War games

[Michael Jotne Slayer]

The average board game seems to consist of ten million pieces that only those who have mastered Rubic´s cube would have a chanse of figuring out. You can offcourse, turn to the instruction manual. But its complexity and tiny print would make even Gen.George Patton consider all-out surrender.
Another form of gaming is "role-playing", which definitely test´s one´s imagination...

Tall guy- I´m a Hobbit.
 
Small guy- well, I´m a mighty warrior.

Big guy- I´m an elf.

Some board games have immense surfaces that can involve entire world wars.

Player- Move my what?!

These games, with their incredible size, intricacies and variation of procedure, dice, etc may involve months of playing time.
Upon entering a game for the first time, the novice should note that the games have strict rules which should not be tampered with.

Novice- Can I build HOTELS on this space? Chuckle.

A Disquieting by-product of gaming is the difficulty in returning to reality after-ward.

Man in parking lot talking rather loudly to a kid in his way-

By CROM, stand aside ye Hobbit.

[Ancient Gamer]

This reminds me of all those hours I spent playing Advanced Squad Leader. The manual was in english and I and my friend spent most of our time arguing about how a rule should be interpreted. While he insisted on reading everything straight forward, I insisted on dividing the sentences where someone had put a full stop.

Oh, well...

[Scrasamax]

There was once a time when I played tabletop Battletech, but I mixed up my own backstory, rather than use the tired Succession Wars, and poorly designed Clan invasion as backstory. In addition to the intricate rules of heat monitoring, ammunition supplies, armor damage, to-hit-modifiers, logistical support, and mission based planning, I still came up with my own crap. The Role-playing never ends, real life just intrudes from time to time.

 - Nothing but Victory, and the Emperor
motto of the Annapurna White Tiger Legion

[Strolen]

My son (4yrs) found the adult box of games. We have played the simpler ones like backgammon and Sorry and he knows all the moves for chess but I cringed when he kept eyeing Risk. He opened it up and  found all the pieces and was sold. So finally we got it out and played a highly modified version of it. Just threw all our pieces on the board and rolled dice against each other as we declared war on each other's continents.

The instructions are not super hard for that one (glad Fortress America is in storage) but with all those d**n pieces it is just a pain in the ass to set it up just to play.

I do like the games though and for all their inconvenience and small parts once you get going I have a lot of fun. When you think of the rules, really, they are still a lot less complex then the roleplaying games we have and they are also pretty solid. No worry about rules lawyers or interpretations, the rules normally work. That is the somewhat beauty of a confined board game though. While the annoyance in the initial getting into the game are still there I still like a good strategy game now and then!

[Rei]

This reminds me of playing the old game monopoly...

[Sentinel*]

I play Risk Two on the comp and yes, I agree. It is a pain in the butt to set all the pieces where you want them, but I've played it for years and have become quite good at it, and yes it is extremely fun.