History of Wargaming

• ~3000BCE - Sun Tzu’s Wei Hai
• ~2356BCE - Creation of Go
• ~2000BCE - Creation of Chaturanga (4 sided chess)
• ~500 - Creation of Chess
• 1562 - zuSolms's Kartenspiel, Europe’s Earliest Kriegsspiel
• 1664 - Weikhmann’s Koenigspiel
• 1780 - Helwig's "the Brunswick Wargame"
• 1779 - Clerk’s Essay on Naval Tactics, included a simulation and may have influenced the defeat of de Grasse by Rodney in 1782 and Nelson's victories at Cape St Vincent & Trafalgar
• 1797 - Venturini's gridded wargame, 60 x 60, each 1 mile square, had most features of a modern wargame
• 1811 - Reisswitz Snr develops his kriegspiel using a gridded table
• 1824 - Reisswitz Jnr further developes the kriegsspiel using 1:8000 maps, 1”=200yd, 2 minute turns and dice. Start to see extensive use of wargaming by the Prussian General Staff (von Moltke and others)
• 1862 - Tschischwitz develops enhancements to Reisswitz
• 1872 - Capt Bearing RA modifies a set of Tschischwitz “later rigid” kriegsspiel rules, officially issued by the British Army as "Rules for the Conduct of the War-Game (compiled at the Topographical and Statistical Department of the War Office by Captain E Baring, Royal Artillery), February 1872"
• 1875 - Oxford Kriegsspiel club formed
• 1876 - von Verdy develops a “free kriegsspiel” with expertise based adjudication to strike a better balance between realism and playability
• 1878 - Capt Colomb RN patented a ship-ship game “The Duel” - first true Naval wargame
• 1879 - Livermore’s The American Kriegsspiel
• 1880 - Totten’s "Strategos: A Series of American Games of War”. Included concepts like stacking & ZOCs
• 1881 - The Manchester Tactical Society founded
• 1883 - Polemos published,  the "New Game of War" by Dr. David Griffiths in Brighton. A picture appears in the Illustrated London News, 1888, of the game being played on a square cloth grid with military miniatures representing blocks of soldiers instead of the wooden or metal blocks associated with Kriegsspiel.
• 1884 - British Army's Rules for the Conduct of the Wargame, August 1884
• 1896 - British Army's Rules for the Conduct of the Wargame on a Map, 1896 (39358/645)
• 1900s - Sayre’s Map Manoeuvres and Tactical Rides
• 1900s - von Schlieffen using wargames for strategic planning
• 1900s - Japanese using wargaming before the Russo-Japanese War
• 1905 - J.M. Grierson's British Army 1905 War Game (used the 1896 rules).
• 1905 - A vital wargame took place when the newly formed General Staff conducted an extensive war-game to simulate the outcome of the outbreak of war between Germany and France & Belgium which helped inform UK/French military collaboration and helped lead to the Anglo-French Entente
• 1906 - Fred T Jane’s naval rules
• 1909 - Bellum, a British Kriegsspiel refinement by A.W. Mercer which used a blank gridded table with terrain markers/pieces rather than maps for flexibility. Eventually used as a training tool in the expanded British Army after 1914.
• 1910 - Mademoiselle Hermance Edan designs and publishes via La Samaritaine, a game which becomes the basis for L'Attaque and the Stratego.
• 1911 - HG Wells' Floor Games
• 1913 - HG Wells' Little Wars
• 1914 - Russians wargame war with Germany
• 1914 - Scientific American article on wargaming at the US Army War College
• 1918 - German’s wargamed the last offensive of WW1
• 1919 - US Naval Warfare Centre Plan Orange games start (vs Japanese, they also wargamed vs the British!)
• 1920 - The Manchester Tactical Society held its last meeting
• 1929 - von Manstein’s pol-mil game on Poland attacking Germany
• 1940 - Fletcher Pratt’s Naval War Game
• 1940/41 - Germans using wargames to company commander level prior to big ops
• 1941 - Japanese wargamed Pearl Harbour & Pacific War, & Indian Ocean! Predicted US counter attack at Midway.
• 1941 - Nimitz staff found 2 Plan Orange games which matched Japanese dispositions and informed their attack plans
• 1941 - Montgomery wargames using a free kriegsspiel approach (or may be more like a ROC drill)
• 1941- German Army wagaming booklet by von Cochenhausen
• 1942 - Western Approaches Tactical Unity (WATU), staffed mainly by Wrens, wargame the battle against the U-Boats
• 1942 - Japanese use a red cell of Naval attaches just back from US, keeping them in isolation to prevent the contamination of ideas
• 1944 - German Army wargames a US attack on the Ardennes. The US actually attack in the middle of it and it becomes a live operational planning tool!
• 1940s/50s - Operational Research begins to supplant wargaming in the UK and US, especially with rise of civilian scientists, McNamara’s “whizz kids”
• 1952 - Charles Roberts creates Tactics, the first modern hobby board wargame, creates Avalon Game Company
• 1954 - Roberts moves from square to hex grids for D-Day and Chancellorsville, inspired by his contacts with the Rand Corporation
• 1957 - Jack Scruby starts the War Game Digest in the USA
• 1958 - Avalon Game Company becomes Avalon Hill
• 1959 - First Airfix HO/OO model soldiers (the Guards Band set)
• 1960s - Rise of political-military (pol-mil) strategic games by the big think-tanks (e.g. Rand)
• 1960 - Donald Featherstone starts a UK version of The War Game Digest in the UK with Tony Bath
• 1962 - Joseph Morschauser publishes How to Play War Games in Miniature in the USA
• 1962 - Donald Featherstone publishes War Games in the UK
• 1962 - Donald Featherstone starts publishing Wargamers' Newsletter to replace The War Game Digest
• 1966 - Strategy & Tactics founded
• 1966 - The first UK National Wargaming Championships, held in Southampton and organised by Donald Featherstone.
• 1967 - Brig. Peter Young and Lt. Col. JP Lawford publish Charge! Or How to Play Wargames
• 1967 - Strategy & Tactics first published
• 1969 - Terry Wise publishes Introduction to Battle Gaming
• 1969 - Shire Publications publish John Tunstill's Discovering Wargames
• 1969 - The Wargames Research Group (WRG) founded by Phil Barker, Bob O'Brien and Ed Smith and publish their First Edition Ancients Rules.
• 1970s - SPI's Firefight commissioned by US Army for $25k
• 1970 - Charles Grant publishes Battle: Practical Wargaming
• 1970 - Jim Dunnigans' Panzerblitz for Avalon Hill published, “irrevocably changed the shape of the wargaming hobby” with geomorphic map tiles, silhouettes on counters, smaller 1/4” counters, and more probability rather than "strength" based.
• 1971 - Charles Grant publishes The War Game
• 1973 - Marc Miller & Frank Chadwick form Game Designer's Workshop (GDW) and publish Drang Nach Osten!, one of the first monster games.
• 1974 - Airfix Magazine Guide 4: Napoleonic Wargaming by Bruce Quarrie published
• 1974 - CF Wesencraft's Practical Wargaming published
• 1974 - Battle for Wargamers magazine starts publishing. In 1978 it was merged into Military Modelling.
• 1974 - The thriller film Callan with Edward Woodward features two wargames facilitated by Peter Gilder
• 1974 - TSR publish the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy role-playing game
• 1975 - The first Origins boardgaming show is held
• 1975 - Games Workshop (GW) founded
• 1977 - GDW publish the Traveller science-fiction role-playing game
• 1978 - GW shop opens in Hammersmith, London
• 1978 - Battleground series of TV wargames with Peter Gilder, Paddy Griffith and Edward Woodward (of Callan and wargaming fame)
• 1970s/80s - A "golden age" of board wargaming, which closed as computer games started to take over
• 1980 - Paddy Griffith publishes Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun
• 1980 - WD founded. Moor Park Conference held (the forerunner of COW)
• 1981 - The first COW
• 1983 - The film War Games is released
• 1983 - Warhammer Fantasy Battles by Rick Priestly and Richard Halliwell published by GW
• 1983 - Miniature Wargames magazine starts publishing
• 1987 - Wargames Illustrated magazine starts publishing, as does Stuart Asquith's Practical Wargamer
• 1987 - GW publish Rock Priestly's Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader
• 1990 - WRG publish Phil Barker’s DBA
• 1992 - Chris Engle creates/codifies the Matrix Game
• 1993 - Wizards of the Coast release Magic: The Gathering, which starts the collectable card-game genre
• 1995 - Settlers of Catan published and the Eurogame/modern boardgame explosion starts
• 1997 - Game of War on TV, refighting Naseby with Paddy Griffiths and Angela Rippon!
• 2002 - Flames of War by Phil Yates published by Battlefront Miniatures Ltd.
• 2003 - The TV Series Time Commanders starts, running for 2 seasons and covering 24 wargames
• 2006 - Henry Hyde starts publishing Battlegames magasine
• 2008 - The History of Wargaming Project publishes its first book
• 2009 - Black Powder rules published by Rick Priestly and Jervis Johnson
• 2016 - Time Commanders returns for one series of 3 episodes/wargames
• 2020 - Dstl opens the UK's first dedicated military wargaming centre
• 2020 - The first VCOW held as COVID puts the traditional COW plans on hold.
• 2021 - The last COW held at Knuston Hall
• 2022 - COW 2022 held at the Defence Academy

There is also a more detailed timeline covering similar ground but more US centric at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~beattie/timeline2.html