Matrix Games Forums

In your experience, which was the worst, most disappointing wargame you have ever played? I would have to nominate a behemouth called Raiders of the North; a jugernaut of a game that attempted to realistically portray the war in the Atlantic during WWII. The manual was just a bit smaller than a NYC telephone book. The section dealing with battleship mounted seaplanes alone took up several pages, as I recall. I never could get anyone to play it as it would have taken so long just to figure out the rules.

Eric Maietta

Hmm worst.

That is actually not easy, I tend to stay away from anything that hasn't gotten a lot of sterling rocommendations actually. And I will only mention games I actually got and played, for purposes of this post (which will disapoint someone I am sure hehe).

I will also settle for just mentioning something that I bought and was disappointed with, as I don't think I have actually bought anything bad enough to "hate".

Tank Leader (board game). It had a lot of promise, but in the end, the system simply didn't work. And as a result, it was fully unplayable. Which is to say, there was no point in playing it. The design worked, but it just wasn't worth playing.

Computer games offering. Well, I would have to say I played Sudden Strike 2 just long enough to realise it was a pretty looking game with pretty looking graphics that had nothing to do with wargaming (any more than playing with toy soldiers in a sand box does).
Some might like the game, but I am here to say it was a flaky waste of time.

If I use a fairly broad definition of 'wargame' it would have to be 'Medal of Honor: Allied Assault' - an overrated pile of tosh if ever I played one. German soldiers continuously re-spawning behind me in a dead-end alley

The History Channel 'Civil War: The Game' would be a close second, MOHAA only gets the vote because I paid £24.99 for it, I paid £0.50 for this shambles. No manual and an un-intuitive gameplay style meant this disappeared from my hard drive hours after I installed it. I even went to the game website to see if there was anything there and the 'forum' was just clogged with messages from those suckered into paying good money for it. The only reason I've still got it is the good selection of photos and documents on the disc.

Tank Leader (board game). It had a lot of promise, but in the end, the system simply didn't work. And as a result, it was fully unplayable. Which is to say, there was no point in playing it. The design worked, but it just wasn't worth playing.

Just for my own interest, why didn't this one work?

I bought this one (years ago) and fiddled around with it solitaire, and then played a game vs. a friend of mine ... not enough to judge it's worth tho.

It seemed like a Panzerblitz/UpFront cross at first...

I still have the game in my closet but never really played it that much (now it's just another pretty box).

Damn ... why can't you tell me about another hidden cardboard classic worth many times it's purchase price that I can flog ... [:-]

Ok as best I can recall, Tank Leader suffered from the usage of the cards that represented the units.

Bit vague here though, been more than a decade since I snuck it in as a sale at a used book store.

Essentially, I think the design weakness, was the cards were extremely limiting, inflexible, and channelled the game into a critical error in game balancing. It is not that you couldn't play the game, it was more you would never get anyone willing to play it twice. There was more, but time has robbed me of recollections

Now if you want to talk about a classic that might have been an inflated price item that was yet still a very great design, yet lost all its worth due to circumstance...
The Assault system. It generated several modules that naturally would require a fairly good amount of investment.
It was basically a Nato vs Warsaw Pact design. All the counters were absolutely unable to be anything else too.
When the Iron Curtain collapsed, so too did the relevance of this game.
It was easily the best platoon/company level modern armour using Panzer Leader sort of wargame ever released.
Now it sits upstairs accomplishing nothing. Which sucks.
The design is solid, and a reasonable wargame designer could remake this into a new release with their eyes closed.

And to the best of my knowledge, no one has released a modern era board game of this sort. The field is actually wide open.

UMS 2 on amiga. It took 30min to make one (edit: short) turn, totally unplayable. I tried to return it to the shop but they refused to take it. Bastards.

UMS2 was that bad on the PC platform too.

Just as bad was the computer game Patriot, that was supposed to be a Gulf War sim. Never actually worked -- well the game loaded and the graphics moved, but you could not really control anything. At one point they were going to issue a "patch" which was a big deal back then, but it was killed for some reason that I no longer recall.

That's right !!! ROFL

I left Firebird/Rainbird before UMS2 came out, but UMS1 was such a dog that I was actually embarrased for the company, especially since we built up so much goodwill with Elite.

It has to be UMS 1. OK, it's probably not the worst, but I was so excited at what it promised - there just weren't any computer wargames then, and to be able to fight and design battles for every historical period ? Like, wow.

I can still remember launching in to Arbela, and seeing my Companion Cavalry get slaughtered time after time by Persian peasants just because the Companions were split into small squadrons rather than treated as one unit.... and unit size was about the only thing that mattered in resolving combat. Needless to say each combat was resolved as 1v1, and you had no way of grouping or attacking with more than one unit at a time.

Why trouble with "morale", "quality" or even "big, vicious bastards on horses" ? Yrchhhh..... [:@]

ORIGINAL: blam0

UMS2 was that bad on the PC platform too.

Just as bad was the computer game Patriot, that was supposed to be a Gulf War sim. Never actually worked -- well the game loaded and the graphics moved, but you could not really control anything. At one point they were going to issue a "patch" which was a big deal back then, but it was killed for some reason that I no longer recall.

I'm pretty sure that patch did come out - at least I do remember playing a game that seemed to work.

Worst game has to be Wargamer Napoleon 1813. It didn't have an AI and the tactical / strategic interface lost units. Great concept but no money to finish it.

Have to go for Ghost recon myself, that game sucks to the highest degree, the grahpic suck and the ai has super powers, some how the manage to shot you in a chilli suit crawing through bushes from miles away with ak47 when you can barely make them out with a sniper rifle!

Other than that Echelon, not techically a "war game" but still crap, three different conguration of pc componets and it crashed regardless of patches etc.... and as for getting my force feed back to work well......[:@]

For computer games I'd have to agree that UMS I and UMS II were pretty bad. And I have to also agree that PATRIOT by Atomic Games was very bad. At least I could fool around with UMS II but PATRIOT was just a big waste of money.

As far as board games go, the worst in my opinion is RICHTOFFEN'S WAR by AH. The most boring, lame game every made.

Les-
You hit my nail right on the head! I love the "Assault" series, got all the mods (Boots and Saddles, Bundeswehr, Chieftan, etc), plus Chadwicks "Sands of War" series, which is similiar. They had great playability, were a tremendous amount of fun. I do't mind the loss of relevance, I kinda like wargaming the old cold war Nato vs Warsaw Pact stuff. Great counters, beautiful maps, pretty clean but comprehensive rules, just a good time. Still had my cat/dog guerilla issues when I was last playing them, but love to try again sometime.
Tim

ORIGINAL: Dave Briggs

For computer games I'd have to agree that UMS I and UMS II were pretty bad. And I have to also agree that PATRIOT by Atomic Games was very bad. At least I could fool around with UMS II but PATRIOT was just a big waste of money.

As far as board games go, the worst in my opinion is RICHTOFFEN'S WAR by AH. The most boring, lame game every made.

I ran out to get a 2MB video card just to play Patriot [X(] Wasn't it made or published by the same people who did Harpoon at the time? I was expecting Harpoon on land but got......well I still can't really explain what Patriot was.

I'd like to throw Pax Romana into the mix. It never worked, was patched once and the latest incarnation works less than the original release. Total and utter garbage.

Ghost Recon? That’s a great game, prized in part for the tough AI. A good challenge.

Winning hands down simply on level of dissappointment.

Napoleon 1813.

Should have been brilliant, could have been brilliant but was actually a load of rubbish due to the fact that a few of the designers didn't understand what a wargame was and a couple of the programmers couldn't program a pacman clone.

This game desperately needs to be redone by a team that knows what they are doing.

ORIGINAL: november

Ghost Recon? That’s a great game, prized in part for the tough AI. A good challenge.

What ?! Prized by who - the AI was crap. It WAS a challenge, but only because it cheated massively, especially with weapons accuracy. That said, I loved the game. Single-player was no more than OK but it was absolutely superb in multiplayer. For a 5v5 it's my favourite game ever, it could get unbelievably tense at times.

ORIGINAL: Didz

Should have been brilliant, could have been brilliant but was actually a load of rubbish due to the fact that a few of the designers didn't understand what a wargame was and a couple of the programmers couldn't program a pacman clone.

This game desperately needs to be redone by a team that knows what they are doing.

That's more than a little unfair.

The whole development team was disbanded by the publisher at alpha stage - they only had a few weeks given to them to "complete" it at that point before collecting their final pay cheques.

It depends on how hard-core of a wargame we was talking about. But two disasters spring to mind when we talk about bad wargames.

#1 Real War
#2 Axis & Allies Iron Blitz expansion by Hasbro.

As for #2, there is a very good reason why it is nick-named Iron Shitz in the A&A communities.

You can pick any of the RTS WWII games made by CDV.

ORIGINAL: Dave Briggs

For computer games I'd have to agree that UMS I and UMS II were pretty bad. And I have to also agree that PATRIOT by Atomic Games was very bad. At least I could fool around with UMS II but PATRIOT was just a big waste of money

Atomic had NOTHING to do with Patriot.

E