Now this is a game because it is a simulation!
Wargaming includes a wide variety of games but at the end of the day a war game falls into either one of two overarching categories; simulations and games. My father introduced me to wargaming through Strategy & Tactics simulations. Mostly covering historical battles or pseudo historical conflicts such as NATO vs the Warsaw Pact, these games are played on paper maps filled with tiny hexes containing little cardboard chits representing armored, artillery, and mechanized infantry units. These games tried to give the players the feel of the epic-scale of war and the grinding attrition necessary to win sometimes.
In middle school, I started to play miniature games like Warhammer Fantasy. Three-dimensional boards with miniature towns, bridges, and rivers guarded by blocks of model infantry waiting for a single powerful spell or cannonball to devastate their ranks and send them running for the board edge. Heroic actions and deeds seemed to dominate my miniature games where a lone hero or soldier held the power to shift a game in an instant which made the games absolutely thrilling. I greatly enjoyed these experiences growing up and now I wish to convey to my fellow wargamers the lessons I learned playing both genres of games. I believe simulations and games are distinct genres of wargames and both worthy of our attention as wargamers.
Simulations in a general sense provide a large-scale environment for a gamer. A player commands regiments, divisions, and even armies numbering the hundreds of thousands with a single historic battle or the entire globe as a theater of operations. The downside to playing at this level comes from simulations reliance on realistic but often overwhelming sets of rules to provide the appropriate level of difficulty and authenticity. On the flip side, the rule sets from companies like Strategy & Tactics tend to be carbon copies of each other so once a player learns how to play one game moving onto a second game seems less strenuous. In these kinds of games, the core rules tend to boil down to three things; terrain, supply, and zones of control.
Terrain impacts in simulations more than it does in games. Terrain diversity in simulations outclasses what I often find in games. Movement and combat results in simulations swing wildly depending on what's underneath the pieces on the board. Movement in simulations are determined by individual movement allowances. Terrain interacts with the movement allowances by charging different amounts of allowance for units to move across roads, beaches, or swamps. Terrain and movement establish where zones of control lie. A unit maintains a zone of control around every hex or square around them. Zones of control slow or stop enemy movement and break lines of supply. Keeping another player's units in zones of control while maneuvering around them absorbs a player's thoughts. Terrain and zones of control throw the wrench in the works for any player because supply lines bring victory to the player who protects them and defeat to the player who does not. Units in supply, usually involves tracing a line back to a player's board edge or controlled city without an enemy nearby, operate normally and those without supply dissolve quickly or even removed immediately. The best way to defeat enemy units centers around cutting off their lines of supplies rather than attacking them. Thus Terrain, zones of control, and supply lines remain consistent elements across simulations.
Games, on the other hand, give a player an experience simulations cannot because they offer small-scale battles, creativity, and fairness. Though some games do offer large-scale combat such as Axis & Allies, games tend to lean in towards smaller-scale combat because players get to see the effect combat inflicts on their armies. Rolling on charts as one does in simulations never seems satisfying to rolling a ton of dice and watching someone else pick up ten models that suffered the brunt of an attack. The ability to achieve such high casualty rates in a game comes from the license for creativity provided to game players. Games often provide an source book of information that let's a player tailor their army to their personal taste. Players don't find themselves restricted to what Alexander the Great commanded at the Battle of Gaugamela but instead may choose to build a list consisting of units from across his career despite them never actually fighting together in single battle. A player gets the chance to see what the best of the best would look like together when reality failed them. Fighting with the best of the best all the time sounds unfair until one realizes that everyone else gets to do it too. Victory in real conflicts relies heavily on overwhelming numbers and technological superiority. Giving one player everything and another player nothing results in a recipe for disaster in the gaming community. Games, therefore, often attempt to bring parity into by applying a points system. The bigger and better a unit seems; the more points it costs. Players agree before the game how many points they wish to use to build their armies and that becomes the balancing element that prevents things from getting out of hand.
Based on my own experiences, I delineated the key differences between playing games and simulations and why we should play them. Engaging combat generated from creative and balanced list building culminates the game experience. On the downside, games often lack enough strategic elements that provide the player the opportunity to "lose the battle, but win the war." Simulations provide that grand scale element by making players maintain and cut supply lines by using movement to traverse the terrain and zones of control to hold the board. Where simulations find themselves left wanting are their unbalanced encounters with cumbersome rule sets which games tend to avoid by streamlining their rules to provide players a sandbox to create parity in any given battle. Wargamers who learn to play both genres of wargames develop skills that transfer one from to the other.
Concepts like movement remain key in both genres though their targets vary. Games look for enemy units to attack or take cover from whereas simulations look to attack or protect supply lines. Participating in both genres grants a player a more realistic lookout on wargaming in general and a deeper respect for what the real thing is. If you want to start playing wargames, I advise you to start with games because they provide an easier entry point to wargaming as a whole. From there, players looking for a more challenging and realistic experience may move over to simulations. Either way, both genres will make you a better wargamer but more importantly give you more opportunities to enjoy your hobby.
Keepin' it Dank,
Bailey
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