Parzival | 17 Dec 2018 1:03 p.m. PST |
Maybe they're popular, maybe they've even gotten stellar reviews, maybe the whole gaming world just loves them, but they still just leave you cold— in fact, you'd "rather play ANYTHING BUT game Y." (By the way, this question is about tabletop miniatures rules, not board games. Heck, we'll make an extension into RPGs, but that's about it.) So, what rules do you secretly (or openly) despise? |
Onomarchos | 17 Dec 2018 1:13 p.m. PST |
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Winston Smith | 17 Dec 2018 1:13 p.m. PST |
I played Piquet. Once. At a convention. It was a modified Rorke's Drift scenario, played with Piquet. I had the British defending an enclosure. The Zulus had broken in and were swarming behind me. They couldn't draw the card(s) to charge me in the rear. I couldn't draw the card(s) to allow me to turn around. I accumulated 3 Volley cards, or whatever they're called. The Zulus couldn't charge me. Finally I got a card that allowed me to turn around and I blew them away with three volleys. Hooray for "realism"! The GM was very pleased. The players less so. I was more than willing to be run over by overwhelming forces due to my own bad decisions. But the system seemed to take that out of everyone's hands. Including the Zulu player, who was none too pleased either. Needless to say I didn't spend a dime getting the rules or the Codices. If playing a game at a convention is to introduce you to new gaming systems, that game sure had a negative influence on me. |
Titchmonster | 17 Dec 2018 1:33 p.m. PST |
2nd for Empire Napoleonic Rules. |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 1:35 p.m. PST |
Glad you had fun, Winnie. |
Wackmole9 | 17 Dec 2018 1:36 p.m. PST |
Anything Piquet is also my no go rules also anything with DB in its title. |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 1:38 p.m. PST |
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Glengarry5 | 17 Dec 2018 1:41 p.m. PST |
I played Empire once… I still have scars… |
Phil Hall | 17 Dec 2018 1:44 p.m. PST |
I have to agree with Winston. Played Picquet one time. Had a similar experience. Never played it again. |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 1:45 p.m. PST |
Thanks Phil. I wondered where that sale went. |
14Bore | 17 Dec 2018 1:55 p.m. PST |
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robert piepenbrink | 17 Dec 2018 2:02 p.m. PST |
Activation rolls--or card draws--are a problem for a lot of us, Brent. Hence my personal losing struggle with Napoleon's Battles. Empire was painful just to watch. I never played. After that, anything with a roster tied with anything computer-moderated. (It has to be a tie. I won't play either one.) |
DisasterWargamer | 17 Dec 2018 2:03 p.m. PST |
Piquet The Men who would be kings DBA |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 2:12 p.m. PST |
Oh come on guys. I'm trying to get some painting done. Did you hear about the accident at the airport? A female mechanic backed into a propeller and it…. Thanks DisasterWargamer. |
Winston Smith | 17 Dec 2018 2:24 p.m. PST |
Glad you take criticism so well, Brent. |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 2:29 p.m. PST |
Thank you, WS. I find it amusing that the criticisms are for a quarter century old game system, Piquet. Never a word of the new (well, they've been within the last 10-15 years) games that have been published. Please keep up the Piquet discussions – sales always spike when it is mentioned. I'll buy myself something nice with the holiday sales dollars and put your name on the tag when I put it under my tree. |
mad monkey 1 | 17 Dec 2018 2:48 p.m. PST |
That's because it sucketh then and it sucketh now. I played a half dozen or more games of Piquet and found none of the games satisfying. That said, I like the look of Field of Battle. It seems to have fixed some of the problems we had with Piquet. Haven't had a chance to play them yet though. |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 2:50 p.m. PST |
I might incorporate that into the cover of Piquet: "It Sucketh Then, and It Sucketh Now" So say we all. |
lloydthegamer | 17 Dec 2018 3:09 p.m. PST |
Tomorrow's War, just found it hard to comprehend. |
BorisTheSpider | 17 Dec 2018 3:16 p.m. PST |
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Major General Stanley | 17 Dec 2018 3:25 p.m. PST |
Once upon a time Empire was all we played. It was "The" Napoleonic rules for an entire club. There were huge armies based and organized for Empire. If they hadn't kept coming out with new editions every year it probably still would be. |
PJ ONeill | 17 Dec 2018 3:35 p.m. PST |
Activation rolls that make you stand still, when ANY commander would go in. and Black Powder has it's own "no play" slot. I know some of you like it, but not me. |
Dn Jackson | 17 Dec 2018 3:59 p.m. PST |
Bolt Action – my friends love it for the simplicity. I…don't. Last time I played a US player over ran a German MG-42, with an unarmored bulldozer. Right dice came up. Played Fire and Fury at a convention with the author. never played again, just didn't enjoy it. |
warwell | 17 Dec 2018 4:08 p.m. PST |
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PzGeneral | 17 Dec 2018 4:27 p.m. PST |
@ Warwell…watch out! You may have just committed Heresy! @ PK Guy Brent…Brent, I played Field of Battle at ORIGINS in my first Napoleonic game and loved them! Made me get into Napoleonics and are my rules of choice. Now MY least favorite rules are the Warhammer Fantasy / 40k system. At it's core they are straight forward, but when you pile on all the special rules that come in the Codexes, makes me cringe….. |
PK Guy Brent | 17 Dec 2018 6:10 p.m. PST |
PzGeneral . . . Thanks! And Winston – thank you as well! The new orders that came in will finance a game purchase. I'm thinking "Blenheim" by Legion Games. I'm intrigued by the SHS (Seven Hex System). |
Mooseworks8 | 17 Dec 2018 6:47 p.m. PST |
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21eRegt | 17 Dec 2018 8:05 p.m. PST |
My usual rule is play a set three times before deciding. Black Powder required only two to say, "never again." PK was the rules of choice one area where I lived. I gave up after I saw a single Russian battalion march all the way across the big open field, assault an Old Guard massed battery and win, then go on to "capture" Napoleon. I could do some heavy duty rationalizing when I saw a French corps redeploy in plain sight onto the flank of an Austrian corps and roll them up, but not this. |
miniMo | 17 Dec 2018 8:08 p.m. PST |
Game I bought, laughed out loud when I opened it, and never ever played; keep it around to show folks what game design in the 1970s was like: * Tractics Bought, played once; that was more than enough for this lifetime: * WRG 6th Edition Ancients Never bought or played, but always the epitome of design gone wrong: * Star Fleet Battles. I have played Empire 3 several times, but we just crossed out half the rules before we even started. |
Allen57 | 17 Dec 2018 9:37 p.m. PST |
Played GASLIGHT a few times and did not care for it. In the naval genre SeaKrieg and General Quarters. |
mghFond | 17 Dec 2018 9:57 p.m. PST |
Another person here for Piquet, to each their own, one of my gaming friends swears by it. But it's not for me. |
HansPeterB | 17 Dec 2018 10:10 p.m. PST |
The great thing about table-top games is that the people you play with make such a difference. Warhammer left me absolutely cold -- buckets of dice, yadayada … but played it a few years ago at a convention with an endlessly entertaining GM and had a grand time. Given the right folks to game with, I don't think there's a rules system that I wouldn't enjoy. (That said, even after half a dozen tries many, many years ago, I never did find folks who could make Empire enjoyable.) |
Doctor X | 17 Dec 2018 10:16 p.m. PST |
I guess we know who the IGO/UGO fans are. |
foxweasel | 18 Dec 2018 12:21 a.m. PST |
Armati, can't remember why I hated it, but I know I won't play it again. |
23rdFusilier | 18 Dec 2018 12:46 a.m. PST |
Piquet, hands down. Once fell asleep during agame. It was that much fun. |
Patrick R | 18 Dec 2018 3:35 a.m. PST |
I'll keep it to all those NASA data dumps people mistook for wargame rules back in the early days. |
Timmo uk | 18 Dec 2018 5:51 a.m. PST |
I can't really pin point a single rule set but more types of games that I now won't play – anything that is IGO/UGO and anything that is wall to wall troops with no table space for manoeuvre. |
Garryowen | 18 Dec 2018 6:18 a.m. PST |
Flames of War The Man Who Would Be King Fortunately I usually find out enough about the rules to avoid ones I wold not like. The above two I played despite misgivings. Tom |
Giles the Zog | 18 Dec 2018 6:40 a.m. PST |
Age of Smegma – Fantasy. WE read it, thought it was sh1t, played it once and gave up because it was sh1t. |
Tommy20 | 18 Dec 2018 7:18 a.m. PST |
Apologies for the apparent heresy, but another vote for Sword and the Flame. |
Vigilant | 18 Dec 2018 7:35 a.m. PST |
DBA. Never played Piquet, but never met anyone who liked it either. |
etotheipi | 18 Dec 2018 7:44 a.m. PST |
You should never apologize for heresy. That said, I like TSATF and many of the variants. I don't think there's a game I have played that I would reject out of hand because of how it played. There are certainly people I don't want to play with, which keeps me out of certain games by opportunity. Those people seem to have a rousing time playing without me there, too, so, win-win. |
22ndFoot | 18 Dec 2018 8:58 a.m. PST |
I am warwell! YouTube link I really don't like the Sword and the Flame either. All those naval sets that cost an absolute fortune to buy and seem to take forever for nothing to happen even assuming you have an advanced degree in mathematics and unlimited patience fall in the same category for me. You see them at all the US shows all sitting round a blue table with a bloke standing and talking at one end – they're there when you set up and there're still there when you take down and the ships don't seem to have moved at all. I had a friend who played a lot of Piquet and who got me back into wargaming when I first moved to the States. He loved and wrote pieces on it and everything. It wasn't quite my bag as I could never quite get the hang of it but I certainly wouldn't say they were my least favourite. |
deephorse | 18 Dec 2018 9:02 a.m. PST |
Seekrieg 5. Surely the most tedious set of wargame rules ever devised. Though To The Sound Of The Guns must run it close. |
Legion 4 | 18 Dec 2018 9:08 a.m. PST |
I can't really pin point a single rule set but more types of games that I now won't play – anything that is IGO/UGO and anything that is wall to wall troops with no table space for manoeuvre. +1 Agree 100% ! |
wrgmr1 | 18 Dec 2018 10:12 a.m. PST |
Any rule set where you have to role a high number on a six sided die for movement activation. NO Thanks! |
Northern Monkey | 18 Dec 2018 10:15 a.m. PST |
I always felt that there was a great game in PK trying to get out. I liked some of the concepts, but in practice it seemed too random. Just too many cases of a single unit doing extreme things. |
skedaddle | 18 Dec 2018 10:55 a.m. PST |
Empire was and is painful. A game that requires a flow chart is truly scary. |
Parzival | 18 Dec 2018 11:16 a.m. PST |
Wow, I seem to have struck a nerve (or more)! My list includes: DBA (okay, I *might* play this. But I'd rather not.) 40K Age of Sigmar (not so much the rules but the setting, look and fluff leave me cold, which WFB didn't.) SFB In addition to the above, generically, I also don't like rules that require bases to be noticeably labeled, or that leave copious markers strewn about the tabletop or on the figs, or that insist I have "X" number of figures on a base (when multi-based). I don't mind rolling to activate a figure/unit, if the reason that this is a randomized requirement has some situational logic (even if abstracted). But having units not react at all when an enemy is near is silly. |
Chuckaroobob | 18 Dec 2018 1:10 p.m. PST |
Most hellish game of all time: Battlefleet (ptoi!) Gothic. Remember you have to spit whenever mentioned. Also rans: Bolt Action. (aka "1940 K") |