There’s a particular genre of book, military history book specifically, called the “unit history”. It may have a desultory title like “The History of the 1st Infantry Division in World War II” or a slightly jazzier name like “The Big … Continue reading →

I think at some point in this series I promised you some role-playing. Strategy role-playing, to be exact. Not by me, of course, because I don’t do that kind of stuff. But from a game design perspective, you can’t help … Continue reading →

Everyone knows that strategic games with tactical battle engines are better than strategic games without them. Any game which tries to abstract out combat in the name of tighter, more thematic game design is eventually going to get crushed by … Continue reading →

So many storylines run through the Battle of Britain that it’s hard to decide where to start. The evolution of airpower theory in the 1920′s and 1930′s. The secretive growth of the Luftwaffe after the Treaty of Versailles. The design … Continue reading →

If you read my previous game diary about War in the East, you might be all ready for me to start playing Eagle Day and RAF, pull a few history books off the shelf, find some random paragraphs that support … Continue reading →

Leisure reading about history makes me want to play wargames. This is what makes wargamers “wargamers,” as has been definitively proven in at least one scholarly journal article somewhere. I’m sure of it. Michael Korda’s With Wings Like Eagles, a … Continue reading →

534:366 = Soviet Minor Victory After the jump, I can explain

Snow! Colonel-General Guderian was near Teploie on the night of November 3-4, 1941, where the day before, the leading infantry elements of LIII Corps had run into a large Russian force comprised of two cavalry divisions, five rifle divisions, and … Continue reading →

Mud! Every game about the invasion of Russia includes the rasputitsa, the name for the spring and autumn muddy season when rain or the spring thaw renders the roads impassable. Something I didn’t know until I looked it up for … Continue reading →

This year will be the 70th anniversary of the launching of the final German drive on Moscow, Operation Typhoon (in German: Taifun). And it’s the 70th anniversary of the invasion of Russia itself, obviously. Don’t bogart my point, which is … Continue reading →

Finland’s involvement in World War II includes one of the great David vs. Goliath stories of all time. Invaded in November 1930 by Stalin’s Red Army, the woefully outnumbered and outgunned Finns humiliated the Russians, inflicting heavy casualties, and initially … Continue reading →

If you’ve been following the series up to this point, you’ve undoubtedly been waiting patiently for something which up until now I’ve avoided doing, and I don’t mean taking unsolicited cheap shots at Tom Chick. That comes later. I mean … Continue reading →

I’m pretty sure everybody reading this has at one time or another had the experience of overpromising something, only to underdeliver in the end. Whether it’s a competitive game of League of Legends or a magical presidency of hope and … Continue reading →

Victory conditions are wargames’ great balancers. Without them, you’d have to play many games for fun, because one side would have little chance of winning. No one thinks that the Germans had any chance of winning the Battle of the … Continue reading →