c’mon guys, several players weren’t present at game start, they started as early as possible and then got grumpy around dinner time, and someone thought it would be a good idea to commence the day drinking before Moscow fell–-that’s the classic Axis and Allies game at home.
US military has been rich with nerds and gamers for a long time. We play with a teacher from the Gen. Staff College from Leavenworth, who plays games for a living and who teaches a class on how wargames and their play can inform the conduct of actual battle.
Modern wargames are connected to the first Kriegspiele developed for the Prussian General Staff, which may or may not have inspired similar efforts by HG Wells and other 20th century innovators.
The first wargames were WAR SIMS to prepare for real war, which is pretty sweet because while Chess (and go and other Asian and Scandinavian variants) imitates the grand themes of war and battle, those are not really wargames
Its a rare example of a type of game that began as an extremely serious and formal exercise that has developed into a hobby or part-time pastime rather than the other way around. Many other non-game exercises like horse riding were once deadly serious but are now for amusement and exercise however, D&D was not created as a way of training actors or politicians, Chainmail was not created to train gladiators to fight or figure out which fighters to bet on, Monopoly is not a business school case study or capitalist training exercise that later became a board game…
But AxA has its roots in real war!
