Editing Wargame (section)

==Types of Wargame==
Wargames can be broadly categorized into two groups - Miniature Wargames and Chit Wargames. Chit Wargames are wargames which use paper or cardboard chits to represent the units involved in the battle. Some good examples include Kriegsspiel, Wooden Ships & Iron Men and various other Avalon Hill wargames. Almost every naval wargame also falls in this category. Chit Wargames often straddle the line between wargame and board game, and have waned in popularity in the last few years.  By contrast, Miniature Wargames are games in which the units in the game are represented by miniature models. Miniature Wargames combine the aspect of playing the game with a craft hobby element - miniatures are often supplied unassembled, and almost always unpainted. This is seen as a feature, not a bug, as the ability to build and paint your own unique force is a major draw for many wargamers. Warhammer(in all its incarnations), Bolt Action, and Star Wars: Legion are all miniature wargames. Battletech is notable as a hybrid of the two - the game can be played with paper tokens on a hexagon based grid representing units, or with detailed miniature models and no grid.

Chit wargames are generally played on a map, usually supplied with the game, blurring the line between them and board games. Miniature wargames, by contrast, expect the players to produce a miniature battlefield for their models to fight over. Some players lovingly craft unique tables out of common and specialist materials, many companies produce purpose-designed wargaming terrain, while plenty of players, especially those starting out, just use piles of books and whatever else fits on the dining table to produce a playable battlefield.

Wargames are also categorized by scale. While there are no solid guidelines on what a scale consists of, there's generally two important points - how big each unit is in gameplay, and how many units are expected to take part in a battle. The size of the units is often referred to by how tall an individual soldier is, in millimeters, while the number of units expected to take part is generally referred to by the military unit that a player's force is meant to emulate. For example, [[Bolt Action]] by Warlord Games uses 28mm scale miniatures, meaning that an individual soldier stands a little over an inch tall, and the game is referred to as "Reinforced Platoon" scale, meaning that each player commands a platoon, sometimes reinforced by a tank, artillery piece, etc. Some games are also referred to as "heroic scale" - this is a simple acknowledgement that the scales aren't exactly consistent, and elements are exaggerated for dramatic effect or just for visibility at a distance.

There's also the matter of the other kind of scale, i.e., "how many people do an individual chit or miniature represent?", and "how many pieces does each side have?". As for the former: Some games have them represent tens of thousands of men; some games have them represent exactly one person, and everything in-between is also commonly seen. (This is (usually) less of an issue with naval or space-fighting wargames, where a ship is a ship is a ship, but is still an issue there as well.) The latter, well, everything from one (in games about one big unit against a bunch of smaller guys, e.g. [[Ogre (Wargame)|OGRE]]), to hundreds (e.g., [[The Campaign for North Africa]])