It’s almost odd how A Clash of Rhyfles has become my third most played game this year and yet I still feel like I need to play it more to keep it in my head properly. I’m starting to rethink my initial takes on the game. But first, let’s talk about the match I had.

I wanted to do a 300 point pickup game. Looking through the book scenarios, that really only gives you two choices: kill each other or fight over two objective points. Fair enough: the game is very narratively focused and many of the missions want one side to bring more or less than 300 points to do an attack or defense. Rather than tweak our lists, I went ahead and produced a quick scenario for equal forces where we’re fighting over a central object that needs to be moved off the board.

It was a fun match where I made my fatal mistake early and spent the rest of the battle paying for it. I pushed up on my left flank, then my opponent did the same and threw a grenade at me. The grenade rolled an okay result, which knocked everyone prone and pushed them out of cover. Before I could circle back and get them back up and running, my opponent had overrun their position and I had lost a third of my boys.

On the other flank, my Marksquar managed a devastating shot that took out my opponent’s mounted MMG in one go. I uh… I felt bad, but it gave me a flank! Unfortunately…

He paid me back with his own Marksquar, who managed to take out my boys one after another while I flubbed every bit of return fire.

Back on the left flank, I tried to pick things back up by sending in the Sarf-cyn and laying down fire with my remaining models. It just wasn’t enough. In hindsight, I should have thrown a grenade myself and paid him back the favor. The reality is that the grenades are so effective not because they kill but because they eat up your opponent’s activations. I can see a circumstance in which my opponent gets a grenade off and then my boys are just… down. I have to spend three actions to pick them all back up, which consumes a turn, then my opponent tosses another grenade. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Now, that’s entirely my fault. I should have advanced more cautiously. I should have used smoke and overwatch and all the other tools at my disposal. This is what leads me to say “I need to play this more to enjoy it more.” Your width of options is so great that when you’re picking it back up after a month and trying to navigate its systems again…

“How do grenades work? Oh right, the weird chart thing.”

“Oh, you brought cavalry this time? Okay… what do… what do those do? They have a special charge or something, right?”

By the time you’ve settled these, you start to lose the mental bandwidth for thinking through what you’re doing. I knew I wanted to advance on my left flank and secure a position to overwatch the objective. I uh… executed it totally wrong.

It’s a game that would sit in my head just fine if I played it regularly, but it has so many systems and charts and tables and ideas that gosh if I don’t just start to think it would be easier to just remember and play Chain of Command, but with Quar.

So am I out? Well, no. But do I recommend Quar? Er… maybe? If you play it on the regular, I’m sure it’s fine.

I’m really struggling here. I went back and reviewed my QRS to update it. I… just don’t want to. The game has so much going on that it was a sincere challenge to fit the QRS on 6 pages with a bunch of truncated language. I could readily improve it and I should do so. But good lord… it’s just so much.

The flipside to all of this is I had a great time. It was a fun game. The core infantry rules remain plenty intelligible and playable. If I just played it a bit more, I’d enjoy it a lot more. I guess that’s the conclusion here? I need to play more Quar.

Or… just admit the defeat and move on. We’ll see.