Reddit reviews One-hour Wargames: Practical Tabletop Battles for those with limited time and space
We found 3 Reddit comments about One-hour Wargames: Practical Tabletop Battles for those with limited time and space. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Pen Sword Books
I'm both a tabletop and a PC (war)gamer. I've played lots of wargames but enjoy videogames in general. My current favorite PC wargame is Unity of Command.
For me the tabletop has a tactile approach. I enjoy the hobby aspect -- collecting, assembling, kitbashing and painting -- as much or even a little more than actually playing.
Many PC wargames are indeed too convoluted and with difficult UIs (again, my favorite Unity of Command has a very streamlined UI). I've come to a point where I don't want to fight the UI or read a large manual to play a PC game. Videogames to me require almost instant gratification.
I was going to say "conversely, with tabletop wargames..." but actually, it's the same. My patience and spare time grow thinner as I get older. I really cannot stand convoluted wargames. Following the guidelines from Neil Thomas' One-Hour Wargames, I believe good wargames must be fast-play, simple, practical, and value gameplay over needless details and rules. This is why games such as Crossfire appeal to me: it's a tabletop wargame where the rules "melt away" as you play. Conversely, I was reading about Fistful of TOWs 3 400+ page manual and immediately knew it wasn't the wargame for me.
As for aesthetics: I value them in both PC and tabletop wargames. It's just that for something to be beautiful it doesn't need to be "realistic". Wooden blocks and a colorful map look beautiful to me. Still, I prefer miniatures in tabletop games.
How about One Hour Wargames by Neil Thomas?
These are pretty simple rules with each side only needing six units to make an army and covers Ancients up to WW2 with various rules for each era. There's also 30 different scenarios, each played on a 3'x3' table.
You can then use the Wargame: XXX series by Peter Dennis which are books bursting with full color paper standees. They've got Romans, Dark Ages, English Civil War, American War of Independence, Napoleonics, American Civil War, and more!
For OHW and a single Wargame: XXX book might be $40 total from Amazon, plus any more costs from copying the paper prints from the books, but that's far less than even a DBA army.
https://www.amazon.com/One-hour-Wargames-Practical-Tabletop-Battles/dp/1473822904/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496680547&sr=1-1&keywords=neil+thomas
https://www.picoarmor.com/war-shop/
The first link is for a set of rules "Practice Wargames" by Neil Thomas. They cover from Ancients to WWII. The second link is for Pico Armour. They sell 3mm miniatures for Napoleonics, American Civil War, WWI, and WWII. A very inexpensive way to collect two armies and start playing wargames. Hope this helps.