This article originally appeared in Pyramid #18

Pyramid Pick

Tactical Command

Published by Medallion Simulations
Designed by Scot Hunt
Price: $44.95

I never really expected to like wargaming. I tried before, really. I like military history, and armored warfare in particular. But those boxed wargames have always struck me as being too complicated. Most of them seemed caught up in a quagmire of rules minutia. The few wargames I've tried always reinforced my apprehensions. I guess I never had the patience or the skill to read through those little books with all their fine print and come away understanding how to play the game, much less enjoy it.

I was completely content to stick with roleplaying games until a convention several years ago. I got kinda lost looking for a Call of Cthulhu event and wandered into the miniature wargaming room. It was here that I saw my first 1/285th scale tank battle. I took in the eight-foot table in front of me covered with small armored companies fighting it out among miniature trees, hills, and buildings. The only drab counters on the hexless battlefield seemed almost incidental to the highly detailed tanks dominating the board. I wanted to play right then. I hung around watching for about an hour and my excitement began to fade. The players spent most of their time bickering over the multiple copies of rule books strewn about. At one point I saw them consult a calculator to determine the line-of-sight between two units. Finally someone took notice of me and launched into an explanation of the rules. . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: March 1, 1996

Copyright © 1996 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.