p.12 All wargames derive from that earliest and simplest of wargames:
chess.
p.13 A wargame is an attempt to get a jump on the future
by obtaining a better understanding of the past. A wargame is a combination of "game," history and science. It is a paper
time-machine. Basically, it's glorified chess. If you've never encountered a wargame before, it's easiest to just
think of it as chess with a more complicated playing board and a more complex way of moving your pieces and taking your opponents.
p.52 You now begin to see that technical expertise will take
you only so far. A lot of it is psychological. Much of it depends on the other player making a mistake or something as simple
as putting one unit in the wrong hex, putting it in a position that looks OK at first, but on further analysis is not OK at
all. In this respect, playing the games is much like playing chess. There are tremendous similarities and the
last time we checked, more than 98 percent of wargamers had played chess. To be successful with wargames, you've
got to plan, look ahead and be lucky.
p.64 Chess by mail has been around for years. It certainly changes
the style and tempo of the game... Oh, by the way, about two percent of wargamers (according to several decades of surveys)
indulge in play by mail, but these tend to be a very active and interesting two percent.
p.90 By dynamic I mean how and to what limits the various
elements of the game may be manipulated. Every historical situation has this dynamic potential. Most history books
or films are presented as a linear rendering of what went on, so there is no potential for exercising this dynamic. A game,
of course, is just the opposite. Its elements are meant to be exercised and a player will often do this in his head with the
aid of the game components.
p.93 Chess, I should point out, is a rather
accurate rendering of tactical warfare in this period [3100 B.C. to A.D. 600]. Indeed, it is a fairly accurate rendering
of warfare (with some exceptions which we will get to) up until the last few hundred years.
p.140 Chess is one of the oldest surviving ancient wargames.
Games similar to chess go back thousands of years. Chess is also one of the more accurate wargames for the period it covers
(the pregunpowder period).
p.140 For thousands of years, chess and variants of chess were
used by civilian and military personnel alike for entertainment, education, for "simulation." As more education, leisure time
and technical sophistication became available, the games themselves expanded in a similar fashion.
p.228 Wargames in the military have a long history, as the concept
of working out battles ahead of time struck many ancient soldiers as an easy way to gain an advantage. Chess was an
ancient wargame developed to train apprentice commanders on the finer points of battlefield operations as they then existed.
In the 1700s and 1800s, chess developed into more complex wargames that most gamers today would recognize.
p.264 Chess was originally an accurate model of pre-gunpowder
combat.
p.265 A model is working when it begins to raise questions.
p.266 Your potential opponent must be modeled accurately.
p.268 This is the end of the book. [JLJ - Thanks for telling
us that. But it is not the end of the book.]
p.278 Up Against the Wall, Motherf----- (1969)-
The game of the student takeover of the Columbia University campus in the Spring of 1968. I was a student
there at the time and, although I didn't participate in the action, several friends did. Some of these lads worked on the
school newspaper (The Columbia Spectator) and they asked me to do a game on the event for the first anniversary special issue
of The Spectator. I agreed to do the game as long as they published it under the name of my choosing. Although I was
an elderly 25 years old at the time (attending Columbia under the GI Bill), I still had the spirit of the 60s. The
game title caused a bit of a stir, but the game was a simple and accurate representation of the power struggle that went on
in the Spring of '68.
