Thursday
Dec102009
Date Night: playing my very first wargame
Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 9:21AM 
What I found: The idea of war wasn't glamorized or made trivial by the game. Instead, it made me better appreciate the bravery of those who fought in the war as well as the strategic insight (of lack thereof) of those who were in charge.
Posted in BoardGameGeek.com:
Overview of my first wargaming experience, with photos.
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Reader Comments (3)
You should try playing a quick game of Advanced Squad Leader with Andy. I'm sure you can get through your first game in 15 minutes or so. Heh.
Ask Jeff about "Star Fleet Battles", a game where advanced players have to agree to how certain rules are interpreted before starting the game. Not to mention that those rules fill 7 binders! I think Bruce has them all.
Now that's a romantic evening.
Even I'm not sure if I'm being sarcastic or not.
Some of the more intimidating sets of wargames rules are like that because they have to include all the options. There are so many different weapons, and some of the differences really matter. But for a particular battle you might only need a tiny portion of the data.
I used to do a lot with miniatures, as well as boardgames, and it's the same for both. I once managed to field a Soviet-style tank regiment with 1/300 scale figures. The rules I was using listed maybe a hundred different sorts of tank, but I was only using one type. What wasn't in the rules was the differences in how the armies planned to fight.
In some ways, wargaming is far less narrowly focused than other sorts of gaming. The players have far more choices, good and bad. And concepts such as morale mean that the game tokens don't always do as the player wants. Chess doesn't have the pieces running away from each other.