"What makes you say... " Topic

"Never again!" to a game?

For this discussion, "a game" is a set of rules and does not include player behavior, referee foibles, a horrible venue experience, the fact that you had to put your cat down for advanced lung cancer last night, or ineffective artifacts (figures, terrain, randomizers) … though poor design on how artifacts are used would be, well, fair game.

I played in one colonial Piquet game;for such a small game,there seemed to be an inordinate amount of time spent trading little slips of paper back and forth,changing polyhedrals,etc.for very little action. We could have run that scenario twice in the same amount of time with TSATF.

But I know some people like them a lot, and I didn't really say "never again",just never sought out another game.

If offered a choice, I'd go with TSATF every time.

When I played a game of Warhammer 40k and guys throwing axes VASTLY outranged troops with laser rifles. This was true fantasy as physics obviously do not apply in this universe. To top it off we were using the point system and 2000 points of orks overwhelmed 2800 points of Imperial guard with an additional 2000 points of defensive works. I do not remember which edition it was, probably 1st or 2nd edition. The only survivors of the carnage of that battle was my heavy weapons unit. The weapons were so ridiculously short ranged that I employed a reverse slope defense and when the orks charged over the hill I vaporized them at point blank range then retreated off the battlefield.

Black powder! We did an ACW game and I couldn't fathom why units on the march or attack moved not at all, once, twice or 3 times in a turn for no discernible reason!

Look at reality!

I'm with Hafen von S. There are very few things that make me say "never again" but games where the moving unit gets some advantage rub me the wrong way. An example of this was DBR. I kinda liked DBR. But I was playing a game where we each had Pi(F) and each stopped outside of charge reach because whoever got charged would in all likelihood lose. Pi(F) is usually assigned to the most aggressive mounted in an army and to have them sitting back for fear of getting charged was hard to deal with. I think that was the last game of DBR I played.

I prefer rules where the factors in a combat are not dependent on who moved into contact. Movement is made discrete for the purpose of game play and rules that play on that abstraction aren't very appealing.

and I couldn't fathom why units on the march or attack moved not at all, once, twice or 3 times in a turn for no discernible reason!

For the same reason that you can't always move all your units in DBA.

Grand Armee

In a game, Gm'd by Sam Mustapha himself. I sat there all game with a British Corps unable to move or defend myself while I was hammered to pieces by inferior French Forces. I couldn't even move my troops. I tried it two more times with similar results. That was it. I dismissed it as another "All French are +3" rules.

40K. Stuck in a bad position with troops that couldn't do squat, maneuvering was apparently pointless, even into cover, even if gaining height advantage from cover, didn't matter. Finally charged in an all out assault just to get it over with and accept the slaughter. Never again. (To be fair, it might have been the scenario. Had the same thing happen in a replay of the Battle of Hoth, where the Rebels were intended to be cannon fodder until the shield was down and the "real" fight to escape began. So, once again, sit in a ditch and roll dice till the AT-ATs finally reach you and kill are your men, or charge and have the same result. Great for a movie, bad for a game.)

And Space Opera… but that's a long story.

Suffice it to say, the game/scenario had better let me
1.) Do something potentially effective from the start
2.) Not get caught out by obscure "fiddly" details in range/base angle/terrain position (just because the tiniest milimeter corner of a base touches the "bad going" the unit shouldn't be ruled as being in the nasty terrain)
3.) Not face "super unstoppable death machine" units fielded by whomever can lay out the cash or laboriously do the min/max point build. I don't mind an Ogre, as long as the Ogre can actually be stopped by my force of tanks and GEVs.

Rapid Fire. I gave up after playing my third game of it because the same problems kept cropping up: Too easy to hit and kill things, the side that gets the first shot in tends to win the game and there was no nuance to it at all. I can forgive a game one or two bad sessions, but three indicates there's a flaw deep down.

Napoleon's Battles. Way too skewered in favour of the French. Lousy for Peninsular War battles. At a club I used to attend people said "Mark's never lost with his French army" and I came to the conclusion that's because the rules are already gifting him an advantage before he even rolls the dice. And it costs around £75.00 GBP for the rules!

D&D 4th Edition. Oh that was an awful game. All the power tripping of a MMORPG but so, so, slow. It also dispensed with the role-playing side of things.

When I throw dice, then my opponent throws dice, then I throw dice, then maybe I throw dice again…and nothing happens.

Next!

40K seems to get a lot of love here :-) I happen to agree, but for different reasons. I think the weapon ranges compared to the melee charge ranges are ridiculous; the fundamental ranged vs. melee mechanic of the game seems to be that there can only be one volley of effective fire against melee troops (if you are lucky) before they are on top of you. Blood Angels Rhino Rush has been fixed, I understand, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. I could go on and on with examples, but really, what would make 40K much more playable is to simply double every weapon range for all instances. *That* would be a playable game.

Ok, I want to tell the Rhino Rush story. My first tournament game with 3rd edition. My opponent was playing Blood Angels against my Dark Eldar. In the first turn, he went first, was in my deployment zone and in melee with those Ovecharged Engines. My entire army was destroyed except for my commander before I even had my turn. My commander, in turn, destroyed the entire Blood Angel army except for one severely damaged Dreadnought that finally took him down in the final melee of turn six.

Ridiculous on both sides.

Aw c'mon Parzival

And Space Opera… but that's a long story.

This is TMP, it's made for long stories. I like(d)… Space Opera if we are talking about the rpg

Inelegant mechanics such as buckets of dice or roll to hit-wound-save or whatever the order is when one roll should suffice to get a result.

Hummm, I dislike games where there are too many tiny details and the pace of the game flow is destroyed. If you have to mark of how many bullets you fired in a 6 turn game , then that is not the game for me. I also dislike games that have complicated charts and excessive math. If I have to take my target distance and divide by two, then add a tenth, next subtract the amount of targets in the target unit, multiply by the amount of ammo you are shooting, and then add your age and then divide by your leader's shoe size, that is poor game design. It is clumsy and boring. If you are a good game designer, it must be simple and elegant for me to enjoy the game.

Some games are just very hard work to play, with lots of of bits to manipulate which don't really add to the experience.

I find umpiring Fletcher Pratt games hard work, all that crawling on the floor and endless tedious arithmetic and tiny move increments while the layers sit around looking bored waiting for the firing results. I still do it though as the toys are fun to play with.

As Peterx says, too much arithmetic puts me off. If the mechanisms are that complicated, develop a chart instead, or simplify your mechanisms.

Curious:

How many games use math more complicated that addition or simple division?

Grand Armee

In a game, Gm'd by Sam Mustapha himself. I sat there all game with a British Corps unable to move or defend myself while I was hammered to pieces by inferior French Forces. I couldn't even move my troops. I tried it two more times with similar results. That was it. I dismissed it as another "All French are +3" rules.

Grande Armee are not "French +3" but they do suffer the same problem as any set of rules requiring an activation roll: a player can fail to activate and end up being hammered without being able to respond. Same applies to Black Powder, Warmaster, etc. etc.

For the most part if you put on a nice looking game, I'll play. There are some I like more than others. But for me the trend to "fast and simple" is becoming more and more "simplistic" such that they entirely leave behind any illusion of being "historical." Bolt Action is a perfect example. Super fast, super simple, but the rules have no historical/period flavor at all.

For me it's mostly the gamers, not the game.

Flames of War. I played a few games and thought it was ok ish but a little contrived and then saw a game where Cromwells in their turn drove through a line of Tigers and then destroyed them from behind and that finished it for me.

Bolt Action. You just can't use a British Infantry section to do their fire and movement tactic, unlike Chain Of Command from the Lardies.

I like to play 'games' but if a rule set claims to be historical I do like it to play that way.

OK, a dozen answers or so past the OP, so I don't think I am biasing the discussion. For me, it's seemingly endless exceptions and additional rules. That is bad design, usually means the system if flawed, and benefits min-maxers who spend lots of time studying the rules rather than tactics and strategy.

And if getting those rules takes continually buying every new release to even understand what is possible in the game, I won't even invest in it and will only play after being heavily bribed with medium rare bacon cheeseburgers and Guinness stout.

Rolling morale before you may move such as AOE or F&F.
Writing orders.
Complicated charge rules as in JR.
Weird basing as in JR.

Played "Piquet" once at a convention. It was hilarious, but none of us will use them again. It was just crazy. Would probably make a really good set of rules for playing solo.

One of our members was in a BP game (Crimean War) at H-Con. Never will play it again.

This was a multi-player game at a convention and a game that I had never player before.

I wait around for my unit to activate. I only have one unit. I wait a long time. I'm new to the game so when I activate the experienced players tell me to order my unit into an ambush. I comply. Now I no longer activate, I just wait for the enemy to trigger my ambush, they don't. I wait. I get a burger and go to the bathroom to relieve myself (thank goodness I didn't need to activate to relieve myself or I would have wet my pants).

When I return my unit is still waiting to spring the ambush and my "commander" insists I stay in place because I am preventing another player from activating because he is on ambush orders also. If I move he ambushes me. If he moves I ambush him. We both sit across the table staring at each other.

Finally he withdrew his unit and I was able to move. Then the game ended. I spent 2 hours as a spectator and moved my unit twice with no chance to fire.

To be fair other players were having a good time. I was in Marine infantry, the concept of "activating" makes me want to puke.

Wolfhag

Black Powder (and Hail Caesar) -- random movement (and especially no movement) that makes absolutely no sense. To me, movement is the absolute key to a wargame. No movement. No game. Any mechanic that decreases or eliminates movement better have a good reason, or else you have a player sitting around doing nothing.

Both systems use the same random die roll to move. Worse, when one unit flubs a roll, the rest of your command sits down and has a temper tantrum. Then, all of a sudden, it might move again. Or move at double speed. Or have a nap.

In Hail Caesar, one player didn't move any units for seven turns in a 7-turn game. My particular units moved about half the time. No reason. Nobody shooting at 'em. Nobody in melee distance. Just a random die roll.

In Black Powder, my fine Prussian cavalry brigade, all five regiments in a line, moved once. No shots. No charges. Nuthin' but open field and the enemy cavalry five feet away. Then, through some random rolls, ended up with a mandatory move 90-degrees to my left. Woods were to my left. The cavalry formed a conga line against the woods. The umpire was kind enough to at least allow me to face the enemy instead of the woods. Several other units/commands (rolling for the brigade instead of an individual regiment) on both sides bolted left and right while on the march. Don't even start about justifying why some unit, previously comatose, will suddenly put on track shoes and sprint at triple speed.

This was the second game of BP we had played and the first had lots of the same random no movement rolls. Sheesh. There's friction in combat. There's no plan survives contact with the enemy. And then there's no wargaming because random numbers are random. Wargames have enough randomness in firing, melee, and morale without including movement of pristine units prior to even seeing any enemy.

I know these rules sold well. I know a lot of people like them. But with the group I'm in, except for the one fellow who puts on these games, we come to game, not sit.