Just recently, whilst in a somewhat contemplative frame of mind, I was thinking about how, after more that 50 years of board wargaming, I had encountered games with rules that were either so well written and presented, that learning the game was a delight, while at the other end of the scale, so dire were they as to make the game either totally unplayable, or at best, bloody hard work.
I have to say that, in general, however, most games seem to lie somewhere in the middle of this and, usually, maybe after absorbing any errata, or seeking enlightenment on BGG or yes, even CSW, we reach that happy state of equilibrium that allows play to proceed. As ever, such thing fall firmly into that which we call subjectivity.. Well, at least, that’s what I call it.
Now, I’m not talking here about the interpretation of rules which may be perfectly clear to one person and as clear as mud to another. No. I have already talked about that in another thread, so I aint about to bang on about it again here.
What I seek is your nominations for the game that you thought had, in you opinion, the best, most readily understandable, concise and well formatted rules that you had ever come across, and, obviously, the game of which you thought was the worse.
In order to focus on this, please only nominate one game from each category, with at least some sort of explanation. No prizes for the winner, I’m sorry to say.
Times are hard.
So, for what its worth, here are my own personal nominations;
BEST. ‘Dien Bien Phu – The Final Gamble’ from Legion Games. Designed by Kim Kanger.
Its a reasonably complex game, and yet, the way the rules are written and presented made it a delight to learn. Rather than having just a sequence of play list, which, like many games, has links to lots of different rule sections, this is much more programmed approach, in which each rule is laid out in its entirety, and thus as you go through the sequence of play, each rule is fully explained. I may not have been as clear there as I could have been, but any of you that have played the game will, I’m sure, know what I mean.
WORST. Advanced Tobruk System (ATS) originally from Critical Hit and designed, (I think), by Ray Tapio.
I think this game has had a bit of a chequered career, and at one time was a possible contender for ASL. I remember struggling with the base game for a long time, and there honestly were some good idea’s in there; but oh boy, the writing, layout and formatting was so bad as to make learning the game very hard work, and I eventually was forced to admit defeat..
I seem to recall reading that the rules have since been rewritten, so that may have changed the situation, and if that is the case, then all well and good, but its not a game that I would care to explore again. Anyway – I hated the plain map with all those pesky overlays…..
As far as I can see, the game is no longer published and has, for all intents and purposes, sunk into gaming obscurity, although no doubt there are still some adherents out there in gameland.
Topic: One Rule to Bind them all..... (Read 2524 times)