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Little Wars

H. G. Wells

330 ratings
Little Wars | H. G. Wells

Little Wars

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Miniature wargaming got its start with this thoroughly entertaining little account of how H.G. Wells, with certain of his friends, took their childhood toys and turned play into acceptable middle-aged sport by subjecting the exercise to the civilizing influence of actual rules.

While wargaming progressed far past these beginnings, Wells observes how “little wars” with even his elementary rules can suggest the wholesale crudity of the real thing.

“You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but–the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.”

Wells leaves almost hanging the tantalizing concept that we might someday simulate war, as an instrument of international decision-making, rather than practice actual combat.

But most of this book is just the fun of evicting the boys from the playroom and spending happy days there, away from the “skirt-swishers”, developing the framework under which two gentlemen might meet and accumulate boastable victories!
minute and discharge an alarm note at the end of the move. That would abolish the rather boring strain of time-keeping. One could just watch the fighting.

Moreover, in our desire to bring the game to a climax, we decided that instead of a fight to a finish we would fight to some determined point, and we found very good sport in supposing that the arrival of three men of one force upon the back line of the opponent's side of the country was of such strategic importance as to determine the battle. But this form of battle we have since largely abandoned in favour of the old fight to a finish again. We found it led to one type of battle only, a massed rush at the antagonist's line, and that our arrangements of time-limits and capture and so forth had eliminated most of the concluding drag upon the game.

Our game was now very much in its present form. We considered at various times the possibility of introducing some complication due to the bringing up of ammunition or supplies generally, and we decided that it would add little to the interest or reality of the game. Our battles are little brisk fights in which one may suppose that all the ammunition and food needed are carried by the men themselves.

But our latest development has been in the direction of killing hand to hand or taking prisoners. We found it necessary to distinguish between an isolated force and a force that was merely a projecting part of a larger force. We made a definition of isolation. After a considerable amount of trials we decided that a man or a detachment shall be considered to be isolated when there is less than half its number of its own side within a move of it. Now, in actual civilised warfare small detached bodies do not sell their lives dearly; a considerably larger force is able to make them prisoners without difficulty. Accordingly we decided that if a blue force, for example, has one or more men isolated, and a red for

Russ 12/25/2022
This little book sits at the root of the tree of all wargames and roleplaying games. It is a direct ancestor of tabletop games like Warhammer 40k, D&D and military board games. Its descendants also include most electronic titles, including Civilization, World of Warcraft, and Bioshock. This is the f
Terri 11/24/2021
This little book about wargaming was interesting and humorous, but much too detailed for me, because I have no interest in wargaming. It is entertaining to think about H.G. Wells and his adult male friends lying and crawling around on the floor or lawn moving toy soldiers and weapons around for hour
Matthew 01/11/2021
Illustrations or quotations from this little booklet appear in news articles now and then: photos of the author (or friends) lounging on the lawn in straw boaters, or a choice outrageously-Victorian/Edwardian-sexist phrase. I was planning to re-read Featherstone but instead started here at the begin
Miltiadis 05/05/2020
This is perhaps the first book on wargaming. When I was a child I used to do the same as the author. I played little wars in my room and then I wrote them down in my copy book. Well, this book reminds me very much of the times when I was playing "battles" and made plans and pretended I was a real ge
Anna 07/16/2018
BRILLIANT.
John 08/06/2011
Honestly, this is basically the great grandfather to military wargames (excluding the military uses of strategy and tactics via games which dates back to ancient Egypt, this was for the masses). Its a rulebook basically, in comparison to the hundreds of wargames on the market now - quite simple, but
Owen 03/06/2008
Almost 100 years ago, an after-dinner round of target shooting with a friend's son's toy cannon inspired H. G. Wells to create a set of rules for fighting orderly, realistic battles with toy soldiers. In the process of perfecting his game he bought hundreds of toy soldiers, built obsessively detaile

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