Forbidden Stars
Okay…my crisis of faith in my ability to teach and understand rules has passed. Taught a new player tonight and had a vicious and awesome ork-eldar-ultramarine throwdown. Even feeling confident we got all the rules right. Finally.
And it’s not even that hard a game. FFG has got to do something about how they write their rules.
No Fall of Magic tonight because player three said he was “too tired to think that much.” Really dude? This game was the easier choice? Maybe!
Yeah, Fantasy Flight rules leave much to be desired.
You are right. The game is pretty straight forward. Not hard. But there are so many exceptions. This is what kept forcing us back to reference the rules.
Brian Casey yuuuuup.
Forbidden Stars might just be the worst rulebook of any game I own.
I need to play this again!!!
James Stuart it’s tied with Imperial Assault for that title in my collection. :-\
Let me know when, and I’m there! Bret Gillan
Maybe sometime soon in between holidays and Torchbearer sessions!
Poor Bret, drowning in stuffed crust pizza and gaming obligations.
If I had my Gchat emojis I’d send a pizza slice, a die, and a crying emoji.
Wait, Forbidden Stars and Imperial Assault are among the worst FFG books you own? But…those are two of the most recent…
…crap, they’re getting worse as the years go on?
Yeah, at least from FS, they appear to simply be throwing in the towel on trying to write a rulebook. They included a tutorial/your first game book (which is not bad, but rules incomplete), and then the other book is simply an alphabetical glossary of rules with not nearly enough cross-referencing or comprehensive enough. You just have to read/memorize all the relevant parts.
Andy Hauge well…okay. So at first I was horrified at the nuFFG methodology, which is to have a Learn to Play book and then a Rules Reference. Learn to Play is intentionally streamlined i.e. incomplete, and Rules Reference is super-complete but presented alphabetically by topic. Yeah that’s right, it’s a nonlinear rulebook.
If you happen to correctly guess the game term they use, or if you scour the fucking book (handling time is ridiculous), you can get a very thorough, albeit context-free explanation of a set of rules. Then they will refer to to other related topics — i.e. the context necessary to understand the fucking rules you just read.
I say “at first” because we got kind of lucky learning Armada this way. I think it’s because Armada is a pretty simple, straightforward game. So I thought, hey, not bad!
But between IA and FS, I absolutely hate hate hate this new method (again). It is terrible, especially if there are little rules exceptions that rely on one another to understand. If Fantasy Flight Games ever reads their Plus feed, I honestly hope they read this feedback. I’m just one small voice in the wilderness, but still.
It was easier he whooped our @##! Well done Jason.