Friday Night Shots (Saturday Edition) – Games That Intimidate You

I was going to leave my Friday post to be the Tag Team review that posted yesterday.

Then I was reading something tonight while eating dinner (I can’t even remember what prompted it, so it must have been stewing a bit in my subconscious) that made me want to actually write something tonight.

This may be a bit of stream of consciousness, so hopefully it will make sense!

Do you have any games that just intimidate the hell out of you, so much so that you don’t end up playing them?

Maybe it’s how big and complicated they are, maybe it’s getting them to your game day, or maybe it’s just something about the time/effort involved to actually play it.

I have a few of those, one that I’m kind of embarrassed about but I’ll put it here anyway.

Let’s get that one out of the way first.

I’ve gone on about big boxes and collector’s editions of boardgames and how I’ve soured of on them, mainly because of how hard they are to get to game days.

The first one for me, and one that should have taught me for subsequent ones, was Suburbia: Collector’s Edition.

This came in a huge box, with its own insert and organization guide, and I actually got it all punched and sorted and everything ready to go.

That was intimidating enough. I actually had it delivered to my work (it was a Kickstarter) and one day, we were all sent home early but I didn’t really want to leave yet because I had to be somewhere else in a couple of hours.

So I opened it up, punched everything and sorted it.

It’s a big box and would be hard to transport to my normal game days.

What’s worse, however, is that all the tiles are roughly three times the size of the regular Suburbia game!

Even if I did manage to get it to game day on Sunday, there’s no way it would fit on the table.

The original barely fit!

I did still go ahead and get the Collector’s Edition of Castles of Mad King Ludwig, but I haven’t even opened that shrinkwrap on that one.

Just way too intimidated by it, though I’ve heard it’s better than the Suburbia one.

It still has tiles that are bigger, I think.

Then there’s my big box of The Pursuit of Happiness, which is so huge that it would take up my entire boardgame bag if I wanted to take it to a convention.

It’s huge!

It doesn’t help that, since I don’t sleeve my cards, it’s almost half empty.

I’ve bought other big boxes before I decided not to go there anymore, but I don’t want to keep going on about those.

Because this is a post about intimidating games, not just big boxes!

And there are other ways that a game can intimidate you.

How about just how much time is involved, and maybe a mechanism or two you don’t like?

That’s where Here I Stand comes in.

A favourite of many of my wargaming friends, it sounds like a ridiculously awesome game to play!

I love history, and the history of Europe during the Wars of Reformation are very interesting to me.

But I’ve heard of this game taking up to 8-12 hours (though BGG says 3-6) and it does have negotiation in it, which is one of my least favourite mechanisms because I am terrible at it.

I’ve mentioned this before and Clio has had a couple of good suggestions, but I just don’t think I would probably sit down and play this game unless it was a completely wargame convention that I was alone at.

Unless Debbie Gibson asked me to, anyway (don’t ask).

Another game that part of me wants to play because it’s in the BGG Top 100 and I’d like to play as many of those as I can (I think I’m up to 60 now!) is Twilight Imperium.

Another really long game with a bunch of negotiation that I just feel like I would be a very small and meek rat in a game full of elephants.

It’s a long game, and do I want to spend so much time playing a game that I would feel that much pressure in, when I could be playing 2-3 others of my favourite games?

A bunch of my friends love this game, or at least like it, and they encourage me to try it once.

And part of me wants to, both for my “boardgame cred” and because it would be a new experience.

But every time I think about trying it, I just chicken out.

It’s funny, but it used to be that really complex games would intimidate the hell out of me, and the super-complicated ones still do a little bit.

However, in days gone by, something as complicated as a big Vital Lacerda game would just make me go “no, that’s ok. I’m sure it’s great. But no.”

Now I’m regularly playing Speakeasy (but not regularly enough!)

It’s not always the complexity that’s intimidating.

In fact, I’m actually finding complexity a thing that I want to embrace, even if I try a game and find that I can’t make heads nor tails of it.

Maybe that’s because I’m becoming a better game player?

I don’t know.

Now, I’m finding size, time and maybe a few mechanisms that just make me cower in fear, but otherwise I’ll play pretty much anything.

Except for some games that don’t intimidate me, but I just know that I won’t enjoy (like Factory Fun!).

There are some games that are intimidating, but that I will still willingly play (even if I don’t ask to play them).

Like most economic games (Brass, for example, or maybe Barrage).

Do you have any games that make you feel this way?

Or am I just posting to the wind on a drunken Saturday night?

Let me know in the comments.