Blog Archives

As discussed in some of my previous Elements of Wargaming installments here on the blog, Wargames are designed to be faithful enough to war and real-world experience to be useful in a real-world scenario. I recently was directed to a further proof of this, in an article discussing the resurgence of Wargaming in the US […]

The top game blog post of the past couple of weeks is, without a doubt, The 5 Worst Mistakes I’ve Made when Learning COIN over at Ludobits. Now… I’m biased because this is on a topic I’ve struggled to articulate previously. But really… check it out: Now what happens when you first sit down at a COIN table with […]

I hate that it has taken as long as it has to write the follow up to Part 1 of my review of The Guns of August. For one thing, I figured that even connoisseurs of wargames would not be interested in all of the minute back and forth struggles between the Austro-Hungarians and the Serbs […]

The big news this week is that Andrew Ruhnke’s Falling Sky is arriving at the homes of wargamers the world over. Twitter is lighting up with images of skrinkwrapped wargames emerging from their boxes of foam peanuts. Those that are holding out for the upcoming two-player COIN game by Brian Train are meanwhile getting a look at […]

The bombshell post of the week is over at Neal Durando’s Defense Linguistics blog: Not only had The Forge alerted me to EMGs, it had also provided many fruitful discussions of how player expectations might best come when a game system supports those expectations. Briefly, some players simply want to win any game while others […]

“For those who think that World War I is an unexciting subject for a game, GUNS OF AUGUST will prove a shock comparable to the appearance of British tanks at Cambrai, and German stosstrupen at Caporetto.” – The Guns of August, Box Text Bold words, Avalon Hill. I was keeping my fingers crossed that a […]

One reason I value wargames is to stay sharp: Wargames require a lot of mental energy and processing power to play competitively. Even casually, there are a large number of variables and connections to make, moves to foresee and plan for, calculation of odds and unlocking possibilities. It’s exciting in the same way as rock […]

The internet has been positively on fire with great material on wargaming the past couple of weeks here. Check it out: GMT Games now has Twilight Struggle up on Steam. This is the war game that very nearly burned down Board Game Geek– and it’s now available on the PC or Mac! If you want […]

One striking similarity I have observed across wargames is that they are organized around dice and a puzzle-esque amalgam of differing pieces, units, or types or applications of the same. Despite the Occam’s Razor of presumption that they evolved from a common ancestor or copied one another in a large part, I am of the […]

GTD’s Napoleonic Wars game is… Different? Ambitious? Impressive? Innovative? Clunky? I hardly know how or where to begin.

Okay, this has been a tough week in wargaming for me. Alex has posted two installments on the classic space wargame Imperium– a game I’ve wanted to play for years. I’d heard that this was an excellent example of how to engineer a multi-war campaign, but he doesn’t think it’s worth playing a second time. […]