The more subdued those aspects of the war are, the more I usually like the game. What I dislike about this type of wargame is that tends to include features that are not military per se-economic planning, production, and even politics or religion. Furthermore, you're free to focus on high-level command and let imaginary subordinates take care of all the details. You have the opportunity to change the course of history. If the game is well designed (and especially if it covers a big war), you get the impression that you're directing momentous events that are transpiring over a long period of time and across a vast area. What I like about wargames at this scale is the epic feel-the expansiveness. I've played only three of those so far (the first two and the last). Gray, The Peloponnesian War, 431-404 BC, and Empires in America: The French and Indian War. The strategy-level wargames I currently own are A House Divided: War Between the States 1861-65, The American Revolution, The Civil War 1861-1865, Blue vs. Oddly, none of these games were historical.Ī few years later, I did try some historical ones: e.g., 1776: The Game of the American Revolutionary War, The American Civil War, War and Peace, Victory in the Pacific, and Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. The next game like that I saw was Tactics II, which a friend bought a couple years later. And it's a fictional strategy-level game it vaguely simulates two nations at war. But at the time, it was a good learning device. It's not much of a wargame it has become kind of a joke. The first wargame I ever played in its entirety was Kriegspiel. Ultimately, I want to say what kind of wargame I like best, and why. But I'm going to ignore such games and stick to those that are clearly either tactical, operational, or strategic.Īnd now that I've pointed to what the terms generally mean to me, what do I want to say about them? Well, I want to share my impressions based on the wargames I've sampled over the years. Some even manage to cover all three-using a strategic map for the big picture, operational maps for in-between events, and then tactical battle boards for the up-close fighting. Naturally, many wargames fall in between two of those scales. The game pieces represent platoons or companies or small groups of guns or vehicles, and the map covers just a relatively small patch of ground. It covers the battling or campaigning back and forth across North Africa-a relatively small segment of World War II. Since it covers an entire war, some call it grand-strategic (i.e., as big as it gets).Īfrika Korps. It's nation versus nation, with minor countries involved as well. OK, here are three old wargames that illustrate the three scales:īlitzkrieg. (Sometimes the word campaign can describe such a conflict-but in gaming that word is often used to refer to a linked series of battles rather than a larger-scale conflict per se.) But for wargaming purposes, it just refers to the in-between scale-military conflicts bigger than individual battles but smaller than entire wars. He says tactical is whatever happens when opposing forces are in con tact with one another strategy is what happens to bring forces into contact (or pull them apart from contact).Īnd what about the operational scale? That's a more modern term, and sometimes it has a specific meaning. Mahan offers a mnemonic device that I like. A tactical-level wargame is one that covers a skirmish or something much bigger, like a battle. Generally speaking, a strategy-level wargame is a game that covers a whole war or a big part of one. Military conflicts range in scale from skirmishes (the smallest, with a handful of combatants on each side) to full-scale wars (faction against faction, nation versus nation-or, in science-fiction wargames, possibly one dimension or galactic confederation against another). Here in my blog, I'm going to stick to talking about what they mean to me.Ī wargame is a game that attempts to simulate key aspects of a military conflict. Old-timers might groan, as they know there's no end of debate over just what they mean. Those new to wargaming might wonder what these terms mean.
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