Tactical wargame

Tactical wargames offer more of a challenge to the designer, as fewer variables or characteristics inherent in the units being simulated are directly quantifiable.

Perhaps the most successful board wargaming system ever designed, Advanced Squad Leader, is set at the tactical level.

[citation needed] Jane's published several sets of rules for naval games in the early to mid-20th century.

[citation needed] Various games have different methods for resolution of combat results, a central core dynamic for any wargame.

AH issued a wide range of similar games in the years that followed, and established itself as the market leader in board wargames.

Dunnigan then crossed another boundary and became the first publisher to release a game on the then-ongoing Cold War, called Red Star/White Star: Tactical Combat in Western Europe in the 1970s.

Dunnigan tried to take tactical games into a new direction in 1973 with KampfPanzer and Desert War, which featured simultaneous movement, expanding on an optional rule for PanzerBlitz.

That same year, Avalon Hill released Panzer Leader: The Game of Tactical Warfare on the Western Front 1944-45.

Another funny situation is where a Tiger unit sits in the open and a Sherman comes out of nowhere and ends up adjacent to the Germans.

With ideal conditions, the Tiger can decimate the Shermans in no time flat without any "defensive" fire by the M-4s at all, and then move off....While Panzer Blitz, Panzer Leader and Arab-Israeli Wars are wonderful games, and demand a high degree of tactical ability to play, victory can be obtained in a manner very often that runs contrary to reason and a player's intelligence...

The new Simultaneous-Sequential-Play-System (SSPS) allowed for much greater realism without sacrificing playability, and was considered the new "state of the art" for tactical wargames.

(but) a squad level game...." Hill was well known, and had recently written an article in Moves entitled "Designing for Playability."

[1] The result was Squad Leader, which went on to become the best selling tactical wargame ever, spawning three add-ons (called "gamettes" by Avalon Hill) and an Advanced version which produced twelve "official" core modules, several historically based modules, a solitaire version, and hundreds of third party add-ons and variants.

Some innovative rules for such things as leadership and "penetrating fire" (to simulate the ability of automatic weapons on the battlefield to engage more than just one target) were introduced.

[3]Even the developers of Squad Leader admitted that "our troops assault with a tenacity that would make Kelly's Heroes proud.

"[4] The Tobruk game released by Avalon Hill prior to Squad Leader got little support from gamers or AH.

"With the exception of a few articles and scenarios in The General, there was never a follow-on game or expansion product for Tobruk enthusiasts.

Thus, one should not be the least bit surprised that Tobruk appeared to be expendable circa 1987, a year that happened to be the height of the ASL craze."

Hence, an artistic designer studies history with concern for the overall battlefield environment and how each specific weapon relates to it, as opposed to proving ground statistics.

Another game, IDF, appeared in 1993 that used the same rules as MBT, changing the setting from a fictional World War Three in Germany to the Middle East and the Arab–Israeli conflicts.

Robert Kern reported (in Fire & Movement Number 49 (Jul/Aug 1986)) that: "Experimentation is the main reason why our games have been so successful.

Other significant product lines appeared by producers GDW and Clash of Arms Games ("CofA").

which covers the First World War, primarily focusing on the appearance of tanks during the later years on the Western Front.

The long rumoured World War I expansion module appears to have been cancelled, however it may eventually be produced by a third-party manufacturer.

Due to the scales of these battles, most games tend to be miniatures-based without boards, and several popular rules systems have appeared.

However, several board versions have been produced over the past forty years, with most games focusing either on the Napoleonic Era or the first half of the 20th century.

Dice rolling, chit drawing, and other game functions are all recreated in these "virtual tabletop" systems, which can be played solo, by email, or live multi-player over the Internet, including the option of spectators.