The Complete Book of Wargames

• 1. Introduction

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  The Complete Book of Wargames appeared in 1980, written by Jon Freeman with the editors of Consumer Guide and published by Simon & Schuster under its Fireside imprint. Readers could buy it as a 285-page hardcover or as a paperback, and both editions split the material into two very unequal parts. One part explained what wargaming even was. The other part judged the games themselves, era by era and genre by genre. Critics who picked up the book that year and the next did not agree on much. They argued over who it was really written for, and how long its information would stay useful. They also disagreed about whether the word "complete" belonged on the cover at all. Those disagreements point toward two questions worth answering. What exactly did Freeman try to fit between two covers? And did the people reviewing wargames for a living think he pulled it off?

• 2. Two Parts, One Aim

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  Part 1, called "An Introduction to Wargames," takes up about a quarter of the book across five short chapters. The first, "Can War Be Fun?," sketches a brief history of wargaming and names some notable companies. It also describes the kind of people who play. "The Nature of the Beast" tackles definitions head-on, weighing realism against playability. "All's Not Fair" walks through the physical pieces of a wargame: hexfields and terrain, the Combat Resolution Table, and the rulebook itself. A chapter titled "Kassala" then hands readers an actual introductory game, built to demonstrate everything the previous three chapters described. The section closes with "Playing to Win." It covers victory conditions, reading a Combat Resolution Table, maximizing odds, using terrain, and defensive hexgrid tactics.

  Part 2, "Evaluating the Games," fills the remaining three-quarters of the book with capsule reviews. Seven of its chapters sort games by historical era, moving from the ancient world up through the Second World War. Separate chapters then branch out to cover modern, post-WWII warfare, science fiction, fantasy, role-playing games, and computer games. Those capsule reviews, one game at a time, are exactly what the era's critics would later hold up for scrutiny.

• 3. Split Verdicts

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  Nick Schuessler reviewed the book for Issue No. 32 of The Space Gamer, published in October 1980. He doubted that any single volume could keep pace with a game industry that was expanding fast. "The mercurial aspects of wargaming will probably leave any new publication a bit obsolete the day it's published," he wrote. Even so, he called the result "an excellent reference work available at (for a change) a reasonable price." He closed his review with two words: "Buy and enjoy."

  Four months later, Tony Watson reviewed the book for Dragon, in Issue 46, published in February 1981. Watson thought it was well-written, but he judged it of little value to experienced gamers, useful mainly to newcomers. He also felt it had gone stale within a few months of publication. "The variety of games available and the rapidity with which they are published has already rendered the topical evaluations obsolete," he wrote, "though they do touch on some of the more important and readily available games in those categories." A third critic, writing for Games magazine, would take issue with something neither Schuessler nor Watson had raised: the word "complete" itself.

• 4. A Misleading Title

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  Jamie Adams reviewed the book for Issue 25 of Games magazine, and his sharpest complaint was aimed straight at the cover. "Unfortunately, the title is misleading," he wrote. The book, he argued, "reviews and describes only board wargames." That left out miniatures wargaming entirely, along with fantasy role-playing games, which he considered "not wargames in any traditional sense."

  Adams also pointed to how fast the hobby itself was outpacing the book. "The hobby has been growing so quickly that much of the information is already out of date only a year after publication; for example, no mention is made of Yaquinto Publications, a major company formed after the book was written," he wrote. He also noted that many reviewed games were "no longer published by the companies credited with them, and may not be available at all."

  Despite the criticism, Adams closed his review on a positive note. He called the book "the most useful guide available both for those already drafted into wargames and for those thinking of enlisting." Even so, by his own account, several of the games it praised were already going out of print. That left readers of the guide chasing titles they could no longer buy.