The Complete Wargames Handbook By James F. Dunnigan The Complete Wargames Handbook Table of Contents Dedication Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter 1. What is a Wargame 1. Overview 2. Turn 1: U.S. Movement Phase 3. Turn 1: U.S. Combat Phase 4. Turn 1: German Movement and Combat Phase 5. Turn 2: U.S. Movement Phase 6. Turn 2: U.S. Combat Phase 7. Turn 2: German Movement and Combat Phase 8. Conclusion Chapter 2. How to Play Wargames 1. Overview 2. How to Win 3. How to Win with the Losing Side 4. Overcoming Math Anxiety 5. Strategy and Tactics of Play 6. For the Defense 7. The Importance of Quality of Play 8. Wargaming Technique 9. Tempo and Shaping 10. How to Play Without an Opponent 11. Playing by Mail and Team Play 12. How to Get into Gaming Painlessly 13. Playing Computer Wargames 14. The Technical Terms of Wargaming Chapter 3. Why Plan the Game 1. Information 2. History 3. Special Problems of Air and Naval Games Page 1 of 291 ©JF Dunnigan 1997,2005 PDF format may not be recreated without permission from Richard Mataka The Complete Wargames Handbook Chapter 4. Designing Manual Games 1. How to Do It Yourself 2. Designing a Game Step by Step 3. Why the Rules are The Way They Are 4. The Drive on Metz: September 1944 Chapter 5. History of Wargames 1. Overview 2. Hey, Let's Start a Wargame Company in the Basement! 3. The Conventions 4. Into the 80's 5. Analytic History, and What Is a Simulation Anyway? 6. Wargames Over There 7. How Many Wargamers Are There? Chapter 6. Computer Wargames 1. Computers and Wargames 2. What Kind of Computer, What Kind of Wargame? 3. The Perils of Computer Wargame Publishing 4. Genealogy of Computer Wargame Technology 5. The Future Chapter 7. Designing Computer Games 1. Overview 2. The Spec 3. User Documentation 4. Quality Control 5. Artificial Intelligence (AI) 6. The Computer Wargame Development Team 7. Hardware for Computer Wargames 8. Victory at Sea 9. Notes on Game Components 10. Hundred Years War 11. Computer Wargame Design Tips for the Military Designer Chapter 8. Who Play the Games Page 2 of 291 ©JF Dunnigan 1997,2005 PDF format may not be recreated without permission from Richard Mataka The Complete Wargames Handbook Chapter 9. Wargames at War 1. Overview 2. Wargames, Models, and Simulations 3. The Military Experience with Wargames 4. Wargaming and the Professional Warriors 5. Professional Wargames and Military Decision Making 6. The Payoff, and Warnings 7. Wargaming Abroad 8. Wargames and the 1991 Iraq War 9. Creating Wargames for the Troops 10. Differences Between Hobbyists and Professionals 11. Types of Wargames 12. Why Use History? 13. Politics in Modeling 14. End Note Appendices Appendices Reading List My Game Bibliography Gaming Aids Paper Wargame Publishers Computer Wargame Publishers Computer Wargame Published: 1979-1991 Page 3 of 291 ©JF Dunnigan 1997,2005 PDF format may not be recreated without permission from Richard Mataka The Complete Wargames Handbook Dedication To Ray Macedonia (COL, US Army, retired), who single handedly exposed the current generation of generals to wargaming and what it could do. His efforts, aided by a new generation of wargamers and wargame designers in the US military, had a lot to do with the outcome of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and our prospects for peace into the next century. Page 4 of 291 ©JF Dunnigan 1997,2005 PDF format may not be recreated without permission from Richard Mataka The Complete Wargames Handbook Acknowledgements A large number of people helped me create this book, and the earlier version. Chief among these groups are all the wargamers I have worked with, for or at cross purposes with over the years. Wargamers are a sharp lot. There's is "the hobby for the overeducated" and they have never shied away from giving me comments, criticism and advice I needed (even if I didn't particularly want it.) Next comes the old SPI crew, some of whom I still work with on a regular basis. It was, among other things, an educational and enlightening experience working in a place one magazine article described as "having the ambience of an unmade bed." The article was from "Cosmopolitan" magazine, so that's how strange SPI was. For the current edition, I also called upon a number of individuals. Among those I owe thanks to are; Mike Garrombone, Mark Herman, Austin Bay, Ray Macedonia, Brad Anderson, Evan Brooks, Richard Berg, Gordon Walton, Susan Leon, Laurance Rosenzweig, Al Nofi, Dave Menconi, Dan Masterson, Doug MacCaskill, Brian B. Carlin, David C. Fram, Andrew Webber, James M. Stormes, John W. Willoughby, Lance Jones, Michael L. Malone, Robert B. Kasten, Rolf W. Laun, Robin D. Roberts, and several others whose names I've misplaced. You know who you are. Page 5 of 291 ©JF Dunnigan 1997,2005 PDF format may not be recreated without permission from Richard Mataka The Complete Wargames Handbook Introduction Year 2000 Introduction for the Wargames Handbook The first edition of the Wargames Handbook came out in the Summer of 1980, arguably the high point of the golden age of board wargaming. In that year, there was peak in the number of titles published, and the number of copies shipped. The second edition came out in 1993, a far different time for wargames. I felt fortunate that I was able to convince my publisher to go for a second edition. They looked at the numbers and noted that a few thousand copies were sold each year. What the publisher didn't know, and what I was not fully aware of, was that most of those sales were to military organizations, to be used as a text book for the teaching of wargaming. Even though the second edition paid more attention to computer wargames, it wasn't enough. For through the mid and late 1990s, board (“manual”) wargaming was completely overtaken by computer wargames. As a result, the Wargames Handbook went out of print in 1998. Board wargaming was shrinking throughout the 1980s, largely because of the competition from fantasy games and the early computer wargames. But in the 1990s, computer graphics became good enough to cancel the visual advantage of board wargamers. Personal computers now had larger screens, and the ability to put more and more information on those screens. It was easier to use a computer wargame, as set up was automatic and you could save your game with a mouse click and come back to it later. Board wargames still had advantages, the major one being that you knew exactly what the game was doing, but many wargamers knew that had a downside in that you had to master a lot of rules and procedures to make a manual game go. But those with the right combination of skills, determination and interest in historical what ifs did play the games and thus became capable of designing games. Most of those gamers were not aware that simply playing manual games turned them into game designers, although over time most of them realized it. Not all of these gamers had the urge to design their own, but most eventually realized that they certainly knew enough about how the games worked to do so if they wanted to. Unfortunately, this proliferation of game designers came at the same time, the 1980s, that computer wargames began to take over. While computer wargames had many advantages over manual games, they had one major minus for game designers. Computer games did not reveal their internal workings. Oh, sure, some computer game designers, and publishers, often former board wargamers, went out of their way to provide thick manuals showing all the details of what was going on in the game. And many gamers appreciated this, but many just took the buzz from knowing all that stuff was there and otherwise ignored it. With board wargames, you could not ignore the details of how the game did what it did. With computer wargames, you could, and most gladly did. You could get into computer wargames a lot more quickly when you were relieved of the need to master a lot of the games mechanics. Moreover, the easier access to computer wargames meant there were far more people able to enjoy wargames. Page 6 of 291 ©JF Dunnigan 1997,2005 PDF format may not be recreated without permission from Richard Mataka The Complete Wargames Handbook But there was a dark side to this proliferation of wargamers. While computer wargames sold five to ten times as many copies as a similar board wargame, they did this by concentrating on simpler games that cost 20 to 50 times more to develop than manual wargames. Even with a computer taking care of all the bookkeeping and the complicated routines, a traditional computer wargame was still a complex beast. There were a lot of playing pieces to look after and complex decisions to be made. Publishers soon realized that the former board wargamers comprised a small, and ever shrinking, portion of their customer base. Most of the new wargamers were more comfortable with simpler games. Moreover, the most popular genre of computer games were what people in the business called "twitch games." These first showed up in arcades, then on game consoles and eventually on PCs. Simple games, with an emphasis on eye-hand coordination (thus the "twitch" nickname), this popular style soon showed up with more frequency in PC wargames. Moreover, arcade games outsold PC games by about two to one. Although most arcade games were too simple for the PC market, many features of arcade games were transferable to PC based games.