"Wargaming: The Illusion of “Balance”" Topic

"In a typical tabletop wargame, two forces meet in a pitched battle: one against the other. Warhammer 40k, Age of Sigmar, or even an accurate recreation of a real-life historical skirmish, it doesn't matter. There's something enjoyable and thrilling (perhaps, a tad sadistic) about miniature wargaming. Of course, a major draw for games is the human element and community that builds around this common gaming interest.

It is amusing that we invest so much into the idea of gameplay balance in wargaming. Balance is an illusion.

In this article, I hope to share a thought about the paradox of "balance" in binary conflict as played out in typical tabletop wargames. In other words, I think a better description for the overarching description of a two-player tabletop wargame (using miniatures, of course!) is controlled, organized chaos…"

Main page
link

Armand

Points and terrain.
Krupp guns in a closed up terrain?
Cuirassier in marshes?

(smile)

Armand

to be honest I wrestled to the end and found it was really overly biased and certainly from my point of view worthles on the basis that it failed fundamentallty to capture what a wargame is, the author using illustrations from some of the worst wargames rules I recognise.

Balance is not waht we strive for, we we game to play out a scenario, a story if you will. That scenario has an initial impusion for the players, defend X whille Y is to attack. However it is never clear whether those objective are even possible with the resources provided. What then occours is a story and learning experience, requireing understaning of how to concentrate the available resources in time and space to achieve what the players consider a reasonable solution, which may or may not be the initail ones in the impulsion.

Notice that in no place in this text is the word balance mentioned or is indeed a useful description of a good wargame. The adding of the pictures seemed pointless, for a supposed "learned paper".

Tango

Let somebody else post too

To really test yourself fight against odds being outnumbered 3-1 or more.

Wolfhag