Wargaming is a recreational hobby designed to recreate actual battles or fight hypothetical battles or battle situations. There are a variety of types of wargames, but these can be broadly classified into three groupings - board games, computer simulations, and tabletop miniature gaming.

BOARD WARGAMES

Traditionally the most popular type of wargame was the board game. Very early, and rather unsophisticated board wargames included such titles as Risk, Stratego, and others. Milton Bradley followed this up in the late 1950's/early 1960's with a line of "American Heritage" board games using small plastic figures as markers (Battle Cry for example was their Civil War game). Avalon Hill and other game companies began mass-production of truer wargames, with actual unit designations and combat strengths around the same time. AH's classic Gettysburg game had cardboard counters marked with each brigade's name and relative combat strength based upon manpower. The gameboard was a map of Gettysburg laid out in squares originally, then in hexes in later editions. For the first time, a gamer could at least play a mock-up of Gettysburg on a battlefield marked with actual terrain features. AH produced a great number of similar board games covering other ACW battles (Chancellorsville for example) and other wars (Midway and D-Day were both popular sellers in the late 1960's). The popularity of board games waxed in the 1970's, and many competitors to Avalon Hill emerged, including the prolific game writers at Simulation Publications Incorporated, who published over 40 titles a year during the decade, covering all aspects of military history. Avalon Hill also stepped up the quality and detail of their board games and a host of smaller companies joined the production frenzy. Over 300 Civil War board games of various battles were produced in the 1970's, with over 40 different games being produced on Gettysburg alone. Some were tactical, some were strategic, and others were operational in nature. In the mid 1970's, the largest wargame ever produced at that time came out - SPI's Richard Berg published the massive Terrible Swift Sword game with over 2000 counters in play! This was the first attempt to simulate the entire battle in regimental scale. TSS remains to this day one of the finest examples of a board wargame ever produced. The battlefield is laid out on three large maps divided by hexagons. A player lays out his counters on the map in historical positions. Counters are marked for strength ratings, movement abilities, and morale ratings. Each player in turn moves his counters into new positions, and is fired upon by the enemy's counters that are in range. Dice are rolled and the die roll results are cross-referenced against a matrix of fire strength / die roll / combat results. Results could include casualties being taken by the unit, a retreat being ordered (or an advance), melee, or nothing happens. Victory points are awarded for possession of landmarks or terrain features, as well as for destroying enemy units and leaders.

The board game craze waned in the 1980's as people grew tired of moving cardboard counters or stacks of them on a paper map. Set-up time for many of these games was onerous, and too often, someone kicked the table and all the counter stacks would topple over. The growth of computer games far supplanted the popularity of board games, but new ones still are produced each year for a shrinking audience. In an attempt to recapture some of the lost popularity of this genre of wargames, in the 1990's a number of companies (among them Milton Bradley) issued new lines of board games through mass retailers such as Toys 'R Us and others. the Battlemaster series from MB includes titles such as Axis & Allies and many others that blend traditional map-based gameboards with miniatures to replace the cardboard counters.

Many Civil War counter-based wargame titles are still in print or can be picked up reasonable on auction sites such as eBay. Terrible Swift Sword remains the granddaddy of Gettysburg games. Other popular titles include Devil's Den, Thunder at the Crossroads, Longstreet's Assault, SPI's Gettysburg, Avalon Hill's Gettysburg (reissued many times over the past 30 years), Little Round Top, and many others. Prices range from $5 up to $60 for more popular collector's edition and out of print titles.

COMPUTER WARGAMES

With the growth of PCs and gaming systems in the late 1980's, kids in particular abandoned or did not start into counter-based wargames. Instead, they turned to computer simulations of battlefields. Early games were crude and arcade-like in their action depictions. However, in the 1990's, a number of very accurate historical simulations came onto the market. One of the leading companies producing outstanding computer Civil War titles (and others) is TalonSoft. They have issued a number of PC games, including their Battleground series, which includes recreations on the screen of Gettysburg, Shiloh/Wilson's Creek, Antietam/South Mountain, 1st/2nd Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Chickamauga / Stone's River. These games offer two options - an on-screen counter-based board game (without the hassle of set-up time and the risk of knocking over a stack of counters at a critical time!) and a miniatures-based game with tiny on-screen figures on a quasi 3D terrain map. TalonSoft's games are very playable and realistic. The computer uses random number generation to "roll the dice" and determine combat and melee outcomes. Players may play against a friend using the keyboard, or via modem for on-line gaming against unseen foes. Clubs have sprung up across the world with organized TalonSoft combat campaigns, with "officer" receiving prestige and rank for winning battles. These games can be found at leading software outlets in malls and shopping centers, and retail for around $20 per title. At times, I have found packages of 4 ACW games for $20 during the holiday seasons. While TalonSoft's games are the most realistic in terms of recreating a miniatures battle, other titles such as Sid Meier's Gettysburg and Antietam games are bigger retail hits as they add some features not found in TalonSoft's software, and a more of a blend of an arcade game and a simulation. Historical purists and old board gamers tend to gravitate to TalonSoft's games, but Sid Meier and other similar games are more popular with the Nintendo / PlayStation crowd. Both are highly playable and fun. Several other games exist of varying quality levels. Prices range from $9 to around $40 per title.

TABLETOP MINIATURES

By far the most visually appealing (and expensive!) method of wargaming, and the oldest method. Miniature armies have been found in Egyptian tombs, with detailed records of unit name, strength, and firepower. No rules have yet been discovered, but it has been surmised that these were used by the Pharoah's officers as training tools for young officer candidates. In the middle ages, wooden or metal soldiers were maneuvered on sandpits or tabletops marked with terrain to train troops for future combat against neighboring kingdoms and territories. Smaller recreational versions of these wargames evolved into the popular game we know today as chess. Lead, wooden, and eventually paper soldiers were popular toys for the rich throughout history, and in the early 1700's a number of toymakers made large 54mm high toy soldiers which generations of kids knocked over with marbles or stones. During the Civil War, a number of figure sets were issued with Union and Confederate soldiers. Sales waned as the war's popularity declined. The English toymaker Britains in the Victorian age issued a series of wildly popular lead figures, and the toy soldier hobby skyrocketed, especially when the British began exporting figures to the USA and abroad. Modern miniature wargaming received it's rather crude start in the 1920's when noted English author H. G. Wells (of The War of the Worlds fame) published a book with rules and pictures of his garden games (using Britiains figures in his backyard with terrain features built up of earth and rocks). Wells' games caught on with the adult public, and by WWII, wargaming in miniature was very evident in English culture. The RAF and Royal Army used wargames with much more sophisticated rules and miniatures during WWII to plan the defense of England, and in connection with the Americans and other allies, to plan the attacks on the continent. Likewise, the Japanese and Germans used tabletop warfare simulations. Pearl Harbor was rehearsed time and time again in Japan using a detailed miniature Pearl Harbor terrain and battleships / planes.

Tabletop recreational wargaming really took off in the US in the 1970's, although it remained hugely popular in the British Isles (still a bastion of wargame figure producers). The wargamer sets up a miniature battlefield on tables of various sizes depending upon the scale and scenario selected. Common table sizes are 3'x4', 4'x6', 5'x8', 6'x12' and 6'x18'. Terrain may be very detailed (3D recreations of actual terrain using carved polystyrene or wooden boards and hills) all the way down to crude flat tabletops covered with a piece of green cloth with roads marked with masking tape and streams by strips of blue felt. Woods are often recreated using model railroad items, as are buildings, fences, etc. Many companies produce terrain and accessories, as well as soldiers in lead or pewter (more recent) or in plastic. Figure and terrain scales vary, but common scales are 54mm (the old toy soldier scale), 25mm (very common today), 20mm/HO scale (not as common), 15mm (very useful for large scale ACW and Napoleonics games), 10mm, and 6mm. Gaming may also be on a army scale, divisional scale, brigade-level, regimental level, or smaller units, including many rules sets for individual skirmishes between figures. In these cases, a single figure may represent thousands of actual troops, hundreds, tens, or a single combatant. As with board games, combat is generally resolved using percentage dice rolls taking into account modifiers to the die roll for formation, morale, terrain effects (hills, fencelines, stone walls, etc.), combat strength of the firing unit, range, and other factors. In most games, individual painted figures are grouped onto stands for maneuver and combat to represent the actual formation and strength of the unit being portrayed on the tabletop. For example, in one leading ACW rules set, Johnny RebIII, each figure is 30 actual men, each inch of miniature terrain is 50 yards of real estate, and each turn is 20 minutes of ground time. A regiment in JRIII is portrayed with 4 stands. The number of figures per stand is varied depending upon the actual number of troops being depicted. A 360 man regiment would be 4 stands with 3 figures per stand (representing 90 men per stand). Casualties are taken off by marking off the figures on the stands, then removing a full stand when enough hits are taken equaling the number of figures on that stand (3 "kills" removes a 3 man stand for example). Rules can be very sophisticated (over 100 pages in the more extreme cases with a dozen tables that need consulted to determine the results) down to extremely easy.

For the Civil War, many rules sets exist. For regimental gaming, Johnny RebIII remains the unchallenged volume leader in terms of sales. Several other rules sets are also playable, including Mr. Lincoln's War, Fields of Honor, and American Battlelines. For brigade-level gaming, Fire & Fury is #1 (and the best-selling set of rules for any Civil War combat). On To Richmond, Volley & Bayonet, and Piquet are also widely used. Rules will cost $10 - $25 normally. Figure prices vary, but in general a 24 man pack (unpainted) will run $5 - $8 and a 100 man pack will be $18 - $22. Paints, accessories, trees, etc. can be picked up at model railroad stores or at hobby shops. Terrain costs vary - cheap for a piece of green cloth and strips of felt and masking tape up to hundreds of dollars for more sophisticated layout with diorama quality. A more inexpensive way to get started is to use internet trading sites such as Bartertown.org or eBay auctions, where miniatures can often be found well below retail prices.

There are many organized miniatures wargaming conventions and local clubs. The largest organized group is the Historical Miniatures Gaming Society, with chapters scattered throughout the world. HMGS hosts the largest miniatures convention each year in Pennsylvania known as "Historicon" where a huge variety of wargames are presented covering all periods of warfare.

For more information on Civil War gaming, as well as many pictures of miniature games in progress, please visit the Scott Mingus web site for North Coast Wargamers at http://www.geocities.com/scottmingus/index.html.


Scott Mingus
co-founder
North Coast Wargamers
greater Cleveland area
scottmingus@yahoo.com