War Games

War
What is it good for?

Defining a WARGAME used to be easy.  It had 36 thousand cardboard square chits, a six sided die, something called a CRT and a map of Lower Jabip which has been forced to fit a hexagonal grid.

Now, it’s not so easy.  My favorites are classified as Dudes On A Map.  Which, with a little imagination, you can picture is a game where you put like miniature dudes.  On a map. Mass market used to have this as Risk and Axis & Allies. Some games, however clearly represent a war, but with neither maps nor dudes.  I’m looking at you, A Few Acres Of Snow. Is it a wargame or a game about war? That sounds stupid, but for the sake of a cohesive gamer shorthand, it kind of matters.  Wargames may or may not use miniatures. Note that a game with miniatures is not always a miniatures game. No really. I like to define Miniatures Game as one where the physical positions of pieces matter, but the map is not gridded in any way.  Sure, we can find a billion exceptions, but that’s a decent way to look at it for now.

Wargames often use dice to resolve combat, to simulate the chaos of war.  Can this guy hit that guy behind a tree? Different modifiers change the roll of the die needed to determine if we have achieved cardboard carnage.

In general, I like to think that if physical position on a board matters and one of your primary goals is beating the snot out of the opponent, it’s probably a wargame.

TLDR: If moving a piece to over here lets you try to kill another piece, it’s a wargame.