This thread here has me thinking that Neal has been right all along.
Years ago Neal Hunt put out a set of alternate air rules for use in Epic: Armageddon that would have eliminated virtually all fiddliness from the rules and smoothed out game play considerably, not to mention being more realistic.
It was rejected by the Epic community almost on the sole basis of aesthetics; in other words, people were disappointed with how long their aircraft models were going to be (or should I say
not going to be) on the board. You see, Neal's system had the aircraft coming and going in a single
phase movement of the game. This reduced the amount of time the nicely painted bombers and fighters could be ogled by player and passerby alike and that did not sit well with many.
I was among those people who outright told Neal that his rules were 'boring' and detracted from the game. Now, several years later, I am rethinking the whole thing and am coming around to the idea that it might not be as bad as we all made it out to be. And even if it did shorten the time we were showing off our air assets, would it be worth it to clean the whole air rules mess up?
Can we discuss this again?
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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.