I’m looking at the requirements for the first scenario. The table represents a settlement—it requires six buildings and some pens or an orchard. On top of that, I need six Giant Rat models and at least eight Zombie models. All right, I think. I’ve been into miniature gaming since 1994. This can be done.

I grab the Zombie miniatures from my copy of Zombicide and paint them quickly—one Saturday, and I have the complete set. Then I look into in the Rat models – I find some rats in one of the Zombicide expansions. I didn’t have the expansion, but I went to the company warehouse and dug around a bit. Perks of being the boss at a game company. The Rats were painted in about an hour, and after one diligently spent Saturday, I was ready with all the enemy models.

The terrain was a bit more work. On Sunday, I built and painted two huts. They turned out much worse than I had hoped, so I didn’t even try making a third one—too embarrassing. Instead, I bought a ready-made STL file and printed two more huts on Monday with a 3D printer. These looked like they had come straight from The Lord of the Rings movies. The next weekend, I painted them, and I was ready with the terrain.

Then my party, my Rangers! I had already bought the models, so all I had to do was paint them. They deserved more than a speedpaint job; after all, it’s Aragorn, Gimli, and Éowyn models, so I had to put in the effort. Seven models, two weekends of work, and they turned out amazing.

A month flew by, but I was finally ready. After four weekends of intense preparation, gluing, building, and painting, I could finally play. I grabbed the rulebook, set up the scenario, picked up the dice, and embarked on an epic defense of the settlement.

After 45 minutes, I won. I calculated the Experience Points and turned the page to the next scenario. This time, I need eight Giant Spiders and six cocoons from which they’ll emerge. The terrain setup represents a forest, so I also need about 20 trees…

***

Rangers of Shadow Deep is a narrative miniature game. Each battle is a separate scenario, with different terrain setups, different enemies, and a brand new part of the Shadow Deep story. Each battle means several weekends of preparing new terrain elements and enemy models. Each battle is then about an hour of gameplay.

It’s completely absurd. Return On Investment, Return of Game Time versus the Preparation Time really is beyond absurd.

I tell you a secret: I love it!

Let me explain.

***

When you play at a gaming club, where the shelves are packed with terrain built over the years, and club members have hordes of skeletons, zombies, spiders, rats, and whatever else you might need, Rangers of Shadow Deep is just another skirmish game. You open the scenario, grab the terrain from the shelves, borrow models from your friends, and defend the Shadow Deep from the Darkness.

But when you’re in this hobby alone, when you have to handle the extensive list of preparations, when you’re the one who is building the terrain and finding enemy models, only then does Rangers of Shadow Deep reveal its true secret. And what is that secret?

Rangers of Shadow Deep is an incredibly simple skirmish game, a game with rules that could be written in 10 minutes on a folded sheet of A4 paper—just roll a d20 and see if you rolled higher than the attacking Zombie. Let’s be frank, this game isn’t really about battles and dice rolling. Rangers of Shadow Deep is about the love of the hobby. It’s about the preparations for the game, about building terrain, finding and painting the right monster models, naming your party of Rangers, and assigning them skills that probably won’t even come into play. Rangers of Shadow Deep is a game about those weeks of preparation and the excitement for the upcoming session.

And the gameplay itself? It doesn’t quite compare to the main fun: roll a few d20s, defeat some Zombies, and in an hour, you can return to what’s best—the preparations. First, allocate Experience Points for your Rangers, then plan new terrain, then paint new enemy models. More weekends of fun ahead…

It had no right to succeed. Not that I wasn’t curious or intrigued. I wanted it to be a great experience, but I just knew it was bound to fail.

Even before it all started, I said: “After 45 minutes, I will stop listening to the rules explanation. I have my limit of information absorption, and it’s exactly 45 minutes.”

And, of course, he didn’t explain all the rules in 45 minutes. It took him another 15 minutes, but I stopped listening. I’m a wordy person—if I say I will process nothing more, I will process nothing more. I had to learn the rules of transporting ground troops with amphibious aircraft in practice when German soldiers landed on my shore in Plymouth.

Przemek, who was explaining the rules, wanted to make it easier for us. He prepared three A3 pieces of paper with tables describing the rules and actions of smaller factions in the conflict—Yugoslavia, Belgium, Greece, and a dozen other countries. Player’s cheat sheet. On three A3 pieces of paper. For some people, it’s helpful. For others, it’s a reason for a heart attack before the game.

Those guys couldn’t agree for the life of them, and it’s strange because the matter was simple, basically, no room for disagreement – one of them bought Frostpunk, they played it, and instead of rating the game on BGG and giving a clear message to the world whether the game is good or bad, they started arguing. Absurd.

Steve: First of all, the game looks AMAZING. The so-called table presence is at the highest level here, large beautifully illustrated cards, huge tiles of terrain, a lot of large, double-layered boards, and of course, the tower – a gigantic model of a generator, into which we will throw coal cubes and check whether the generator has burned out. You look at the table with Frostpunk spread out, and you’re blown away. It’s brilliant.

I had it with On Mars, which, although it is a really complicated game, it didn’t give me any trouble. For three years, working on First Martians, I practically lived on Mars. So I easily absorbed On Mars whole. I also had it with Kanban, which I didn’t understand. On the other hand, my wife moved through the nooks and crannies of its rules as if she had been playing it for years. She loves cars and everything related to them. Kanban was her game. And I had it today with Expedition: Northwest Passage. I sat down and played. Everything went smoothly from the first to the last minute.

It’s an old truth: when we understand what a game is about, if it presents the theme well and realistically, we usually understand the rules in no time, and the game is pure pleasure.

The Battle of Five Armies – based on the climax of JRR Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit – pits the hosts of the Elvenking, the Dwarves of Dain Ironfoot, and the Men of the Lake led by Bard the Bowman against a horde of Wolves, Goblins and Bats led by Bolg, son of Azog. It is a standalone game based on the rules for the epic War of the Ring. It has over 100 miniatures, a big board, cards, tokens… It is freakin’ The Battle of Five Armies. I knew it. I will never be able to learn how to play it.

I had this with the Twilight Struggle. I had this with the War of the Ring. I had this with Clash of Cultures. I had this with a lot of games whose reputation and fame told me: „Don’t even try, you won’t get it.” And then I tried, I sat down with the rulebook, and it turned out that they weren’t so scary. That I get it. That I have a lot of fun with them.