"It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and some guns, and show by a groveling devotion your appreciation of this noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game I have given you." (66)

H. G. Wells' tongue-in-cheek comment comes at the end of his delightful "Little Wars." Subtitled "A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girls who like boys' games and books," this book is what many of us think of as the beginning of modern war gaming, though I wonder how many have actually read it. It was only recently that I came upon a reprint copy and found that Wells' prose served him as effectively with our game as it did with his fiction and historical writing.

Wells' 1913 publication came at the end of a period of significant interest in war gaming as a military exercise, at least judging by the number of war games manuals published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most were map or board oriented and they appear to have been rule and umpire bound affairs, not particularly interesting to modern miniature gamers, at least those interested in playability. (But I'm letting my bias show). Wells' rules were meant for play, not training, but attempted to capture the feel of the battlefield, from the commander's perspective, at least.

Little Wars began its creation when Wells and a friend found themselves in a playroom, alone with a collection of toy soldiers and cannons. Like many of us "grown up" guys, they couldn't resist setting up the soldiers and using them for target practice. Being grown-ups, they also soon found themselves creating a more structured environment for their play -- they began writing rules.

One of the big decisions in rules writing is how to determine casualties. Almost by default, given their origins, Wells' solutions are decidedly simple. Using working cannons solves the problem of casualties from fire. "If they fall down, they're dead" about sums it up! I recall another wargamer telling me about childhood games on the cellar floor where his father's rules included the same principle. It avoided many arguments among the young gamers. I recently acquired several firing cannons myself, hoping to play out the sample game he uses to describe the game. Unfortunately, my efforts to make the plastic figures more stable were too successful, and they wouldn't fall down! It's a bit more complicated to tell who's been hit when they don't topple over, but the game is entertaining nonetheless.

As for hand-to-hand combat, Wells' solution was also simple -- in one-to-one matchups, everybody dies. Can't get more basic than that! In cases where unequal numbers are involved, provision is made for taking prisoners and escorting them to the baseline for "internment."

In addition to these casualty producing methods, a number of features of "Little Wars" stick in my mind. Wells, and friends, found their battles degenerating into "fight to the finish" affairs, sometimes with a single drummer boy standing by the last gun surviving at the end of the battle. One of the tools to avoid this attitude was the introduction of a campaign point system which encouraged taking prisoners, and making strategic withdrawals when the battle was obviously lost. To provide more balance at the outset, a curtain was hung between the opposing sides, so that one player wasn't penalized by having to set up first. In larger battles closed boxes were used, both to facilitate the movement of troops and to add to the fog of war. Chess clock-like time limits on moves provided a sense of immediacy to each player's turn.

In the end, according to Wells, the rules "reached stability, and we regard them now with the virtuous pride of men who have persisted in a great undertaking and arrived at precision after much tribulation. There is not a piece of constructive legislation in the world, not a solitary attempt to meet a complicated problem, that we do not now regard the more charitably for our efforts to get a right result from this apparently easy and puerile business of fighting with tin soldiers on the floor." (36) A sentiment we might all take to heart before we complain too much about that set of rules we're using, what?

Aside from the rules themselves (and they are a fun set to play with), "Little Wars" is a good example of what a rule book can be. After describing their development, and then laying them out in a formal manner, Wells presents us with a battle report. It is in two parts, the first, written as General HGW, is a description of the Battle of Hook's Farm, a noticeably biased narrative, as those written by the victor often are! He follows that with a move by move description, complete with photographs of each position, demonstrating how the rules work on the "battlefield." An appendix includes suggestions for adapting the rules for the more serious purposes of Kriegspiel. The book is a model to use for comparison when we forget about the sentiment expressed in the previous paragraph, and complain about rule sets anyway.

"Little Wars" is interesting not only as a starting point in wargaming's history, but on other levels as well. As I read Wells' description of the rules' evolution, it was disconcerting to realize that the situation he was trying to avoid in his 1913 game anticipated the reality of the battlefields of Belgium and France a year later. The overwhelming firepower and relative immobility which plagued Wells, were problems that the generals in the Great War were unable to solve until after a generation of European youth were killed. I think Wells understood the real life implications of his game's problems. In any case, his pacifist roots are certainly apparent in his closing chapter. While abhorring "Great War," he found no problem in enjoying "Little War." And, accepting the fact that Great War would likely occur, he was at least hopeful that Little War, or its Kriegspiel cousins, would make the practitioners more efficient about it, or at least more conscious of "what a blundering thing Great War must be." (100)

He concludes, "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 realisation conceivable, and Little Wars brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do." (100)

It's hard to imagine a better base for wargaming to stand upon than "Little Wars.'" Well crafted, amusing, thoughtful, it draws together much of the best in our hobby. After almost 90 years, it remains one of the high points in war gaming literature. Find a copy, enjoy!

Wells, H. G. "Little Wars." New York: Da Capo, 1977. Reprint of London: (F. Palmer), 1913 1st edition.

More Roots of Wargaming

Robert Louis Stevenson
H.G. Wells
Shambattle
Children and Toy Soldiers
Links Between Military Miniature Collecting and Gaming
Jack Scruby
1962
Table Top Talk Magazine
Naval Wargames Part 1
Naval Wargames Part 2
Air Wargames
Horse and Musket I
Napoleon Rides Again
Featherstone Again