History of Wargaming

A History of Wargaming Timeline

This timeline has been culled from a variety of sources (listed at the end) to give an idea of the long and rich history of both the hobby and professional use of wargames. WD events often include presentations on different aspects of wargaming history and our own John Curry runs the History of Wargaming Project which make many old hobby and professional rule sets available to the modern player, designer and researcher.

 

the game of war - bonhams auction
  • ~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


Sources

  • Appleget, J., Burks, R. and Cameron, F. (2020) The craft of wargaming the craft of wargaming: A detailed planning guide for defense planners and analysts. Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute Press.
  • Dunnigan, J. F. (1993) The complete wargames handbook: How to play, design and find them. New York, NY: William Morrow.
  • Hyde, H. (2015) The Wargaming Compendium. Barnsley, England: Pen & Sword Military.
  • Perla, P. (2011). Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming. Ed: J. Curry. The History of Wargaming Project. UK.
  • Sabin, P. (2012) Simulating War. Fakenham: Continuum.
  • Wilson, A. (1970) War Gaming. Middlesex: Pelican Books.