There’s talks ‘round here of starting up a Warhammer league of some kind.

I’ve obtained many Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 rules books from secondhand stores, and the impression they’ve left me with is a tough one to sort out.  First off there’s the main rulebook, detailed with an absurd amount of minutia covering just about every tactical situation you could ever hope to engage in.  When someone first slammed that bugger down on the table in front of me and I heard the veneer crack, my brain almost shut down.  Luckily, the hobby boy giving me my first tour of the rules gestured across the table where his grand army of Orcs was set up and declared “Imagine yourself the general of the far-reaching army of loyal soldiers, ready to die in your name, and you will know what it is to experience the epic battles of a Warhammer game!”

Or something similar to that.  I couldn’t doubt the appeal of all of those painted miniatures lined up for action.  The presentation of a fully painted army is just plain cool.  It touches me on a deep and geekly level, and after painting my first miniature I got to experience the artist’s satisfaction of a job well done.  The presentation runs into the books as well, especially later editions.  Artwork and back-story for all of the units is a great injection of flavor, and the abilities and spells are offered in such a way as to make most pieces of your army memorable, if only because they seem to have their own personalities which set them apart from each others’ similar statistics blocks.

Rules, the ever-present rules, are where I run into a wall.  The rules for movement and engagement with the enemy are complex (realistic?), accounting for every soldier’s health, position in the terrain, relation to the units they’re close to and in contact with, and even state of mind.  All of these factors are subject to change over the course of a game based on who lives and dies, the customizable equipment and artifacts a unit can wield, spells, and the scenario being played out.  When you’ve multiple effects from multiple units stacking, each with various effect lengths, it’s time to bust out the calculator and spreadsheets.  When large armies gear up for war scenario, it can take almost half an hour just for the setup.  Tactical positions, mixes, and directions must be considered.  You have to have your specific army’s rulebook (that’s two rulebooks for each player) handy in order to take full advantage of your troops.

I want to play, I really do, but I just can’t see myself memorizing several hundred pages of rules to do it.