Editing Wargame (section)

===Miniature wargaming===
{{Main|Miniature_wargaming#History|l1=History of miniature wargaming}}
[[File:HG Wells playing to Little Wars.jpg|right|thumb|[[H. G. Wells]] and his friends playing ''[[Little Wars]]'']]
The English writer [[H. G. Wells]] developed codified rules for playing with toy soldiers, which he published in a book titled ''[[Little Wars]]'' (1913). This is widely remembered as the first rulebook for [[miniature wargaming]] (for terrestrial armies, at least). ''Little Wars'' had very simple rules to make it fun and accessible to anyone. ''Little Wars'' did not use dice or computation to resolve fights. For artillery attacks, players used spring-loaded toy cannons which fired little wooden cylinders to physically knock over enemy models. As for infantry and cavalry, they could only engage in hand-to-hand combat (even if the figurines exhibited firearms). When two infantry units fought in close quarters, the units would suffer non-random losses determined by their relative sizes. ''Little Wars'' was designed for a large field of play, such as a lawn or the floor of a large room. An infantryman could move up to one foot per turn, and a cavalryman could move up to two feet per turn. To measure these distances, players used a two-foot long piece of string. Wells was also the first wargamer to use scale models of buildings, trees, and other terrain features to create a three-dimensional battlefield.<ref>H. G. Wells (1913). ''Little Wars''</ref>

Wells' rulebook, however, failed to invigorate the miniature wargaming community. A possible reason was the two World Wars, which de-glamorized war and caused shortages of tin and lead that made model soldiers expensive.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sarahsundin.com/make-it-do-metal-shortages-during-world-war-ii/ |title=Make It Do – Metal Shortages During World War II | website=www.sarahsundin.com |date=11 July 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.bmssonline.com/about-the-bmss.html |title=History of the British Model Soldier Society |website=www.bmssonline.com}}</ref> Another reason may have been the lack of magazines or clubs dedicated to miniature wargames. Miniature wargaming was seen as a niche within the larger hobby of making and collecting model soldiers.

In 1955, a California man named [[Jack Scruby]] began making inexpensive miniature models for [[miniature wargame]]s out of [[type metal]]. Scruby's major contribution to the [[miniature wargaming]] hobby was to network players across America. At the time, the miniature wargaming community was minuscule, and players struggled to find each other. In 1956, Scruby organized the first miniature wargaming convention in America, which was attended by just fourteen people. From 1957 to 1962, he self-published the world's first wargaming magazine, titled ''The War Game Digest'', through which wargamers could publish their rules and share game reports. It had less than two hundred subscribers, but it did establish a steadily growing community.<ref>Jon Peterson, in {{harvp|Harrigan|Kirschenbaum|2016|p=19}}</ref>

Around the same time in the United Kingdom, [[Donald Featherstone (wargamer)|Donald Featherstone]] began writing an influential series of books on wargaming, which represented the first mainstream published contribution to wargaming since ''Little Wars''. Titles included : ''War Games'' (1962), ''Advanced Wargames'', ''Solo Wargaming'', ''Wargame Campaigns'', ''Battles with Model Tanks'', ''Skirmish Wargaming''. Such was the popularity of such titles that other authors were able to have published wargaming titles. This output of published wargaming titles from British authors coupled with the emergence at the same time of several manufacturers providing suitable wargame miniatures (e.g. Miniature Figurines, Hinchliffe, Peter Laing, Garrisson, Skytrex, Davco, Heroic & Ros) was responsible for the huge upsurge of popularity of the hobby in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.<ref>See James Dunnigan's Foreword to Donald Featherstone's Lost Tales, published 2009. Dunnigan clearly places Featherstone in his role as a key propagator of wargaming as a hobby and tool for professionals.</ref>

In 1956, [[Tony Bath]] published what was the first ruleset for a miniature wargame set in the medieval period. These rules were a major inspiration for Gary Gygax's ''[[Chainmail (game)|Chainmail]]'' (1971), which in turn became the basis for the roleplaying game ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]''.

From 1983 to 2015, [[Games Workshop]] produced what was the first miniature wargame designed to be used with proprietary models: ''[[Warhammer (game)|Warhammer Fantasy]]''. Earlier miniature wargames were designed to be played using generic models that could be bought from any manufacturer, but ''Warhammer Fantasy's'' setting featured original characters with distinctive visual designs, and their models were produced exclusively by [[Games Workshop]].