Stuff I don't like

[Ric]

I'm one of those people who plays for fun, although I really enjoy learning about the historical aspect of an army, battle or period, I don't have to know everything about the subject to find pleasure in pushing toy soldiers around and simulating their acts using dice!

What I really hate though is confusing or convoluted rules! I'll be the first to admit that I neither have the patience, time or intelligence to learn loads of over the top rules!

Chain of Command is a recent example that had practically destroyed any of the love I had for ww2, sucking the joy out of playing a game. anything that takes 2 hours of moving little disks around to gain some kind of advantage while my lovingly painted troops sit in their box waiting to get on the table is a waste of my limited gaming time I'm afraid!

[FierceKitty]

1) broken concord (vide supra)
2) tropical summer

[Hertsblue]

I'm one of those people who plays for fun, although I really enjoy learning about the historical aspect of an army, battle or period, I don't have to know everything about the subject to find pleasure in pushing toy soldiers around and simulating their acts using dice!

What I really hate though is confusing or convoluted rules! I'll be the first to admit that I neither have the patience, time or intelligence to learn loads of over the top rules!

Chain of Command is a recent example that had practically destroyed any of the love I had for ww2, sucking the joy out of playing a game. anything that takes 2 hours of moving little disks around to gain some kind of advantage while my lovingly painted troops sit in their box waiting to get on the table is a waste of my limited gaming time I'm afraid!

I've never played for anything else (no-one would ever pay me to do it)  .

The problem with ultra-simple rules is that, generally speaking, they give rise to unrealistic tactics and unhistorical results. That obviously doesn't bother the fantasy freaks - which is probably why they do it - but a game that rides roughshod over history isn't worth playing IMHO.

[Ric]

I've never played for anything else (no-one would ever pay me to do it)  .

The problem with ultra-simple rules is that, generally speaking, they give rise to unrealistic tactics and unhistorical results. That obviously doesn't bother the fantasy freaks - which is probably why they do it - but a game that rides roughshod over history isn't worth playing IMHO.

Yeah because in ww2 the allies and the Germans didn't shoot at each other until they'd spent an hour moving in to their deployment area before placing a big disk on the ground, then moving back a few feet because too fat lardies said so..

Im not wanting to sound disrespectful here so apologies if I do but,  I don't follow what you mean by unhistorical results... IMHO It comes down the the fact that all games are fantasy, historical ones with big ass tanks and fantastical ones with big ass dragons. We determine the results of a real life conflict with dice in the hope of changing history.

I do agree that some rules are too simple for their own good, but I consider those ones fine for introducing someone to a genre or period, before introducing more advanced rules. A good example of this is back powder, then on to perhaps general de brigade.

In the end it's each to his own and it's how you play and not what you play that is important to me! I'd rather lose because I did a silly maneuver or had an unlucky sequence of rolls than be beaten by the rules!

[FierceKitty]

If you were a woman, Hertsblue, you'd be Halle Berry.

[Ithoriel]

I'm one of those people who plays for fun, although I really enjoy learning about the historical aspect of an army, battle or period, I don't have to know everything about the subject to find pleasure in pushing toy soldiers around and simulating their acts using dice!

What I really hate though is confusing or convoluted rules! I'll be the first to admit that I neither have the patience, time or intelligence to learn loads of over the top rules!

Chain of Command is a recent example that had practically destroyed any of the love I had for ww2, sucking the joy out of playing a game. anything that takes 2 hours of moving little disks around to gain some kind of advantage while my lovingly painted troops sit in their box waiting to get on the table is a waste of my limited gaming time I'm afraid!

Ric if it takes you more than 10 - 15 minutes to do the initial recon your group and mine are doing something radically different in that phase of the game.

Jockeying for position is one of the aspects of the rules I really like and I do think that real units spent time sending patrols out to probe enemy positions before launching raids or full blown attacks. "Sarge, there's a couple of blokes over behind that hedge talking foreign"

Our CoC games are fast, furious and decisive.

While I agree that all of our games are to some extent fantasy some get closer to the real thing than others. Personally I prefer games that get the right result for the wrong reason rather than those that get the wrong result for the right reasons

[fred.]

My group has found CoC has re-interested us in WWII.

If the recce phase is taking more than a few minutes then you are doing something odd. It should be quick, and more importantly provides a way of starting games that is significantly different from line your troops up 12" from the edge of the table.

Don't confuse abstraction with un-historical.

[Ric]

Of course my '2 hours' comment was meant to add to the effect of how little I enjoy that phase of the game so apologies for that! Maybe it just feels that long to me... That being said I still don't like it, which is the aim of the thread if I'm not mistaken!

[Ithoriel]

Absolutely no reason why you should enjoy it Ric, was just intrigued by an experience of the rules so extremely different to mine.

[Ric]

No problem ithoriel, some like pizza but hate cheese haha, I think it's because I like a bit of Hollywood in my ww2 games which is where Bolt Action is my game of choice in that period!

[Luddite]

I've never played a TFL ruleset I liked.

Also, what does, 'the fantasy freaks' mean?

[Steeleye]

In my opinion if it takes more than five or ten minutes to explain the basic rules so you can start on game turn one your rule set is probably too complicated.

I've used vary many 'simple' (note, not simplistic) rules sets where Ive had an enjoyable game, used the correct tactics for whatever period I've been playing and got a historical result.

I often think overly long winded rules put people off even trying wargames.

[Ithoriel]

For me, a good game is easy to learn but hard to master, involves enough skill that I win because I'm brilliant and enough luck that I lose because the dice were against me!

[FierceKitty]

I sympathise with the above, but I feel drawn to defend at least some rule-writers. There are so many of the wrong sort of player who will persist in playing the loopholes or areas of loose interpretation that are a feature of simple rulesets that one is forced to write in ever-increasing detail to force them to handle their armies in a manner resembling that of real generals of the time. I ended up with about four pages of house rules for DBR before I gave up on the wretched set, and about half of them were necessitated by a player who won about half his victories by utterly absurd minutiae which no real general would ever be troubled with.

To take a simple example: in a perfect world nobody would charge across an enemy unit's front in a wargame, because real regiments a) wouldn't obey a suicidal order; b) would be cut to mincemeat seconds after attempting it. But since the are players of the sort sadly recorded in the above paragraph, you need a zone-of-control rule. And now you need to clarify whether it applies if the unit exercising the ZOC is immobile in square or a BUA, is in disorder, is about to break, is of a type not permitted to seek contact with the sort crossing their front, or has no melee arms, and whether it restricts troops crossing en route to engage another enemy, impetuous troops, troops with remarkably good discipline, religious fanatics who actively want to die, convicts for whom the alternative is a slower death for them and their families, troops led by a charismatic general....

Wargames try to effect a simple representation of a very complex phenomenon. We can expect to be less than perfectly successful.

[Hertsblue]

Rule writers routinely attempt to quantify the un-quantifiable. What price bravery?