Table Top/ Historical

A wargame is a game that simulates or represents a military operation. Wargaming is the hobby dedicated to the play of such games, which are also called conflict simulations. more...

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The somewhat similar, professional study of war is generally known as a military exercise or "war game," with the words war and game kept separate. Although there are occasional disagreements as to what qualifies as a wargame, the general consensus is that they are not only games about organized violent conflict or warfare, but that they must explore and illuminate or simulate some feature or aspect of human behaviour directly bearing on the conduct of war.

Wargames are typically categorized by historical period or era (Napoleonic (1800-1815), Imperial Rome (~50 B.C. - ~A.D. 500)), often qualified by geographical region (World War II - Pacific Theatre, American Civil War - Eastern Theatre), command level (strategic, operational, or tactical), and sometimes environment (land, sea, or air). Games concerned with a particular combination of period, location, command level and environment tend to have similar features emphasized repeatedly.

Strategic games tend to deal with multi-generational conflicts, entire wars, or a particular geographic region throughout an entire war. These games often incorporate resource management elements beyond those associated with pre-formed military forces and the players are frequently faced with certain problems representative of what national civil authorities must resolve in addition to the direct application of military force. Each "move" in such a game can represent a variable period of time ranging from 1 day to many years. These games are often played on small scale geopolitical maps where 1 cm might equal 10-1000 km..

Tactical games tend to deal with actions involving small numbers of troops and equipment whose real world resolution occurs within hours of commencement. In this type of game emphasis is often placed upon quantified "quality" factors such as troop experience, fatigue, morale, training, equipment performance (rate-of-fire, range, penetration, probability of single hit kill). Minor topographical features such as elevations, ground cover, and minor water courses are frequently significant elements on the playing surface which may be a printed map, a table top or even a sandbox. A representative map scale used in these games, if a topographical playing surface is used at all, would be 1 cm = 10-400 m. There exists a subclass of tactical wargames called "skirmish" wherein each playing piece represents an individual or article of equipment, each move represents the passage of a few seconds, and the map scale, if any, is less than 1 cm = 50 m.

Operational tends to be a catchall term that encompasses games which are clearly not strategic nor strictly tactical in nature. They often reproduce entire military campaigns rather than refight a single battle but do not encompass an entire war.

Read more at Wikipedia.org