Reply To: Is it time for some more critical analysis of rule sets

[limburger 21713xp 0]

@piers I probably didn’t explain that bit right. Let me try it again how I’ve experienced getting into historicals.

Battlegroup Kursk is kind of focussed on a specific battle. If it hadn’t been for me getting into WW2 era games and history of the eastern front before I wouldn’t have had a clue why it was interesting. I know you’ve got Overlord and other theatres these days. The only reason Market Garden became an option to me is because I just happen to live at ground zero of the operation in terms of activities related to that (there’s a 18 september square … )

I think the various historical eras have a similar problem/challenge.
Historicals appear to make the assumption that you’re already familliar with the specific section of history to know what you’d want. And unless you happen to have some connection already it’s going to be tough to find an entry point.

As an outsider/beginner who may not want the ‘boring’ history but who does want an interesting game you’d need a hook of some kind to reel them in.
WW2 has a few depending on theatre and stage of the war, but the most well known is D-day. It is however close enough to ‘our time’ that most people will have heard of it.

I know there’s Waterloo for Napoleon, but I don’t know if it is beginner friendly unless you play it at hex&counter scale.

Back to SPQR I’ve got nothing that would draw me in. If it hadn’t been for the Asterix & Obelix comics I wouldn’t even have known about the Gauls vs Romans as a starting point. It kind of sucks that they didn’t try to exploit that to be honest (or maybe the license was an issue?), because it would have fit the ‘simplistic’ rules.

hmm … it’s a bit off-topic because we were discussing a need for ‘deeper reviews’ right ?

Maybe this is part of the challenge for outfits like OTT.
A review also has to match the expectations of the audience too.

When I read reviews for computer hardware there is the ‘newbie friendly’ variant (the card works and these top games get X frames per second) and there’s the technical variety which employ high-end analysis tools that reveal statistics (like the average time to render a frame) the average user doesn’t even care about.
Once I learned more about the hardware I felt a need for deeper/more technical reviews. And as a result the unboxings became less interesting.

I see this need in tabletop games as well, because those of us who aren’t beginners have a definite need for more in depth analysis. And even for beginners it can be interesting to read such technical reviews provided they are written with them in mind.
It would be nice to see this style of review once in a while over here at OTT/BoW.