I\'ve a soft spot for over-complicated big-box boardgames with a lot going on... but I freely admit, for every Arkham Horror that just has a high barrier to entry, there\'s a lotta overcooked nonsense.
If you want complicated tabletop games, try SPI\'s Terrible Swift Sword. It has three boards that fit together and hundreds of counters, only half of which are actual military units; the rest are markers for Strength Points, \"Pinned\", \"Out of command\", \"Fatigued\", \"Out of ammo\" and so on. Twenty-four pages of rules that include a dozen charts on which to roll dice. Papers on which to record every strength point lost and every officer killed, wounded or captured. One of very few wargames in which you can divide a unit\'s attack, but limits how many strength points may fire out of one hexside. The Battle of Gettysburg took place over three days and the rules suggest a full game will take about as long. Production values are lacking even for the mid-seventies; the boards are paper and crudely drawn, the rules unindexed and the counters too small (and since their facing matters, they really should have been hexagonal). I bought it more for curiosity than any hope of ever playing it.
Of course, this is a game built out of research on the real battle and every rule has a simulationist purpose. It\'s probably more for Civil War buffs than anyone wanting a playable game. In a fantasy game, there really is no excuse.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Thanks, I hate it!
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Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage
Vampire: The Masquerade – Heritage is the awkwardly titled board game based on the tabletop RPG. In it, players are asked to take on the role of a Medieval vampire Clan leaders, battling each other for power via an expanding network of followers. It's all a bit Crusader Kings in concept and execution, but without a convenient interface or variety.
Board games should be designed to use as fewer moving parts as possible to translate a concept into a novel gameplay idea. This quality is called "elegance". Chess manages to elegantly represent complex military strategy using only six kinds of pieces and one board. Monopoly elegantly puts you in the shoes of a heartless landlord, exchanging physical money for title deeds on one abstracted city map. Heritage on the other hand has four boards, six types of playing cards and twelve different types of token, all meant to represent the idea of you elbowing other vampires for control over the World. "Inelegant" doesn't sufficiently convey the problems with Heritage's design, which is obnoxious, overly complicated, and convoluted. This game covers your table in cardboard gore. It took our group about two hours to learn the rules sufficiently to even start our first game. I spent most of those two hours either tearing at my hair in frustration or fighting off the urge to sleep. The complexity is unnecessary, and it feels like a cynical attempt to justify a higher price tag by offering "more game".
Hidden underneath all the complexity, the game boils down to three simple mini-games that everyone has to play at the same time. It's a bit like Seven Wonders where you try to accumulate points within a certain number of rounds, which you do by beating your opponents at these minigames. The strategy is in deciding which of these you want to focus on and which to neglect. It takes a long time to figure out what everything does, but once you know, the game moves at a surprisingly fast rate. I've played complicated games that don't ever get any quicker, with players stumbling through multiple unintuitive phases, perpetually thumbing through the rules. Heritage on the other hand eventually becomes fun.
One feature I like is that content of previous games carries over into the next. Your vampires live forever, and each game takes place in a different year, moving inexorably up until the end of the 20th century. That said, I didn't feel like an ancient vampire clan leader. At no point are you really sucking anyone's blood or killing people; you know, actual monstrous vampire stuff. Your network of minions means you could be playing a mobster or a Borges family head and it would be the same experience.
To most people, this game isn't worth the upfront investment. Vt M fans aren't getting something like their RPG, and board game fans aren't getting anything mindblowing. Only the most patient people that will discover the fun side of this game.