Which one of these have you tried? At what point should it just be a computer game?
Personally, most complex game I tried is Ark Nova which did not even make it on this list.
Even some simpler games can have a lot of dependencies that make playing tedious like Hogwarts Battle
None of these games are even remotely close to the most complex board games.
The campaign for North Africa is by far the most complex game, being as it was created specifically for that purpose and nobody has ever managed to even complete a singlr game of it.
Behind that are dozens and dozens of games in the 18xx genre, which is a giant cluster of rules from bespoke stock market operation details to complex route profit calculations to natural disasters and a million other things. Games can often take 8+ hours.
After that you have the entire hex and chit wargame genre, which will have tons of complex rules for combat, tables for looking up results, a million classes of units, and usually many rules that are included not even for game design purposes, but just for historical accuracy.
This is an awful click bait article just designed to get views for a more casual audience with popular well known games.
I wouldn’t call it awful ckick bait article. It’s just heavy games the writter happens to enjoy. It’s not like they are bad games or games with fancy IPs.
The campaign for North Africa would just be a waste of a slot, no one is actually interested in completing a play. It takes 20 years and a group of 8-10 players (yes, that’s a real player range). I would also argue that wargames are their own tabletop category. A factual top 10 most complex boardgames would be, without a doubt, 10 wargames.
To be fair I was expecting a lot worse from a videogame website. It may not be the absolute top 10 but it’s a plausible list of some of the most complex games that the average boardgame player is likely to encounter.
For comparison, BGG search for gameplay weight over 4 and at least 100 votes
(which needs to be taken with a grain of salt too but it’s what we’ve got)
“Some of the average games that are a bit more complex” is a useless arbitrary list.
By your own criteria, that list had none of the games over 4.7 weight with more than 100 votes on bgg
I’ve played gloomhaven, spirit island, and mage knight. Mage knight is the only one I found overwhelming and sold it after a few plays. I don’t have any interest in trying Oath or Twilight Imperium but the rest I’d like to play one day. I feel like this list is “popular complex games”, I’m sure there are larger rule sets out there.
We love spirit island here, it’s often inside the (dining room/gaming) table waiting for the next time we have time.
I’ve played Gloomhaven and Frosthaven (not on the list, but a bit more complex) and they are brilliant games. They take a long while to set up so we basically went out and bought a separate table - now we have a Frosthaven table.
I know there are some computer renditions of Gloomhaven, but honestly, it doesn’t have the same appeal to me. Part of the fun is painting the minis and actually touching the game.
Oh wow, a dedicated table for the game! Sound like you need a boardgame table that has two layers :)
Yeah, that’s spot on. Our table has one layer and a couple of drawers but it’s still not enough. Still have to put away some stuff between sessions, but significantly less :D
Future plans involve something the size of a pool table, like Wil Wheaton had on Tabletop. That should suffice, I think. Maybe…
How does Dune’s complexity rank anywhere near any of the other games listed? Feels like the author was just cherry picking popular games for the list
Are you sure you are not mistaking Dune for Dune: Imperium? Dune is indeed a far more complex game than Dune:Imperium.
The most complex game I’ve ever played was the original Android game from FFG. That game is some kind of crazy fever dream. It’s a cyberpunk mystery inspired by Blade Runner. It has 8 different playable characters, each with their own unique rules. I only managed to get it to the table once and we weren’t even able to finish it. It was definitely a very unique and interesting board game experience.
I guess its this one? Android looks kinda cool! So own the game but its too tedious to play or why was it only ever once on the table?
Basically yeah, it’s hard to get to the table because it’s a massive commitment. Also the rules are pretty crazy, you really need to have several people know the rules otherwise you’ll probably be missing things. It was definitely a cool experience though, just one that’s hard to get to the table since I either play with my family (who would never play a game this heavy) or friends who are typically busy with kids so we need to keep games under 2 hours.
I was excited to see someone mention this game! I have it too, but have yet to find anyone to play it with.
I would highly recommend checking out some of the files that users have posted on Board Game Geek, which include player-made rules variants that think improve the game - a major rules variant I have always wanted to try is the Co-Op variant, which allows you to work with other players to solve the murder and work against the conspiracy to cover it up.
It doesn’t solve the problem of complexity, as there is a LOT to cover, especially since the way the Co-Op rules materials were created basically require learning the game twice: learning the original rules and then learning what is added/changed when making the game Co-Op. I felt like the Co-Op rules improved a lot, though, especially because the original rules had the “ask” of learning such a complex game followed by you causing extreme trauma to the other player’s characters (ex. “haha, I just caused your character’s wife to leave him and now he’s contemplating suicide”).
Making the game cooperative helps with that saltiness; at least you, the teacher, are no longer responsible for the bad things happening to the other player’s characters.
Yeah it makes sense, sounds like a pity though! But maybe the game could use a redesign to make it a bit less tedious
