Whooa, that is a mouthful! As gamers I imagine most of us day dream about some way for us to put our life on the sidelines and get involved in some of those full bodied hobby games that take up extraordinary amounts of time, money and effort to play. Those ultra-complex games that are out there that look amazing, but are largely inaccessible thanks to the hustle of our everyday lives. I suspect most people have a game or two that definitely falls into this magnetic allure so Today I’m going to identify 5 games that qualify in my opinion with some tips and ways you might actually be able to get involved with minimal or at least less effort than what it appears to be.

Advanced Squad Leader

For many gamers war is a very common and favored theme in board games. In fact, I would estimate that at least 80% of all my gaming is dedicated to some form of war game. While I’m personally not that a huge of a realist, historical buff or simulationist gamer, some of my favorite games actually kind of qualify. Tide of Irons for example is a tactical world war II game which has graced my shelf for several years and is one I would not object to being buried with it. I love it and it definitely scratches that itch, but Advanced Commander by all accounts is really the meca of world war II tactical war games.

Advanced Squad Leader is really kind of the ultimate in complex war games in general thanks to countless modules and expansions, but like all of the games on this list it’s really almost overwhelmingly complex and demands a pretty serious commitment to learn to play let alone actually play. Even the smallest most basic scenario will have you reading over a hundred pages of rules and will take 4+ hours to resolve. So why would anyone be attracted to it?

The truth is that most war games heavily abstract combat for streamlining sake immediately drawing it out of the realm of realism, but for me personally sometimes I really want that full experience out of a game. That gritty reality only a complex war game can offer. This is probably why for more complex games I look to my PC as much of what is complex about games like ASL (remembering rules, the math) is done for you. I have never played Advanced Squad Leader but I do feel the allure of it and it’s something that has been on my must try list for years.

Fortunately the Advanced Squad Leader fan base has put forth some effort to creating some initial baby steps and shallow waters for new players. Several levels of Advanced Squad Leader basic kits have been released since 2004 as well as the creation of some pretty comprehensive youtube tutorials that really walk you through the absolute basic need to know information. Enough so that the game almost reaches that approachable spectrum. More importantly unlike many games on this list, its actually very cheap to try so all you really need to do is convince a friend to join you and you really have a shot at getting a game off the ground.

I don’t know if my schedule and patience will ever allow me to try this game, but I can definitely understand its popularity. There is a tremendous amount of depth and realism in this game allowing history buffs to really play out those scary moments in time from the comforts of their favorite chair. I totally get it.

Warhammer

Large table top games like Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k is not that far from reality for me. I actually dove into it several years ago and its every bit as epic as it looks. The trouble with Warhammer like many miniature hobbies is that aside from simply playing the game it requires that you spend hundreds of hours carefully gluing and painting your army and terrain. It’s really a two part hobby that is not only incredibly time consuming and expensive but fairly complex and difficult to be successful at.

This actually brings me to one conclusion about these sort of epic style hobby games which is that sometimes the allure of them is far stronger than the actual impact. In the end, after playing Warhammer for a couple of years I saw the countless flaws in the game system, tired of the endless stream of “pre-game work” and the insane amounts of money that you have to invest in the game. After a thousand hours of invested time and as many dollars I doubt I played more than a grand total of 15-20 games over the course of two years. Was it worth it?

Hunched over a massive table of miniatures painted in painstaking detail after having spent months reading, planning and thinking about a single event was really kind of as epic and monster sized of an event as it sounds. I don’t regret the money or time invested in the short lived hobby, it was really fun while it lasted but it was just impossible to maintain. No regrets, I wouldn’t object to repeating it but in a way it’s probably part of the reason why alternatives pre-painted miniature games like X-Wing and Armada sort of appeal to me more. You still have to spend the money, but after that it’s just to play the game which in a sense is actually the best part of the hobby for me.

If you have never tried it however, I urge you to because it really is, despite all the work and money a lot of fun, even if it does not last forever. Unfortunatly there really are very few shortcuts to take here, ultimately the best way to approach the game is to find people who are already playing it. Thanks to a pretty healthy 3rd party market the cost of getting involved has dropped considerably and in the end selling off your collection is not going to be that difficult either when you’re done with it.

Twilight Imperium

Another Big Bad Ass game that I have actually played a ton in the past that certainly deserves to be on this list. I have met and talked to many gamers who look at this intimidating beast and imagine themselves hunched over the table as a master of a galactic race, drawn to it like a moth to a flame but off put by its sheer size and scope. All I can say is that its every bit as epic and awesome as you probably imagine it to be but the good news is that while it’s an incredibly long game considering the rest of this list, this game actually has some pretty streamlined and comprehensive rules, it really isn’t that hard to grasp. It’s a complex board game, but within the realm of normal gaming, it’s a lot less of a stretch I think. It’s probably the most approachable game on the list and quite possibly the best.

Twilight Imperium definitely is an investment though and the hard part is that it requires an investment of time not just from you or one other opponent but actually a whole group of at least 4 players but preferably 6. That can be the most difficult part for a lot of people myself included, its actually one of the reasons on the I wish I had more time for it list. I would imagine this alone excludes a lot of gamers from ever getting the opportunity to try it.

We probably will never see another game like Twilight Imperium designed either, it’s really a product of an era of gaming that has come and gone. In fact it might actually be considered the spiritual last member of the Big Box Epic board games that evolved from classics like Axis & Allies, Shogun and Fortress America. Games like Twilight Imperium are really not made anymore, these days mechanics are focused on being streamlined, simpler and faster.

I could be wrong, perhaps someday we will see a resurgence of this sort of design but for what it’s worth, in my humble opinion no gamer should ever miss an opportunity to try this game at least once. I would suggest doing it as soon as possible to because I suspect once this game goes out of print, it will be out of print for a very long time, perhaps forever.

18XX Game Series

This is one on this list that really attracts me that I’m yet to try, a complex game of building railroads and manipulating stock markets in the age of steam. The 18XX games is actually a series, though the foundation rules are all the same. It is in effect a Railroad Tycoon style game where you are competing against other players as a Railway Baron in a fairly simulationist economy which is every bit as cut throat and mean spirited as it is complex and I imagine actually was in the 1800’s.

I love Railroad Games and Railroad themed games but truth be told everyone that I have ever tried was just too simple for me. Railways of the World (eagle games Railroad Tycoon) was a fun game and it certainly had the theme of railroad building but it lacked that umf as a complex game which I think kind of fits this genre. Games like Russian Railroads are complex, but not in the simultationist way rather more in the Euro puzzle style being barely recognizable as an actual game about railroads. This is one that I’m itching to try, the issue is that the Railroad Baron theme is kind of a love it or hate it one and I fear that my group might not take to it in particular since it’s a very deep, complex, long and unforgiving game.

The good news is that the 18xx’s games received what is referred to as an XL version, you can think of it as 18xx game for newbies which cuts down the rules weight for easier learning. This may just be my ticket to trying it in the near future.

It’s on the list for me though, one day this is going on the table!

Heroscape

Ok so this one might not actually belong on this list in its entirety. It’s actually a very simple game, really the hardest thing about it is

that its insanely difficult to get a hold of, takes up a shit ton of room and has probably one of the longest set up and take down times of any game in the existence of the human race. You are going to spend at least an hour or more setting it up and just as long taking it down unless you just do the rage quit arm sweep into a bin at the end to be dealt with at another time.

 

That said Heroscape is probably one of the most fun looking games I have ever seen and I have always wanted to try it. Its concept is kind of cool as well as there are over a thousand different units in this war game. Players construct a team from soldiers from all genres, histories and imaginations ever created and fight it out in a massive landscape constructed out of hexagon legos that traverses time and space. Its as much a game of war as it is of creativity and silliness from what I have gathered but in the end I just love the way it looks.

Unfortunately Heroscape is both out of print and what is available on the 3rd party markets is really expensive, in particular terrain which you need a lot of. There are a lot of drawbacks to this one, but in a perfect world this game will see a re-print at some point in the future, something I believe is inevitable if you consider how well the 3rd party moves for this game.