Little Wars: H.G. Wells and the birth of Miniature Wargaming

[Angus McCarthy]

While perusing the aether-webs yesterday I came across an astounding fact: H.G. Wells, the beloved Father of Science Fiction, was also responsible for what may have been the first organized rules for miniature wargames. I find the tale of the game's inception utterly fascinating.



Apparently having nothing better to do with his time, Wells and a rather house-bound friend of his commandeered the children's play-room and spent hours upon hours experimenting with rules regarding terrain design, troop movement, melee outcomes, artillery bombardment and a host of other permutations to what had previously been just a set of tin soldiers in a box. I have been rather blase about the whole tabletop campaign concept until now, but this revelation of a simple, straightforward game makes me want to rush out and find some tin soldiers of my own.

And so, for your enrichment, I present Little Wars.

EDIT: Confound it. Here is the URL. Something seems to be getting mixed up in posting.
www. archive. org/ details/ littlewarsgamefo01well

[OswaldBastable]

funnily this was a question on a quiz I was watching this week; I was surprised but fascinated also

[MechanicalMouse]

I like the full title of the book

Little wars : 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 ([1913])

Score one for gender equality

[polyphemus]

The text of Little Wars is available on Project Gutenberg

[Angus McCarthy]

Oh dear. It seems the link in my original posting has disappeared from the Internet Archive.

Blast it all, what good is an archive if you start deleting items from it!? 

[OswaldBastable]

yes rather goes against the whole concept really!

[cyberjacques]

Wow, this brings back some amusing memories.  When we were children, my younger brother and I would do something similar with our plastic army men.  I wore braces as a kid, and we discovered that those horrid little rubber bands they tell you to use with your braces will knock over a plastic army man when shot at him.  I never used my rubber bands, since they were beyond annoying, and they hurt like hell if they snapped while inside your mouth.  So I had bags and bags of them, in varying thicknesses, and my brother and I came up with a set of rules regarding which army men fired what kind of band and how many, and we would set them up and shoot them down.  I remember that the largest bands, which were so formidable I thought they would pull the braces right off my teeth, were assigned to the little bazooka guys, and sometimes they would take out several troops at once, as was fitting.  And the tiny thin bands were assigned to the officers equipped only with a pistol.  We had so much fun doing that... 

[Simon Hogwood]

Sorry to bring this topic back from the dead, but I just discovered that Little Wars is now available as a free Kindle ebook. And, there's "Kindle for PC", now . . . I'll let y'all know what I think of it after I finish reading it.

[MinistryOfTruth]

This wasn't actually the first set of rules for miniature wargaming - the Prussian army actually used games of this sort to train their officers in basic field tactics as early as the late 18th century.  H.G. Wells did popularise the idea as a recreational activity rather than a strategic excercise, though.

[H. MacHinery]

This wasn't actually the first set of rules for miniature wargaming - the Prussian army actually used games of this sort to train their officers in basic field tactics as early as the late 18th century.  H.G. Wells did popularise the idea as a recreational activity rather than a strategic excercise, though.

Kreigspeil?