The Art of Wargaming: A Guide for Professionals and Hobbyists

by John Curry, Peter Perla, Peter P. Perla

Book Overview

Traces the history of war games, looks at how they have been used by the Navy War College, and defines the fundamental principles of designing, playing and evaluating war games. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870210505
• ISBN13: 9780870210501
• Release Date: January 1990
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Wargaming History Survey

This is a decent book. It gives an excellent history of wargaming through the ages, and covers the 70's period extremely well (taking me for a walk down memory lane). I agree with the other esteemed reviewers on the rest of the book, it's worth a read.

An excellent reference book on wargaming

The most comprehensive book on the subject Wargaming from an insider -- Dr. Peter Perla. His theoretical approach to the making of this book combines with actual practices make this book an immensely useful and thought-provoking reference as to historical development, principles of designing and analyzing wargames. Mr. Perla is a naval guy and so there is much coverage on the naval game simulation at the start and in the end part of predicting the future use of wargames. If you can pass these rather technical materials drawn from his extensive experience in the Center for naval Analyses since 1977 where he works as a naval operations research analyst, you can find a vibrant, knowledgeable and insightful as to the modern commercial wargames. A lot of these games are covered especially those from SPI, Avalon Hill and Victory Games. You may jump to read Chapter 3 onwards to Chapter 9 if you are a hobbyist yourselves. Perla's book is more scholarlistic and hard to chew on than James Dunnigan's "The Complete Wargame Handbook". But at the same time, this book offers more depth and breadth on the subject. Highly recommended. The book was first published in 1990. Grab a copy of it before it goes out-of-print.

Conceptual and Helpful

The first half of the book focuses on the history of wargaming, and is quite informative. The second half deals with concepts pertaining to design and use of wargames in the both the professional and hobby industries. Modern commercial wargame designers could learn a lot from reading this book.

A must read for any wargaming enthusiast.

Perla's extensive research into the background and history of wargames, along with the books acceptional chapters on designing and playing wargames make it a comprehensive guide for both the FNG (the NG part stands for new guy, the F yu can figure out) and the professional. A must read for any wargaming enthusiast.