Instead, most of the squares are blank, while some of them occasionally had special markings. While this games is remarkably similar to chess, there are a few key differences. The player controls 8 warriors (similar to pawns), and a number of special pieces including the Raja (king), chariots, elephants, and horses. The board is separated into an 8 by 8 grid of squares, and each player controls two rows of pieces that represent their “army”. This game comes from ancient India, and is the ancestor of many modern war strategy games. This may have been on purpose, however – it is theorized that the unbalanced arrangement of the board is meant to represent the asymmetry of a Viking raid, as the Vikings were the main people who played and spread this game.Īnother ancient military strategy game is known as Chaturanga. While this game may have been an early pioneer of asymmetric play, it is also considered to be quite unbalanced. The goal of the king was to escape (by making it either to the edges or corners of the board), while the goal of the opponent was to capture the king. The other player had the larger force, and their pieces were arranged around the board, surrounding the king and his forces. One player had a king piece, and their pieces were arranged towards the center. Both armies had different numbers of pieces (one army had twice the number of pieces as the other), and were arranged differently around the board. In Tafl, the two players have distinctly different goals, and different resources. Tafl is a particularly interesting example because it is not only one of the earliest wargames, but also one of the earliest asymmetric games. Maybe? *shrugs*Īnother ancient military strategy game comes from Scandinavia in the 4th century AD, known as Tafl. What we do know about this game is that it was played on a gridded board (somewhere between (7 x 8) to (9 x 10)), and it is likely that it did not differentiate between different pieces like later strategy games would. Many archaeologists have tried recreating the rule-sets, often with quite differing results. It may also be based upon an even older game known as Petteia, although even less is known about that game. This game was played in ancient Rome, and although very little is known about it it is believed to be a game of military strategy. While early war games tested martial prowess, the earliest known military strategy game dates to the first century B.C., and was known as Ludus Latrunculorum. Some of the most impressive of these early war games were the naval battles held in the Colosseum, in which two mock navies fought for control of the waters. These games ranged from early combat sports teaching armed and unarmed combat, to massive spectacles involving hundreds of participants. These early war games are some of the earliest competitions known to man, and evolved significantly over time. The earliest known war games were not board games, but instead mock-battles and sparring fights used to practice and test a warrior’s skills. Much like race games, war games go back thousands of years. Instead, I will be including any board game that deliberately tries to thematically or mechanically emulate a battle. I will also not be restricting myself specifically to the modern definition of wargames – large, complicated games full of miniatures and figures that try to simulate battles as accurately as possible. In this article, I will be referring primarily to strategy board games that are used to simulate military conflict. It can be used to refer to everything from military training exercises, to first person shooter games such as Call of Duty, to a category of strategy board games, to certain types of paintball. This term actually has a number of different meanings. Along the way I hope to see how this genre evolved over time, and see what lessons can be learned along the way.īefore I begin, I want to clear up exactly what I mean when I refer to wargames. In this article, I want to take a look at these games, from the very earliest ancient war games to modern, massive combat simulations. In the same way, games based around war have been around nearly as long as war itself. The concept of a race is very ancient – documented races date back to 3800 years ago, and people have certainly been racing eachother much longer than that. One of the reasons that race games have been around for so long is their simple, relatable premise. Today, I am going to continue this series by examining another very ancient category of board games – war strategy games. A few weeks ago I wrote an article describing some of the most ancient games of all time, known as race games (if you haven’t read it, you can check it out here).
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