The rumble and thunder of cannon, the grind of tank treads, the whirring thrum of aircraft engines sparking to life. War games stretch through history to bring humanity’s greatest conflicts to life, and not always through arms alone. Below we’ll look at how to navigate this immense and rewarding section of tabletop gaming so you can find your next adventure whether this is your first time with a paper map or if you’ve clipped a million counters.
First, a brief definition – in this piece, we’re referring to wargames as games where conflict is the core, striving for either victory points or objectives through direct competition. That net includes titles we’re not touching here, like Warhammer and Magic, but I’m betting you’ll be able to parse the difference.
The Many Ways to War Game
An easy way to see that difference is to look at how wargames present themselves: sure, many come in the boxes we know and love (though counters and paper maps mean those boxes tend to be smaller), but you’ll often find bonus scenarios or entire games included in magazines too.
Those magazine titles let you use counter trays like others might use loose miniatures to play a whole slew of scenarios and smaller games, a more or less steady infusion of entertainment without breaking the bank or filling your basement with endless boxes. This is especially true with games like Advanced Squad Leader, which act as modular systems to create fresh battles. An investment into ASL, then, means almost limitless gameplay potential.
Limitless, too, is an apt word to describe the decades of quality wargames out there. As you reach further back, you’ll find most come with paper maps, a potential shock to someone jumping from Catan. A little flexibility (and perhaps some plexiglass or poster sleeving) will turn your opinion though – a paper map not only cuts costs, but makes a title among the most portable board games around. Traces of War could be shoved in a large Ziploc bag and toted in your carry-on, a perfect way to get your hex-and-counter fix on the beach.
Piña Colada and a Soviet-Germany smash? Yes please.
Newer titles and classic older games are, though, often getting mounted maps to match up with their ‘modern’ board game counterparts. More than ever before, you can indulge in a little bit of cardboard luxury to spruce up your counter clashes. It’s worth doing a search on your favorite war games just to see what chrome might be around to make your gaming easier.
Similarly, Noble Knight offers war game collections to make jumping in an easier proposition. You’ll find expansions grouped with their core games, saving you time and money. Special deluxe versions live here too, offering one-of-a-kind versions perfect for collectors or gift-giving to the grognard in your life.
If all that sounds like a lot, consider it your basic training. You’re now armed with the terms and definitions, so read on to figure out just how to use them to either dive into a rich new world, or expand your war game collection into fresh, engaging titles.
Now, we could delve into the differences between card-drive war games, chit-pull, more pure hex-and-counter, and so on. Much like describing worker placement, trick-taking, or pick-up-and-deliver mechanisms for euro titles, though, these mechanics either have their own articles here in the Noble Knight Gaming Hall or will in the future. The short answer, with war gaming, is to pick a conflict that interests you and go from there.
Which, of course, leads us to just who is making all these war games in the first place.
War Game Publishers Past and Present
The variety above gives wargaming one of its most enduring strengths: a production flexibility that lets publishers big and small experiment, grow, and carve out their own place among players. If you’re looking for a new title to add to your collection, browsing the searchable catalogs of the publishers below are good places to start:
SPI: Strategic Publications, Inc. is a legendary publisher from the 1970s and early 80s, one that helped pioneer wargaming magazines with its Strategy and Tactics ‘zine. Amid classic magazine issues with unique scenarios, you’ll find classic titles worthy of exploration even today, like the somewhat insane Air War, an in-depth simulation where turns cover seconds in real time. It’s the sort of game Maverick would play.
Avalon Hill: Perhaps best known now for games like Axis and Allies and Risk, the Avalon Hill of yore delved deep into living legends like Squad Leader, Advanced Squad Leader, and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. A mix of classics and more accessible modern titles, the venerable publisher is bound to have something you’ll like.
GMT Games: Arguably the most prolific modern war game publisher, GMT is likely your first stop for a recent war game. With a catalog chock full of
classics like Paths of Glory, Twilight Struggle, Time of Crisis, and Space Empires, you could spend a lifetime playing GMT titles and never be bored.
Compass Games: Like GMT, Compass Games produces a range of quality war games covering all manner of themes, theaters, and eras. Their angle tends to be a bit different than GMT, giving you fresh flavor with games like Golden Age of Piracy, Night Fighter Ace, and Napoleon’s Eagles. I’ll often find myself getting a GMT title to cover a war’s operational level, and a Compass Games production to zoom into the same conflict from a unique perspective.
Multi-Man Publishing: Essentially the second coming of Avalon Hill’s war gaming arm, Multi-Man Publishing is where you’ll look for updated Advanced Squad Leader material and special titles like Storm over Jerusalem and Ardennes II.
Beyond these bigger publishers, numerous smaller publishers like Vuca Simulations, Legion Wargames, and Worthington Publishing infuse special designs into the game space. All are worth checking out, as you just might find your next favorite game in their catalogs.
Navigating Noble Knight’s War Game Store
How you find those titles depends on where you’re starting from. Starting with a conflict, like the Vietnam War, will leave you with a swath of titles ranging 
from solitaire adventures (Fields of Fire) to big asymmetric conflicts (Fire in the Lake). From there, you can zero in on a preferred designer, mechanic, or, perhaps the easiest, a publisher.
Noble Knight’s web store offers a slew of searchable items on any given game – from a product listing, you can zip to the publisher, category, and so on, but for war games, I find the Genre tag most useful. This essentially teleports you to all the titles in the conflict you’re looking to explore, and you can refine the search from there by type, publisher, category, and so on. Then, bookmark your preference and bam: you now have an easy way to access the games you’re interested in.
To save you a bit of time, here’s a quick list of common war gaming tags (presented in loose timeline order) ready to bring you straight to filtered cardboard goodness:
I also like the Solitaire/Solo genre search too, as you’ll find war games (among plenty of others) best suited for solo play here. And, if you’re looking for the essential war games for your collection, you can’t go wrong with the aptly named Popular War Games collection.
If you prefer a broad swath, you can always filter a search or venture through collections like Recent Arrivals and Bundled Game collections by clicking on the War Games category on the left. Both of those are good to glance at often just to throw more items on the Want List.
And lastly, while designer or author isn’t a linked genre, you can search on them. So if you’re looking for Richard Berg or Mark Herman, just drop their name in the search bar and you’ll get the whole list.
War gaming is more than a hobbyist niche – the hex-and-counter adventures of SPI and Avalon Hill in many ways paved the way for modern tabletop gaming. Rich in interactive gameplay, solitaire adventures, and history, war games deserve a spot in your collection. And if you’ve already gathered a few thousand counters, hopefully the above helps you find more joy in this wonderful hobby.
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