International Federation of Wargaming
The International Federation of Wargaming was a wargaming club operated from 1967 to early 1970s. Founded by Bill Speer, Gary Gygax, Scott Duncan in 1967, it emerged as a successor to an earlier club called the United States Continental Army Command, founded by Speer, it was founded as a society dedicated board promotion of the publication of wargames. The IFW distinguished itself as a more mature club than its rivals in the early American wargaming hobby, its membership included gamers in local wargaming clubs such as the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association and the Midwest Military Simulation Association. IFW members participated in various "societies" within the IFW for special interests, such as the Castle & Crusade Society, which promoted medieval wargaming, the Armored Operations Society, which emphasized World War II wargaming; the IFW ceased functioning around 1973. The IFW held its first annual convention in Malvern, Pennsylvania in July 1967, though it was only a year when Gary Gygax hosted the annual convention on behalf of the IFW in his home town of Lake Geneva, that the Lake Geneva Wargames Convention was born.
By publishing a magazine and sponsoring the early Gen Cons, the IFW helped wargamers share ideas and meet wargamers from different parts of the country
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
Tractics
Tractics: Rules for WWII Miniatures is a set of wargaming rules for conducting World War II style combat with 1:285 scale micro armour miniatures. It was written to use 1/87 scale miniatures which were available at the time of its writing. Written by Mike Reese and Leon Tucker with contributions by Gary Gygax, the game was published by Guidon Games in 1971 and republished by TSR, Inc. in 1975. It came, it has the distinction of being the first published game to use a 20-sided die. TSR printed about 5,000 copies of the game and let it go out of print in 1977; the name of the game recalls the popular Avalon Hill board wargame Tactics II. Although World War II style combat was popular with board wargamers, few miniature wargamers were enacting World War II battles in the mid-1960s, in part because appropriate miniatures were scarce. In 1968 Reese and Tucker, two members of the LGTSA, began play-testing rules for tank combat that would form the core of Tractics. Gygax contributed some rules on infantry, covered in the second booklet, the third booklet would cover additional topics such as airstrikes and the MODERN period.
The rules are for the dedicated wargaming enthusiast. The players must first build the terrain. Reese and Tucker were interested in an accurate simulation, as a result the game provides data describing the rate of movement, thickness of armor, rate of fire for the makes of tank in service from 1940 to 1970; the game is slower to conduct than a board wargame such as Tactics II. For miniature wargamers who felt that the amount of detail was excessive and Tucker recommended their earlier Fast Rules although that set covered World War II only. Tractics requires the use of a judge. A player does not know where his enemy is located, pieces are placed in the playing area only when they come into open view or are detected by active observation. Tanks have a base 30% chance to hit a target. Modifiers apply depending upon factors such as. Tractics at BoardGameGeek
HO scale
HO or H0 is a rail transport modelling scale using a 1:87 scale. It is the most popular scale of model railway in the world; the rails are spaced 16.5 mm apart for modelling 1,435 mm standard gauge tracks and trains in HO. The name HO comes from 1:87 scale being half that of O scale, the smallest of the series of older and larger 0, 1, 2 and 3 gauges introduced by Märklin around 1900. In most English-speaking markets it is pronounced "aitch-oh" and written with the letters HO today, but in other markets remains written with the letter H and number 0, so in German it is pronounced as "hah-null". After the First World War there were several attempts to introduce a model railway about half the size of 0 scale that would be more suitable for smaller home layouts and cheaper to manufacture. H0 was created to meet these aims. For this new scale, a track width of 16.5 mm was designed to represent prototypical standard gauge track, a model scale of 1:87 was chosen. By as early as 1922 the firm Bing in Nuremberg, had been marketing a "tabletop railway" for several years.
This came on a raised, quasi-ballasted track with a gauge of 16.5 mm, described at that time either as 00 or H0. The trains had a clockwork drive, but from 1924 were driven electrically. Accessory manufacturers, such as Kibri, marketed buildings in the corresponding scale. At the 1935 Leipzig Spring Fair, an electric tabletop railway, Trix Express, was displayed to a gauge described as "half nought gauge", abbreviated as gauge 00. Märklin, another German firm, followed suit with its 00 gauge railway for the 1935 Leipzig Autumn Fair; the Märklin 00 gauge track that appeared more than ten years after Bing's tabletop railway had a similar appearance to the previous Bing track. On the Märklin version, the rails were fixed to the tin'ballast' as in the prototype, whilst the Bing tracks were stamped into the ballast, so that track and ballast were made of single sheet of metal. HO scale trains elsewhere were developed in response to the economic pressures of the Great Depression; the trains first appeared in the United Kingdom as an alternative to 00 gauge, but could not make commercial headway against the established 00 gauge.
However, it became popular in the United States, where it took off in the late 1950s after interest in model railroads as toys began to decline and more emphasis began to be placed on realism in response to hobbyist demand. While HO scale is by nature more delicate than 0 scale, its smaller size allows modelers to fit more details and more scale miles into a comparable area. In the 1950s HO began to challenge the market dominance of 0 gauge and, in the 1960s, as it began to overtake 0 scale in popularity the stalwarts of other sizes, including Marx and Lionel Corporation began manufacturing HO trains. Today, HO locomotives, rolling stock and scenery are available from a large number of manufacturers in a variety of price brackets. Most modern HO trains run on two-rail track powered by direct current, or by Digital Command Control. Other trains, such as those manufactured by Märklin, run on alternating current and use a "third rail" of small protruding studs between the running rails. On simple temporary layouts, power is supplied by a power pack consisting of a transformer and rectifier, a rheostat for regulating power to the track, reversing to control model direction.
On permanent layouts, multiple power supplies are traditionally used, with the trackage divided into electrically isolated sections called blocks. With the advent of digital command control, block divisions are eliminated, as the computerized controllers can control any train anywhere on the track at any time. For Europe it is defined in the Normen Europäischer Modellbahnen standard NEM 010 published by MOROP as 1:87. For North America the National Model Railroad Association standard S-1.2 defines HO scale 3.5 mm as representing 1 real foot —a ratio of 1:87.0857142 rounded to 1:87.1. The precise definition of HO or H0 scale varies by country and manufacturer. HO is the most popular model railroad scale in both continental Europe and North America, whereas OO scale is still dominant in Britain. There are some modellers in Great Britain who use HO scale, the British 1:87 Scale Society was formed in 1994. In other hobbies, the term HO is used more loosely than in railroad modeling. In slot car racing, HO does not denote a precise scale of car, but a general size of track on which the cars can range from 1:87 to 1:64 scale.
Small plastic model soldiers are popularly referred to as HO size if they are close to one inch high, though the actual scale is 1:76 or 1:72. In model railroading, the term HO can be stretched; some British producers have marketed railway accessories such as detail items and figures, as "HO/OO" in an attempt to make them attractive to modelers in either scale. Sometimes the actual scale was OO, sometimes it split the difference; these items may be marketed as HO in the US. In addition, some manufacturers or importers tend to label any small-scale model, regardless of exact scale, as HO scale in or
Perfect information
In economics, perfect information is a feature of perfect competition. With perfect information in a market, all consumers and producers have perfect and instantaneous knowledge of all market prices, their own utility, own cost functions. In game theory, a sequential game has perfect information if each player, when making any decision, is informed of all the events that have occurred, including the "initialization event" of the game. Chess is an example of a game with perfect information as each player can see all the pieces on the board at all times. Other examples of games with perfect information include tic-tac-toe, infinite chess, Go. Card games where each player's cards are hidden from other players such as poker and bridge are examples of games with imperfect information. Academic literature has not produced consensus on a standard definition of perfect information which defines whether games with chance, but no secret information, games with simultaneous moves are games of perfect information.
Games which are sequential and which have chance events but no secret information, are sometimes considered games of perfect information. This includes games such as Monopoly, but there are some academic papers which do not regard such games as games of perfect information because the results of chance themselves are unknown prior to them occurring. Games with simultaneous moves are not considered games of perfect information; this is because each of the players holds information, secret, must play a move without knowing the opponent's secret information. Some such games are symmetrical, fair. An example of a game in this category includes rock–paper–scissors. Complete information Extensive form game Information asymmetry Partial knowledge Perfect competition Screening game Signaling game Fudenberg, D. and Tirole, J. Game Theory, MIT Press. Gibbons, R. A primer in game theory, Harvester-Wheatsheaf. Luce, R. D. and Raiffa, H. Games and Decisions: Introduction and Critical Survey, Wiley & Sons The Economics of Groundhog Day by economist D.
W. MacKenzie, using the 1993 film Groundhog Day to argue that perfect information, therefore perfect competition, is impossible
Miniature wargaming
Miniature wargaming is a form of wargaming in which players enact battles between opposing military forces that are represented by miniature physical models. The use of physical models to represent military units is in contrast to other tabletop wargames that use abstract pieces such as counters or blocks, or computer wargames which use virtual models; the primary benefit of using models is aesthetics, though in certain wargames the size and shape of the models can have practical consequences on how the match plays out. A miniature wargame is played with miniature models of soldiers and vehicles on a model of a battlefield; the primary benefit of using models as opposed to abstract pieces is an aesthetic one. Models offer a visually-pleasing way of identifying the units on the battlefield. In most miniature wargame systems, the model itself may be irrelevant as far as the rules are concerned. Distances between infantry units are measured from the base of the model; the exception to this trend may be models of vehicles such as tanks, which do not require a base to be stable and have rectangular shapes.
Some miniature wargames use the dimensions of the model do determine whether a target behind cover is within line-of-fire of an attacker. Most miniature wargames are turn-based. Players take turns to move their model warriors across the model battlefield and declare attacks on the opponent. In most miniature wargames, the outcomes of fights between units are resolved through simple arithmetic, sometimes combined with dice rolls or playing cards. All wargames have a setting, based on some historical era of warfare; the setting determines. For instance, a wargame set in the Napoleonic Wars should use models of Napoleonic-era soldiers, wielding muskets and cannons, not spears or automatic rifles. A fantasy wargame has a fictional setting and may thus feature fictional or anachronistic armaments, but the setting should be similar enough to some real historical era of warfare so as to preserve a reasonable degree of realism. For instance, Warhammer Age of Sigmar is based on medieval warfare, but includes supernatural elements such as wizards and dragons.
The most popular historical settings are World War 2, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War. The most popular fantasy setting is Warhammer 40,000. Miniature wargames are played either at the tactical level. At the skirmish level, the player controls his warriors individually, whereas in a tactical level game he controls groups of warriors—typically the model warriors are mounted in groups on the same base. Miniature wargames are not played at the strategic or operational level because at that scale the models would become imperceptibly tiny. Miniature wargames are played for recreation, as the physical limitations of the medium prevents it from representing modern warfare enough for use in military instruction and research; these models were made of tin or lead, but nowadays they are made of polystyrene or resin. Plastic models are cheaper to mass-produce but require a larger investment because they require expensive steel molds. Lead and tin models, by contrast, can be cast in cheap rubber molds.
Larger firms such as Games Workshop prefer to produce plastic models, whereas smaller firms with less money prefer metal models. Wargaming figurines come with unrealistic body proportions, their hands may be oversized. One reason for this is to make the models more robust: thicker parts are less to bend or break. Another reason is that manufacturing methods stipulate a minimum thickness for casting. Odd proportions may make the model look better for its size by accentuating certain features that the human eye focuses on. Wargaming models are sold in parts. In the case of plastic models, they're sold still affixed to their sprues; the player is expected to glue them together. This is the norm because, depending on the design of the model, it may not be possible to mold it whole, selling the parts un-assembled saves on labor costs. After assembling the model, the player should paint it to make it more presentable and easier to identify. Understandably, the time and skill involved in assembling and painting models deters many people from miniature wargaming.
Some firms have tried to address this by selling pre-assembled and pre-painted models, but these are rare because, with current technologies, it's hard to mass-produce ready-to-play miniatures that are both cheap and match the beauty of hand-painted models. The other options for players are to hire a professional painter. Historical miniature wargames are designed to use generic models. It's not possible to copyright the look of a historical soldier. Anyone, for instance, may produce miniature models of Napoleonic infantrymen. A player of a Napoleonic-era wargame could thus obtain his models from any manufacturer who produces Napoleonic models at the requisite scale. It's difficult if not impossible for a historical wargame designer to oblige players to buy models from a certain manufacturer. By contrast, fantasy wargames feature fictional warriors, fictional characters can be copyrighted. By incorporating original characters into his wargame, a wargame designer can oblige the player to purchase his models from a specific manufacturer, licensed to produce the re
Wargame
A wargame is a type of strategy game that simulates warfare realistically, as opposed to abstract strategy games such as chess. A wargame does not involve the activities of actual military forces, better called a field training exercise; the term "wargame" should not be applied to sports such as paintball. Wargames are not a reliable tool for predicting how a commander might react in a hypothetical scenario that he has never faced in the field. There is substantial literature in psychology that shows that humans are bad at predicting how they'd react in hypothetical situations, although wargames do deliver somewhat more reliable predictions than pure thought experiments. Wargames can give hints as to how a commander might react, these hints could be explored and tested through other methods. Wargames on their own are not suitable for disproving technical or tactical theories. Wargames have much more utility as training tools, some military experts contend that that's all they're good for. Wargames are good for training students to respond in a situation, known to provoke bad decisions.
For this purpose, it is not necessary for the wargame to be realistic, it must at least be convincing enough that when the commander encounters the real situation in the field, it will be familiar to him and his trained response will be triggered. Wargames can train students on how to better apply abstract principles of warfare in actual battlefield conditions. A professional wargame is one, employed by a military for the purposes of training or research. A recreational wargame is played for pleasure by civilians. While a wargame does not involve the activities of actual military forces, military command and associated staff may operate in a physical command and control center and execute their decision-making as if the simulation were real. A wargame must at least involve one human player, otherwise it's a mere simulation. Although wargames are adversarial, a wargame need not have clear victory conditions, nor does it have to give each player a fair chance of winning; this is common in military wargames, which are for research and training, not competition.
Real-world conflicts, after all, are fair and do not always have clear winners and losers. By contrast, recreational wargames are designed for competitive play and are structured around fairness and clear victory conditions. A wargame must have a setting, based on some historical era of warfare so as to establish what armaments the combatants may wield and the environment they fight in. A historical setting depicts a real historical era of warfare. Among recreational wargamers, the most popular historical era is World War 2. Professional military wargamers prefer the modern era. A fantasy setting depicts a fictional world in which the combatants wield fictional or anachronistic armaments, but it should be similar enough to some historical era of warfare such that the combatants fight in a familiar and credible way. For instance, Warhammer Age of Sigmar has wizards and dragons, but the combat is based on medieval warfare. A wargame's scenario describes the circumstances of the specific conflict being simulated, from the layout of the terrain to the exact composition of the fighting forces to the mission objectives of the players.
Historical wargamers re-enact historical battles. Alternatively, players may construct a fictional scenario, it is easier to design a balanced scenario where either player has a fair chance of winning if it is fictionalized. Board wargames have a fixed scenario. A wargame's level of war determines to the scope of the scenario, the basic unit of command, the degree to which lower level processes are abstracted. At the tactical level, the scenario is a single battle; the basic unit of command is an individual soldier or small group of soldiers. The time span of the scenario is in the order of minutes. At this level, the specific capabilities of the soldiers and their armaments are described in detail. An example of a tactical-level games is Flames of War, in which players use miniature figurines to represent individual soldiers, move them around on a scale model of the battlefield. At the operational level, the scenario is a military campaign, the basic unit of command is a large group of soldiers.
At this level, the outcomes of battles are determined by a simple computation. At the strategic level, the scenario is an entire war; the player addresses higher-level concerns such as economics and diplomacy. The time span of the game is in the order of years. Flames of War is a tactical-level historical miniature wargame that simulates land battles during World War 2. TACSPIEL is an operational-level military wargame developed in the 1960s by the US Army for research into guerilla warfare. Hearts of Iron IV is a strategic-level computer wargame set in the mid-20th century. Wings of War is tactical-level historical wargame. Star Wars: X-Wing is a fantasy wargame whose rules are based on Wings of War. No wargame can be realistic. A wargame's design must make trade-offs between realism and fun. Military wargames need to be realistic, because their purpose is to prepare officers for real warfare. Recreational wargames only need to be realistic to the degree that the players can suspend their disbelief—they need to be credible, if not realistic.
Fantasy wargames arguably stretch the definition of wargaming by representing fictional or anachronistic armaments, but they may st
