There are hardcore boardgames you will find difficult to find human players willing to play with you. Campaign for North Africa takes 8-10 players and has an estimated playing time of 1000 hours [1]. An excerpt of a review written for this game:
> Are you a logistics major? Are you masochistic? Do you think that the calculations required to play a game should take longer than actually moving the units? Then do I have a game for you! Get yourself a copy of The Campaign for North Africa, and say goodbye to the family for a couple of months, if not years.
The Campaign for North Africa is the most detailed game that I have ever played. It isnt necessarily the most complicated, but for sheer size of the detail and planning involved, it is by far the most laborious and detail-oriented game that has ever been produced. As a first example, this is the only game that I know of that differentiates between British and German jerry cans for fuel. More about this later on.
The Campaign for North Africa is Richard Berg and SPIs simulation of the war in North Africa in the Second World War. The seven foot long mapsheet (divided into five sections), two sets of rulebooks, charts and tables galore and, oh yes, thousands of counters complete the game in a nice sturdy box, not the usual SPI flat game holder that falls apart. Most of this is standard SPI fare, with the functional but not pretty counters, standard three column style SPI rulebooks, and a fairly attractive map that does an excellent job of creating an epic sense of scale. True, this is the desert, and most of it is desolate, but the numerous tracks and roads, the coastal plains and mountains, and the railroad (both already built and railroad you can build as the game goes on) all combine to present an appealing picture of the area.
Each turn is one week of time, and each turn is broken down several stages. There is an initiative determination, naval convoy stage, stores expenditure stage, and then three operations stages. The Ops Stages are where most of the activity occurs. There are also stages that are used in the air game. I did not play the Air Game for the purpose of this review, but did play with the advanced logistics.
The game also includes on of each type of chart, which can be used to make copies. I made my own in Excel. There are charts for Division and Brigade organization, truck convoy sheets, naval convoy sheets, prisoner sheets, broken down and destroyed vehicle sheets, supply dump sheets, sheets for the air game and more. I even created a couple of my own for production and independent units. As each Division in the game needs its own Org chart, which fit best on legal size paper, these are a lot of charts and sheets to keep track of. All of these must be filled out before the game even starts, and just setting up for the beginning of the game requires filling out hours (literally) of paperwork. And for heavens sake, dont use pen! Much of what you write in the charts at the beginning of the game will be erased by the end of the first turn. After every movement, every combat, just sitting there and doing nothing will require updating of the org charts for every unit in the game.
Tabletop simulator would making an interesting training environment. I may not be able to train a good go player, but a table flipping sore loser is probably doable.
