You can obviously learn about what happened on Little Round Top by reading about it, but you can gain insights unavailable in books by pushing bloodless little cardboard representations of Colonel Oates’ Alabamians toward Professor Chamberlain and his men from Maine.
Quotes about wargames
When you consider I own 27 different games about the Battle of the Bulge just now , it should be pretty clear that’s an obsession of mine . I admit freely to it and refuse to seek counseling . Everyone should have an obsession or two . Mine is harmless
My only beef is that sometimes wargamers can cop an attitude when looking at a game that doesn’t try to model activity at some insane level of detail and conclude that, because it does not, it is not a realistic game. That’s nonsense.
Rules complexity was not necessarily matched by strategic complexity; the only real choice for the German player in a strategic World War II game, after all, is “Britain first” or “Russia first”. The attraction of the wargame lies in mastering a complex system; and in the difficult, complicated tactical decisions to be made—exactly how to position your counters to deliver an attack of maximal effectiveness.