Reply To: Why don’t we already have the perfect wargame?

[limburger 21708xp 1]

@horus I think the combination of named characters, the ability to create your own as well as a neutral ‘enemy’ make this a great game for experimenting.

There’s also the fact that it doesn’t focus on defeating the opponent, but on completing your objectives.
You can play games very ‘rpg’ like because shooting/killing your opponent actually has negative consequences whereas in most wargames there rarely is a reason not to attack an enemy.

‘Clash of spears’ and ‘Chain of command’ that sort of do a ‘fog of war’ thing by having a ‘scouting phase’ where you move counters instead of actual units. It really adds to the strategy, because it is no longer “I place my strong unit here to oppose his” as it adds a bit of bluffing to the mix.
Instead you have to guess where his forces could be and you can find that the units that could counter his are on the ‘wrong side’ of the battlefield. It might not make a lot of sense in futuristic settings altough one could argue that when there are sensors that can ‘see’ more there’s bound to be tech that defeats said sensors (electronic warfare …).

Heck … overall the goal of a battle is still the same regardless of the hardware available. The real trick is finding a way to make period/technology specific tactics viable in game without adding a ton of exceptions and special rules (with slightly modified naming because flavour is more important than being able to remember them … ).

@athelstane I think having named characters helps. It even makes for better battle reports when you read ‘Gerry walked out of the house with a pistol’ instead of random enemy armed with pistol appears …