Stefan said:

In the 80ties and 90ties I knew alot of people which played these games. They were never as much popular like say risk, but had their hardcore fans. I fondly remember playing a World in Flames game with each available expansion with another 2 friends. Each corner of the hobby room of one friend was covered with giant maps, counter pools, rulebooks and pizzaboxes etc. for one whole week. Thankfully he had no dog or girl friend at this time, so this was not much of problem. The experience to play such a game was absolut phantastic in those times. Today I would not want to play wargame monsters again. Maybe I am just to old for this.

Maybe. Perhaps I would have played those monsters too back in school.

Stefan said:

Take a look at one called "Campaign for North Africa" then Supposedly a full game of that takes 1200 (yes, twelve-hundred) hours, and the rules are almost on an "individual soldier" level.

That's just crazy Napoleon would have loved, I AM telling you !

Stefan said:

Yes, many of those games are REALLY complex. Eg. the rulefolder of Advanced Squad Leader is more like a technical readout than a rulebook. In those days I grew slowly into these games. I began with simpler ones like North & South, and after a few years ASL was not that much problem for me to understand anymore. If everyone was firm with the rules and prepared himself for the gaming session then everything ran smooth and it was a fine experience.

But if you played with players with bad memories or pseudo-know-it-alls the game became bogged down because you spent more time reading the rulebooks or controlling the other sides military moves than playing. I guess it was in the mids of the 90ties as I came to the conclusion that wargaming is for me not fun anymore. I sold off my wargames (not all - some of them, like GDWs Imperium or North&South I still own today) and spent my time with family and roleplaying from then on.

From time to time we play boardgames too, but they should not that complicated. So today I prefer a good game of Axis&Allies to any wargame of the past. I hoped that Runewars is similar to the streamlined approach A&A has, but after reading the extensive list of the non-plastic components I am not so sure anymore. I think that the hobby needs such a kind of light fantasy game with beautiful plastic minis (like A&A is for the WW2 topic), but I guess Runewars will not go this avenue.

wow everyone s complaining about a 40 page book. that is not that bad. i prefer something of this length because i know that they went over all the rules, when i get a board game and see a 5 page rulebook i think, this is it; this cannot be all the rules. If you think that is long try the Warhammer rule book (140 pages not to mention the army books, there are over a dozen of those all over 100 pages in length) i've read it.... 5 TIMES! pft 40 pages.... i would eat that for breakfast.

or try an RPG, hundreds upon hundreds of pages for the core rules alone.

I can see how some people could be to busy so i understand, but seriously, i expected this to be at least 60 pages (not quite =)

@ superklaus:

You list your fifth favorite (FFG) game as StarCraft, which has 48 pages in its PDF rulebook.

Without adding Brood War, of course ^^

40 pages is nothing, really. SPI in its heyday had rules at least that long (Air War was over 60 pages as I remember). I love it! Call me geek, but the longer the rule book, the better as long as it's clearly written, lots of illustrations, well-organized, and has examples of play. FFG rules generally meet all those criteria. So I'm glad it has a long rule book. But it also needs, as others have said, a one-page summary, player's aids, and an index so that learning and remembering is fast and easy. (for that matter, put the essential rules on cards as Fantasy Roleplay is doing as well as in the rulebook.)

An an INDEX ..the remark about SPI was right on,a lot of their rules were fold outs & printed on both sides & the fold outs were rather big.It was like trying to read a newspaper on a full bus.

Remember in those days of War Gaming the first thing the Rules said were that the die had nothing to do with movement,like "OK this is not like Monoply"

OD

Yeah, better a longer and good explained rulebook than a short and badly written one.

gdherdter said:

Here you go . Rule book is only 3 pages.

I don't mind a big rulebook. FFG nowadays usually has plenty of full color examples of play that take up a lot of space (StarCraft comes to mind). A few pages of summaries, ads for other games, an index, etc. Really, it's probably not all that complex, if you can handle other FFG games, I don't see how this can be much harder to learn.

Mo pages, mo awesome!!!!!

At one time one of my favorite games was A World at War by GMT Games. Strategic level World War II with 2,800 counters, four 22"x30" mapsheets, 196-page rulebook, 72-page Status Sheet booklet, 24-page Research and Diplomacy booklet, and a 24-page Scenario booklet. Sadly out of print.

The designer maintains a web site for the game at http://www.aworldatwar.org/. You can download the rules from that site. If you think 40 pages is a long rulebook, prepare to be amazed...

Definitely looks like the ones superklaus mentioned. Things that prevent me from trying one of these ? Finding players, finding time, wanting to see pretty contents and not thousands of ugly and old fashioned material, and, not to forget : have you realized all these games always refer to war ? second world war or wars in general ? man, that's a bit sad. I love any topic for any game, and war is definitely an okay theme, but hey, I'm no war obsessional either...