Does anybody play the Operational Games regularly?

[Bullroarer]

I don’t. I find them too unbalanced and too bulky. I feel the combat mechanics are far too complicated and the games too long, and if I’m going to spend 3 hours on a game I’d rather play WOTR. I’m guessing that the majority of people feel the same since there are so few threads about the operational games. There are a few requests for operational style expansions though (e.g. 5 Armies) which surprises me.

I did develop a streamlined version of the games – which worked I felt – but the existing cards didn’t work with the new version and I didn’t want to go through every card. Also my playing partner got fed up with the games, “To be honest, they aren’t any fun.” One of the things that really drives me bananas are all the tokens, especially the ephemeral Shadow Leadership Tokens. (SLTs, tactics tokens, damage tokens, event tokens, recruitment tokens… J.R.R. Token indeed.)

I would appreciate hearing different viewpoints. In most of my games the Battle(s) for Rohan/Gondor becomes the Fight(s) for Deeping Coomb and Pelennor Fields.

[mrweasely]

They feel wrong to me too. I'll probably play them again someday, as the rest of my group doesn't feel so overmastered in them as they do in the base. Nevertheless, we'd rather just play Puerto Rico most of the time.

[theimmortal]

I actually don't mind the Operational Games, but that may well be *because* the balance may be an issue, as that's the sort of thing I love investigating. But I also think there's some classy tactical maneuvers you can pull, more so than in the base game.

They definitely are a little more repetitive than the base game, and probably that is even the intention. I think the Gondor game is the more interesting of the two, but I have seen variations in the Rohan game as well. Last time, as the FP I stymied the Shadow at Deeping Coomb, but the orcs managed to blitz the river which meant major problems by my back-door (although I did still take the victory by a reasonable margin).