Note: Ambush! is my second full on war game and another example that Weight/Complexity ratings of war-games on the Board Game Geek website are not commensurate with board games of different types. Agricola, which is weighted at 3.63 (8/16) I could teach somebody to play in about 15 minutes (and learned from the awful rulebook in about an hour), whereas Ambush!, which has a weight of 3.22 (8/16), I have a pretty decent grasp of only after playing two complete games, reading the rulebook for hours, re-reading some of the book, consulting rules threads (of which there are many), and watching a video, where the player got a lot of the stuff wrong.
Three of my favorite games are complex---Cave Evil (#1!), Codeword Cromwell, and Mage Knight---but still, Ambush! feels much heavier. Part of the complexity comes from the amount of exceptions to each rule, and part of the complexity comes from some poorly explained and occasionally counterintuitive rules: the many Line of Sight question threads attest to this fact. But the major part of the weight of this game comes from an uncommonly well detailed combat system that takes into account the firearm, the focus of the shooter, the distance of the shot, the health of the fighters, the terrain of the target, the intervening terrain, the relative elevations of the target and shooter, the likelihood of weapons jamming, the likelihood of accidentally expending too much ammunition, and (my favorite detail) the stances of the shooter and target. All of these things are taken into account for each minute phase of combat...and other variables may come into play as well. This system and the event decoder (and paragraphs) are the biggest mechanical strengths of this game, wherein the sense of adventure is quite high.
It is clear that greater comfort with the many systems of this game would make playing Ambush! more enjoyable, but this could never be played quickly by me. The feather weight paper components make the tactile part of the experience an effort rather than a pleasure--- these counters would not stay in place if Ambushed! by a mild sneeze and there is not enough room to actually see the many things you are required to stack in each hex. (If the map were mounted and could accommodate the counters, and if the latter were visible, and if the cross-referencing were simpler, this would be my second favorite board game ever.) Still, there is satisfaction with every small victory, frustration with every defeat, and apprehension with the arrival of every new enemy. In addition to the detailed combat, the enemy A.I., and the variety of events, the overall thematic success is probably why this game from 1983 is still being played and discussed by war game enthusiasts today.
Overall, Ambush! feels like high school homework, albeit those rare assignments that I found enjoyable to do.