the sheer visual spectacle. Particularly the one time we had access to a real ballroom to play it in (in a Victorian fortress).

Any and all card driven games.

Worst of the worst are card driven rules that don't even sell finished cards, but have to print them out and make them your self…

Anything complex or over engineered. I like them simple.

All DBthingy rules. The abstraction. The ridiculous names (for instance peltasts in definitely non-Greek armies). It is (at least for me) far too much like chess, so why not just play chess ?
I will never play them.

Just about any rules that mandate the use of their own brand of miniatures.

I know "brand loyalty" games are the 800 lbs gorilla of the industry, but they pretty much have relegated me to niche market rules.

I will play almost anything except naval rules that fit in the 'rivet counting' mode such as the Command at Sea stuff and Seekreig. I can admire the effort that went into them and don't hate them, I just don't like fiddly detail if I have to play.

Similarly, the GW mainline stuff has always left me cold and I wouldn't touch 40K or WHFB/AOS not out of any corporate, cost, market practices issues, just not my cup of tea.

About the only rule set I genuinely hated (although I feel a vague nausea when I hear the word Newbury) was a modern set called Challenger that was the most complicated pile of excrement I have ever encountered masquerading as a game.

Naval games set after 1900 that use range estimation.

This…

Just about any rules that mandate the use of their own brand of miniatures.

…And this, at least for historical games.

Bill's house,etc,so if he wants to shoot himself in the foot…..

Hmmm….not so sure he is shooting himself in the foot. If my game came up once on this list, it would probably be based on individual taste. If it came up over and over again, I'd still not take it personally and try to figure out "why" my game is "hated" and maybe make some changes. That's assuming I was selling something of course! In any case, Bill is not causing others to form there opinions. They may choose to contribute or not at there own peril.

I can't stand the design philosophy behind Piquet. If I wanted that kind of experience, I'd read a book.

I would count this topic as market research, like 'Who asked this joker' is saying…

"Newberry "Fast Play" Ancients was a set I picked up at a convention and brought home. It seemed to say "You think WRG is complicated… Let's add social class and hemorrhoids to it!" Fast play? Dear god, what could Slow Play have been like?"

Newberry Fast Play, along with being one of the most misnamed rule sets, was a "faster play" version of their full set of Newberry Ancients. Paint drys faster.

Piquet
Force on Force/Ambush Alley
Empire
FOW

Not really. There are some that don't turn me on, but nothing that actively turns me off. And, honestly, I would rather play rules that don't turn me on with players who seem to be having a genuinely good, social time than rules I luuuuuuuuv with people who turn me off.

[quote ]Newberry Fast Play, along with being one of the most misnamed rule sets, was a "faster play" version of their full set of Newberry Ancients. Paint drys faster

Given that miniature paints drys in seconds to a few minutes, i would hope a miniature game lasts longer then 3 minutes.

Yes, acrylic paint can take minutes to dry but artists oils can take weeks – just like Newberry!

Depending on the scale i would like a miniature game to be 1/3 to 1/1 speed of a real one, if I'm playing a division sized napoleonic game it can be real time, so a 2-3 hour game.

If I'm playing cannae i would like 1/3 to 1/2 speed. So a 12 hour battle would be 4-6 hour game.

1) Card driven games

2) Rules where just one player moves at a time and so you sit and wait a half hour or longer waiting for it to be your turn again. Hate them! Then, when it is your turn, all you do is move 6" and then wait for another half hour or more to go by.

Porthos : you 've said it all, and then there is still …. Empire and Black Powder ….

Anything with a ton of special rules that are not optional (so BP yes, Warhammer 40k no)

Any 40K edition past 2nd.

Battletech past year 3025.

StarFleet Battles-switched to Federation Commander, much much better.

D&D past 3.5 or Pathfinder series.

Traveller New Era, MegaTraveller or Traveller 4

Oddly, there is no genre that doesn't work for me in Savage Worlds.