"Least pleasant gaming surprise?" Topic

Over the years I've had an assortment of disappointments with rules, miniatures, board games, books, etc.

I figure in a hobby that's largely mom-and-pop companies, there's no pleasure bad mouthing anyone. Besides, some folks may well like that which I don't.

"It Never Snows" the SCS game on Market Garden. An SCS monster game? What could go wrong, pretty much everything.

I'm with vtsaogames; no airing dirty linen in public.

But I'd like to describe types, if I may? The absolutely symmetrical scenario is high on the list. I really don't need to pay someone to draw a diagonal line across a board for a river, put a bridge exactly in the middle and announce "each side has 19 men and an officer: take the bridge." That one--and many like it--came from expensive professional publications. The other is the scenario--and this tends to be worst in fantasy and SF--so inextricably bound together with a particular set of rules that it's absolutely no use otherwise. A good scenario book is a pleasure just to read and an inspiration over decades. A bad one is advertising for a stillborn rules set. Often you can't tell the difference until you've gotten past the shrink wrap.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 4th edition. They removed my Slann!

Warhammer 40,000, 2nd edition. They removed my Slann! And my Squats!

The Ogre, Sci-Fi tank, boxed "game".

The box art was nice, and it looked and sounded intriguing, but there was little in it for a lot of money back in the day, and the rules looked overly simplistic and boring.

I took it back to the retailer, and after listening to him tell me how good it was, still asked nicely for my money back, and got it.

Glad I did still, to this day.

It's the only wargaming rules set I've ever returned.

Personally, I've received a lot of disappointing items, but I don't consider that a 'gaming' experience.

Now, I've played my share of forlorn hopes, I've struggled with obscure rules and/or scenario descriptions, I've slogged through long tedious periods with little action, but my worst gaming experience, the one that sticks with me, was being invited at a con to play Starfire, I'll be the first to admit a very simple and fun game.

But, I kept saying it had been a long time since I played, and hadn't played that much to begin with.

'No problem; have a seat!'

Whereupon I found a form shoved in my face; 'design an ' x ' point fleet and we'll start playing…'

I just realized it was really like the pop quiz you never studied for.

Doug

I have tried out more than one set of rules at a convention where the GM babysat us through the rules. "Can I do this!"
"Sure. Just move 12".
"But where does it say….."
"Don't worry about it."

The game itself was very enjoyable. So the next day I ran over to the dealer area and bought a copy. When I got home and read it, it was unplayable. Confusing, badly organized etc.

I ordered 4-5 items from an online retailer during a holiday sale. And I was disappointed with every item. Not the retailer's fault, they provided good shipping and service.

1 set of figures I'd hoped to use with an existing force I had were too small.

Another figure had a banner pole so long it had to be bent to fit it into the blister pack. And the pole was so thin, it seemed it would break if I bent it back.

And one model that required assembly turned out to be way more fiddly to put together than what I looked like in the pictures.

If at least 1-2 things turned out like I'd hoped, I wouldn't have been too bothered. But since everything had something wrong, there was nothing of redeeming value which made the whole order useless.

Mine was with a club. They were putting on a club-wide Battle of Leipzig game and were asking for players. As I had a Saxon army, I put my name down and listed what figures I could provide. I spoke with a couple of the game organisers and other players and proceeded to paint up some more figures so I could supply enough French to go with the Saxons to form the VII Corps. All the while I let the organisers know that I was doing this and they nodded and said fine.

About a fortnight before the game took place, I found that I had been bumped from it. Someone else was going to play the Saxons and the VII Corps. My name wasn't on the list of players anymore. Awkward. When I asked if there were any spaces left in the game, I got a "you'll have to ask so-and-so" from various people and it was never the same person I had to speak to.

I took the hint, I quit the club.

I felt that "Few Cents More" pain, Terrement.
Those figures are a special kind of weird AND a special kind of ugly.

I've said it before, but the West Wind Q-die rule books were inexcusably worthless. Utter trash with just enough hint of good mechanics in there to add insult to injury.

My least pleasant surprise was when I ran a demo game at a local public library and someone stole a box containing a full WW2 German infantry platoon in 28mm.

I don't remember the names, so no worry about making anybody upset.

I was in the market for some cold war Soviet infantry and found some packs really cheap from a manufacturer I'd never heard of.

Bought 3 packs and they turned out to be:

A: Midgets.

B: The casts were so spindly that several of them were defective.

C: The poses were incredibly awkward and unnatural.

They got replaced with wonderful QRF figures instead.

Settlers of Caitan and Age of Mythology, boring and excruciating in that order.

Similar to ubercommando – offered to paint up a mass of artillery required for a large club Napoleonic battle. Finished in the early hours and overslept, arriving half an hour late, only to be told that it wasn't a problem, as someone else had miscounted their guns and they'd been there all along.

Still, at least I had an incentive to paint, I suppose.

For me, it was a toss-up between two sets of rules; the first was "Dragoon vs Hussar", which sounded cool. Man to man cavalry skirmish combat. Bought the game at an Origins convention in L.A., then got them home to discover the rules were incomprehensible. Years later, I found what I had been looking for: Song of Drums and Shakos.

The second was free rules on modern naval warfare by Phil Barker, Subs and SAMs, I think. The rules were presented as a work in progress, but read well. So I created my own quick reference booklets with all the charts for each player. Set about doing a Falkland Islands scenario with the club. Something about the transition from tactical turns to hour long turns allowed the Argie destroyers to close to gunnery range and blast the UK fleet to smithereens with their 5" gun batteries.

We moved on to Shipwreck, which worked much better.

I had the exact oposite response to Ogre than Mako11. It remains one of my favorites to this day.

Watching the miniatures and minatures rules seem never to be in print simultaneously however…

The moment that always springs to mind was when some club members persuaded me to try a game of DB? something or other from WRG. I was given a wing of Mongol Light Horse Archers. With instruction on pips, etc I manouvered them up into what looked like approx composite bow range to deliver an initial round of harassing missile fire and inquired what the range needed to be? Never forget the response that there wasn't any missile fire in the rules and I had to close to base contact. I struggled not to laugh out loud – asked if anyone there had ever done any historical research on the battle tactics of the Mongol army, handed over my dice and walked off to find something sensible. Never forgotten the moment.

Age of Sigmar.

Otto, whereas Settlers would be on my list of greatest games ever (having played 2 games a month for the last 9 years with ex work colleagues)

Mike

Age of Sigmar.

My local gaming group used to play on average once a month, usually WHFB.

Since last summer, we've played one game of WHFB.

On the upside,we have played more Mordheim and Frostgrave, but are nowhere near more than a game every other month. :-(

The day I lent an acquaintance of mine my copy of Memoir 44 plus all the expansions and my large AK47 army. That was in 2006, I haven't seen or heard from him since, he moved house and disappeared.

whereas Settlers would be on my list of greatest games ever

I would have to say 'depends on other players.'

Kind of quality of interaction that can depend on personalities.

…Age of Mythology…

Okay, on that one, I've NO quibble!

Doug

The Beast

All games "depend on the other players." My quibble with "Settlers" is that it's uninspiring. I've played it with good players who are a lot of fun and with perfect [ a word beginning with "t" which is a slang term for a pile of human excrement.] The game did not improve with the former. It was largely a luck of the draw game.

My dissatisfaction with "Age of Mythology" was that it's a fraud. There is no mythology in it. Hydras, medusa's and so forth don't make a mythology game. They are stand ins for cavalry regiments or Tiger Tanks. The whole game was one long boring exercise in accounting where I had to line up little colored cubes so I could build things, rather than say… tricking the giants into building it for me. At the time I was director of Planning in an industrial firm and it was oh so terribly much like work.

I wanted the game to be one where the three hotties from Olympus came down and did the slow strip to get me to give them the golden apple, not dithering around with food and wood and having to tell my farmers to farm.

Dear Black Hat Miniatures.

The question is about our personal experiences. Mine remains mine and yours remains yours and neither can gainsay the other.

I've WON games of Settlers of Caitan and they were as boring and excruciating as any.

Strangely enough, The other side of the coin for my most pleasant:

"Spanish American War figures – Tiger miniatures from Recreational Conflict.

I picked up a few figures for a Guarda Civil unit. After getting them, went back for at least two more orders including more officers. They turned out to be two of my favorite Spanish units."

Down side:

The horses included were far to large to fit with my other "Old Glory" figures. The figure themselves are a little on the large size, but the horses made the OGs look like ponies. My solution was a special order of horses from Old Glory.

Discovering that dice had 1s.

Dear Winston

You should come to the Weekend. In my Ogabas Games "1" is good and "6" is bad.

Discovering a dice given as a freebie at a distant Salute actually had two 1's on it. I had used it for at least a year before realising.

Hello Kev

I remember that dice. was it a special sort of skewed D6 with 1,1,3,4,6,6?

martin

This wasn't my experience but one I witnessed. My good friend and I were at Little Wars in Chicago several years ago and it was right after Ambush Alley came out and we wanted to get a feel for it. My friend got into a game and I watched since he got the last slot. The scenario was out of Generation Kill with a Humvee column crossing a damaged bridge across a canal. The narrow road had 6 foot walls on either side so all the Humvee's could do was drive up to the bridge in line and try to get across.

The guy running the game assigned the players to Humvees 2-5 and the insurgents that were already setup in the city. He took command of Humvee #1 to show people how to do things. He then proceeded to essentially play the game solo with the players rolling dice for him as he told them what to do each turn. ie. "You shoot at the first Humvee, roll these dice to shoot" Handing the player the exact dice to roll. "Now you roll these dice", "You should move here.. just follow my Humvee", etc. It was amazing. My friend lasted about 2 turns and bowed out. We checked back about an hour later and the game was continuing the same way. Amazingly only 1 other player had bowed out.

Craziest con game I ever saw.

No longer invited to a group I've gamed with for over 20 years. I bathe, brush my teeth, and use deodorant so I'm not sure what happened. Oh well. Pity

Dear Lost Wolf

Aw… that's sad. I'm having a game on September 10., want to come over, you're invited. I see you're in Wisconsin but if you are ever in the area, consider yourself welcome.

Anyone else want an invite?

Otto,
Well done ,That is actually very funny
Inviting people to play a game ,in a topic headed "Least Pleasant Gaming Surprise "

Dear grtbrt

Not wanting to be funny, just trying to be nice.

I believe in kindness.

The world is a terrible place.

Only kindness can alleviate the misery, occasionally, now and then, from time to time.

Still its funny .

Why do you believe the world is a terrible place ?

The world is what you make of it :good or bad .

It's a an amazing place full of potential, wonder and mystery.

Only to the rich, the powerful, the fortunate or the lucky.

Not at all- I have known people that don't fit in those categories and they also think positively about the world

And aren't those adjectives just perspective ?
Your and my view of what is rich is likely very different .

Your view of someone that is powerful is different from the view of a poor resident of Bangalore .

I bet most the Lakota's at Pine Ridge would consider you(and most wargamers- "you spend how much on toys ?") to be very fortunate.

The point of the post was to be kind to people, especially war gamers who for some reason were disinvited from their club of twenty years. There's misery enough in the world. If you're arguing against kindness I have nothing to say to you. If you are debating that there is misery In the world then my answer is the same. In both cases you're trolling for a fight and I won't give it to you.

Merely taking exception to your absolute statement that the world is a terrible place .

So ,to you, if someone points out an inconsistency in your statements -that is "trolling for a fight "??

Then perhaps the world is a terrible place for you after all .

My, how lonely you must feel.

an odd statement -
But not at all -Thank you for asking . Don't often feel lonely and when I do I just fly over to England to visit family or a quick trip to St. Lucia for sailing .
So ,No my family and friends keep me from feeling lonely.

I guess by that response that you do feel lonely, but buck up things might get better .

No grtbrt,not at all. It is rare to meet such perfection in an individual. I don't feel lonely at all. I have plenty of friends, and they do not debate the efficacy of kindness. I am quite happy that you live in a world where you think no one is miserable, no one has pain and suffering, and anyone can do what they wish, and kindness is not necessary.

If you wish to discuss ontology you may contact me privately. As for this topic here, as I said, you are attempting to be invidious and argumentative.

And there you go again – putting your own interpretation of what was written into peoples mouths and saying they said it . .

I never debated the efficacy of kindness- Nor did I ever say no one was miserable etc…
Could you point out where I said any of those things ? actually said that is ,not what you choose to believe I said .

You made an absolute statement that the world was terrible -I pointed out that a statement like that depends on where you view that from -

As to privately debating with you -since you think I am perfect(which I am not- but thank you-) why would I waste my time attempting to educate you ? Especially as you have shown an inability/un- willingness to actually comprehend what is written or said.

But as a kindness, if you wish for me to help with your reading comprehension I would be happy to help , just PM me .

That went downhill real fast