Like any other hobby, wargaming has its own jargon, much of which is derived from military history or military traditions. Unfortunately for new players, these unfamiliar terms can make wargaming seem more complicated than it actually is. For this reason, we’ve added this glossary of common wargaming terms and concepts to ease the transition into the hobby for new players. These are only working definitions we use at Army Men Wargaming; the meanings of many of these terms are still debated in the hobby.
Some definitions include the abbreviation q.v. in parentheses, which means “also referenced.” That means that whatever preceded the abbreviation is also defined in this list. Some definitions have some italicized text; these words are either proper names or alternate terms for the term defined in this glossary.
AAA: an abbreviation for Anti-Aircraft Artillery, ground-based cannons (q.v.) that shoot at enemy aircraft overhead.
AAR: an abbreviation of After Action Report. An AAR is an objective summary of past events, used as a basis of discussion for how those events could have been handled differently or better. In the Military, these reports are often called debriefings. In wargaming circles, gamers sometimes relate events in a turn-by-turn manner which many call a battle report. Disaster preparedness agencies use the term hotwash to describe this activity.
Anti-Tank Weapons, Infantry: These are a class of projectiles, designed to be carried by individual soldiers, that have the capacity to destroy targets protected by armor (q.v.). These weapons first appeared during World War II; they included the famous bazooka and its German counterparts, the Panzerfaust and Panzerschrek. Modern versions include the NATO AT-4 and the Russian RPG-7.
APC: abbreviation for armored personnel carrier, a common feature of mechanized armies. In recent conflicts, the APC has been replaced with the Infantry Fighting Vehicle (q.v.).
Area Impulse: a type of game characterized by a turn being divided into phases, or impulses, and the number of impulses a player gets in each turn varies due to randomizing factors, such as situations calling for dice rolls or drawing random cards. This mechanic adds a level of prioritizing, uncertainty, and strategy to each turn. It also adds complexity and can make games longer.
Armor: in wargaming circles, armor most commonly refers to tanks, tracked vehicles, and various troop transports. See main battle tank (q.v.), infantry fighting vehicle (q.v.), and mobile artillery (q.v.). Groups of armored vehicles are typically called troops (q.v.). The term armor refers less often to actual armor worn by individual soldiers, such as Medieval knights or modern body armor.
AP: abbreviation for armor piercing, a type of ammunition designed to – as the name implies – pierce armor. Generally, these rounds have hardened casings, elongated noses, and smaller explosive charges, resulting in a round more likely to burrow through a target than explode against it. Contrast this type of round with HE, or high explosive ammunition (q.v.) and HEDP, or high explosive dual purpose ammunition (q.v.).
Artillery: basically, artillery is the use of large-caliber guns on land. Typically, these guns are towed into position and pointed toward the enemy. Individual artillery pieces are usually classified as guns (q.v.), howitzers (q.v.), and mortars (q.v.). Multiple artillery guns operating together are called a battery (q.v.).
ASL: an abbreviation for Advanced Squad Leader, a popular hex (q.v.) and counter (q.v.) wargame.
Attrition: a type of battle in which the two sides try to win by wearing each other down.
Average dice: six-sided dice that are not numbered from one through six in the conventional manner, instead being numbered with 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5. Everyone knows that a conventional six-sided die has an equal chance of rolling any number between one and six, with an average result of 3.5. Sometimes, a game designer wants more predictability in a rule set, and seeks to avoid the extremes of a result of one or six; to accomplish this goal, the the dice are labeled with different numbers to help ensure a more ‘average’ result. The different numbering scheme makes it easier for players to estimate the effects of their die rolls before committing to movements or attacks.
Base: a flat piece of card, plastic, or other medium, upon which miniatures are attached. Many games will require miniatures to be placed on bases to govern how forces of opposing sides interact when in contact with each other. For example, if all infantry units have a base that is three inches wide and one inch deep, it isn’t possible for three infantry to attack the front of one enemy infantry – they just won’t fit in the available space.
Battery: a group of artillery (q.v.) pieces firing together as one unit. When a battery locates an enemy battery and fires upon it, it is called counter-battery fire.
Campaign: a group of individual wargame battles which are connected. They could be connected by history (like re-enacting the WWII invasion of Sicily), or by location (like several battles fought in the same geographic area). Often, the outcome of early battles affects later battles in the campaign; the loser of the first battle may begin the second with weaker forces or worse field position.
Cannon: a weapon that fires rounds of ammunition that explode when they hit the target. Note that a “cannon” can be as small as a machine gun if the rounds explode at target; it is the type of ammunition, not the size of the weapon, that determines if a weapon is a cannon or not. By way of contrast, weapons that fire solid rounds are called guns (q.v.).
Cavalry: in the traditional sense, cavalry were soldiers who rode and fought from horseback, from Medieval knights to as recent as some Allied units in World War II. Modern “cavalry” units take the form of various types of mechanized infantry, groups of which are called troops (q.v.). Compare with platoons (q.v.) and squadrons (q.v.).
Chrome: not the shiny plating on vehicle parts – it is wargaming slang for aspects of a game that provide atmosphere or understanding specific to the conflict encompassed by the game. For example, a game recreating the Battle of Gettysburg might have special rules to cover Pickett’s Charge or the 20th Maine Regiment’s defense of Little Round Top, making that game feel and play differently from other infantry combat games, or even other American Civil War games.
Combat Results Table (CRT): a table that indexes attack roll totals and the various combat outcomes associated with those rolls. At minimum, they indicate whether or not an attacker hits the target. More elaborate versions cross-reference attacker and defender strengths, severity of hits or casualties, the effects or morale (q.v.), or even weather.
Command Control: the ability of a player, acting as supreme commander, to have units perform as ordered. Many games have mechanics that prevent orders from being sent in a timely fashion, from being fully understood, or from being obeyed [such as when a unit with poor morale (q.v.) is ordered to execute a suicide charge]. This is one way games create Fog of War (q.v.).
Command Level: this is our term for describing the scope of a wargame. There are basically three levels. Tactical Games, where one figure equals one soldier, involve battles fought between squads or, at most, a platoon or two. Operational Games, where a figure may represent 10 to 100 soldiers, involves battles representing companies or battalions fighting over a larger area. Strategic or Grand Strategic Games have figures representing corps-strength forces or entire armies, and battles are fought for entire continents or an entire planet. At Army Men Wargaming, we play tactical games almost exclusively.
Counters: these are small pieces of card that represent units of troops, or various states affecting those troops during play, such as being in a prone position, being pinned down by missile fire, or having poor morale (q.v.). Usually, counter-based wargames represent both troops and troop states with counters. Games using miniatures (q.v.) have figures representing the troops, and counters or tokens to represent troop states.
Cover and Concealment: the practice of using terrain (q.v.) to protect your units from enemy fire, either by blocking their line of sight (q.v.) or by sheltering behind something solid enough to block enemy fire (such as a hill or stone wall).
Crunchie: term used by tank crewmen to describe infantry (q.v.), based upon the noise made when the tank runs over them.
DBA: an abbreviation for De Bellis Antiquitatis, a popular miniature wargame focused on the Ancient and Medieval periods.
Defeat in Detail: defeating a larger, more powerful enemy by engaging only parts of his army at a time. The weaker parts cannot stand up to your concentrated attacks, and so the opponent’s larger enemy is literally defeated in bite-size pieces, one at a time.
Defense in Depth: a series of fortifications designed to slow or stop a fast, powerful opponent. The defenses are generally arranged in rings or successive lines. As each line of defense is overwhelmed, the defenders can fall back to the next defensive line and continue fighting.
Direct Fire: occurs when a weapon is fired at a high enough velocity and close enough to the enemy that the shell flies in a straight line toward the enemy; it is most commonly seen in tanks and anti-tank guns.
Dummy Counter: a form of counter (q.v.) that doesn’t actually represent any soldier or unit of soldiers at all. Instead, it exists to mislead opponents, who may alter their field position or strategy to react to the phony threat presented by the dummy counter. Some games use dummy counters to create the Fog of War (q.v.).
Facing: in some games, the direction a unit is facing is very important. While most of the skirmish-level games played at Army Men Wargaming allow for 360-degree movement and shooting, in a game involving a unit of 100 ancient spearmen, turning everyone around to face an enemy approaching from behind involves a great deal of precise, coordinated movement, and attacking those spearmen from behind is far more effective than engaging their front.
Field of Fire: an area that is within range of a given weapon. Multiple weapons in a single position can be positioned so that their respective fields of fire overlap; the overlapped areas are sometimes called kill zones.
Firing Position: a term typically found only in games with a tactical command level (q.v.), firing position describes an individual soldier’s physical stance when firing his weapon. Common positions are standing, kneeling, and prone. Many games modify a soldier’s chance to hit an enemy, to benefit from cover, or to move quickly based on his firing position; for example, a prone soldier may be harder to hit, but a standing soldier can usually move faster.
Flight: a group of 12 to 24 aircraft, usually of the same type. Three or four flights typically make up a squadron (q.v.).
Foreward Area: According to the U.S Department of Defense, a forward area is any area close to combat operations.
Forward Observer: a unit that can see an enemy, which then communicates the position of the enemy to an allied unit with indirect fire (q.v.) ability. Guided by the information provided by the forward observer, the unit with indirect fire can then fire upon the enemy, even though the firing unit cannot actually see that enemy.
Forward Operating Base: A forward operating base, or FOB, is a fortified location close to an area where military units are conducting missions. The proximity of a FOB allows militaries to react more quickly to emerging threats in forward areas.
Fog of War: in historical warfare, commanders didn’t have omniscient knowledge of the enemy deployed before them. Some wargames, however, grant this knowledge to players; after all, you can see all your enemy’s units across from you on the table and know what they are doing. Some rule systems employ mechanisms to add some uncertainty to that picture, via dummy tokens (q.v.), the use of wooden or plastic blocks to represent units [with the blank side of the block facing the opponent, with some blocks being dummy counters (q.v.)], or written orders conveyed through a judge or umpire (q.v.). That uncertainty is the fog of war.
Ground Scale: the ratio between an actual measurement on the table and the distance that measurement represents for units in the game. For example, in the 54mm scale that many army men games use, one inch of tabletop often represents one yard of game distance.
Gun: a gun, in the military sense, is a piece of artillery (q.v.) that has almost no trajectory. The shell flies in a more-or-less straight line toward the target, a type of trajectory called direct fire (q.v.). The rounds of ammunition fired by a gun are solid; weapons that fire rounds which explode when they strike a target are called cannons (q.v.).
HE: abbreviation for high explosive, a type of round designed to explode on a target, with the force of the charge extending in all directions. This multi-directional force can cause tremendous damage to buildings and personnel, but are less effective against armor (q.v.). Contrast this type of ammunition with AP, or armor piercing, rounds (q.v.) and HEDP, or high explosive dual purpose ammunition (q.v.).
HEDP: an abbreviation for high explosive, dual purpose ammunition, a sort of cross between traditional armor piercing (q.v.) and high explosive (q.v.) rounds. HEDP rounds were developed in the latter half of the 20th Century, to overcome advances in vehicle armor, such as ablative, explosive, and composite armor, and can be used against armor (q.v.) or unarmored targets equally well.
Hex-and-Counter: an unofficial classification of wargame involving a map or battlefield setting overlaid with a grid of hexes (q.v.), with counters (q.v.) representing various units (q.v.) and troop states.
Hexes: many wargames use grids to help gauge distance or define boundaries for topographical features like hills, forests, or rivers. Instead of using square grid sections (like graph paper), wargames often use grids made of interlocking hexagons, like honeycomb. Hexagons are generally better than grid squares for measuring distance. The distance along the sides of a square differ from the distance across the square diagonally, while the distance between the center points of any two adjacent hexagons is always the same.
HMG: an abbreviation for heavy machine gun. These are usually too heavy for a soldier to carry, but are instead mounted in fortifications or on vehicles.
Howitzer: a form of artillery (q.v.) that fires at a high velocity, but at a higher trajectory than a gun (q.v.). It’s trajectory is often said to be between a gun and a mortar (q.v.).
Indirect Fire: a situation where a unit can fire at an enemy that it cannot directly see. Often, it involves the use of weapons with a high trajectory discharged over obstacles or terrain [like hand grenades, mortars (q.v.) or artillery (q.v.)]. Usually, the unit would have to see the enemy moving into the hidden location or make use of a forward observer (q.v.) to communicate the enemy’s location and make indirect fire possible.
Infantry: foot soldiers.
Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs): tracked vehicles designed to transport a squad of infantrymen and support them on the battlefield. These vehicles are generally armored more lightly than main battle tanks (q.v.), but more heavily than mobile artillery (q.v.).
Intelligence: in military terms, intelligence is information about the enemy – his plans, position, armament, numbers, movements, tactics, lines of supply, radio and satellite transmissions, and any other information that may have military value.
Initiative: sometimes, during a turn-based game (q.v.), players don’t always alternate turns in the same order. In some games, a game turn constitutes both players acting, but the order in which they act during that turn is determined by dicing for initiative. The better roll goes first in that turn, but the other player may roll better on the following turn. This mechanic helps to simulate the ebb and flow of battle.
Key Terrain: an area of the battlefield terrain (q.v.), the possession of which gives the holder an advantage in combat. High ground, areas with cover (q.v.), and areas offering a wide field of fire (q.v.) are all examples.
LD: abbreviation for line of departure.
Line of Sight: a game mechanic that verifies whether units can see each other. Generally, units need to see an enemy in order to shoot at that enemy.
LMG: abbreviation for light machine gun.
LZ: abbreviation for landing zone, usually in reference to where airmobile infantry will deploy.
Main Battle Tank (MBT): an armored vehicle, usually tracked, with a gun mounted into a turret. This is the vehicle that most people think of when they hear the word tank. Main battle vehicles are often classified into light, medium, and heavy varieties. These vehicles are often confused with mobile artillery (q.v.) and infantry fighting vehicles (q.v.)
Melee: a fancy term for hand-to-hand combat. Many systems replicating 21st Century warfare don’t include rules for this type of fighting, as even close-range encounters in such settings mostly involve shooting.
METT-T: an acronym for Mission, Enemy, Terrain, Troops available, and Time. Some U.S. military branches use MET-TC, with the C standing for Civilian considerations. Either term serves to help commanders prioritize factors that can affect the success of a mission.
Miniatures: these are the figures that represent troops in a wagame. Depending on a game’s command level (q.v.), one miniature soldier could represent one, 10, 100, or 500 troops. At Army Men Wargaming, we just use army men as miniatures, but dozens of game companies produce miniatures in metal or plastic, in a variety of scales, materials, levels of detail and price ranges.
Mobile Artillery: also called self-propelled guns, these vehicles are often confused with main battle tanks (q.v.), as they have armored plating, tracks, and often turrets with guns protruding from them. The primary difference between the two is quality of armor; mobile artillery tends to be lightly armored (and therefore lighter in weight), as its goal is to deploy more rapidly than towed artillery. Mobile artillery could never survive a close range encounter with main battle tanks.
Movement: while everybody knows what movement is, there are distinct wargaming connotations for the term, notably how far and in what ways units and individual miniatures move on the tabletop. Most rule systems factor the type of troop and the terrain being crossed in movement rates. Some of the more complicated systems factor in special rules for turning, deploying from one formation into another, and moving while being fired upon by enemies.
Morale: a wargaming concept representing an abstract assessment of a unit’s fighting spirit. Many aspects of a soldier’s life contribute to morale: factors such as level of training, quality of equipment, physical comfort, weather, difficulty of the mission, spiritual well-being, frequency/quality of food, resupply, and medical care all play a role. On the wargames table, units with high morale are less likely to lose cohesion and/or retreat in a disorderly fashion.
Mortar: essentially a tube with a firing pin set into the bottom, a mortar basically fires small-caliber artillery shells at a very high trajectory, which are especially dangerous to enemy infantry (q.v.). Mortars are light enough to be carried by foot soldiers, and their high trajectory makes them ideal for trench warfare.
MRAP: abbreviation for Mine-Resistant/Ambush Protected, a designation for American vehicles designed to withstand attack from improvised explosive devices and ambush from small arms. Wargamers usually only see this term in rule sets centering on 21st Century conflicts.
Objective: this term describes what a given force is trying to accomplish in a given game, apart from destroying the enemy. Objectives can be to occupy a given area of the battlefield, to block an enemy’s escape, or to survive an enemy attack. Often, objectives form the basis for victory conditions (q.v.).
Order of Battle: a list of all units, usually organized by type and quantity, fighting on one side of a battle. In wargaming, some plauers will also use the less specific term of Army List.
Overwatch: An American infantry doctrine, which advises positioning some units in such a way that they can provide fire support for others.
Percentile Dice: dice that generate a random number between 1 and 100. Typically, this is accomplished by rolling two ten-sided dice, with one result being read as the ‘tens’ digit, and the other being read as the ‘ones’ digit. Thus, a roll of 0 and 4 is a result of 4, rolls of 3 and 1 yields a result of 31, and rolls of 0 and 0 are read as 100. More rarely, players may actually use 100-sided die, and read whatever number is on the top facet after rolling.
Platoon: a unit of infantry (q.v.) ranging in size from 30 to 60 men. While the word existed for centuries, platoons first became a widespread organizational unit during World War I. Compare with troops (q.v.) and squadrons (q.v.)
QRF: an abbreviation for Quick Reaction Force, which is an assembly of units held in reserve when a battle starts, but can quickly deploy to key regions of the battlespace when needed.
Realism: while no game can recreate the stress of actual warfare, most wargames – especially those based on real-world conflicts – make a genuine effort to be accurate about how troops were organized, trained, equipped, deployed, and resupplied. They also try to prevent things that couldn’t happen during a real battle from happening in the rules. For example, in many video games, armored vehicles have a “health bar” that allows tanks to be damaged by any opposing weapon, even rifle fire; thus, if enough riflemen shoot at a tank in such a game, rifle bullets can destroy a tank, which could never realistically happen. Wargamers see this sort of thing as sloppy rules design.
ROE: Abbreviation for rules of engagement, those circumstances under which troops are permitted to engage, or fire upon, the enemy.
Simulation (or, to be fancy, CONSIM, a military acronym for CONflict SIMulation): this term pertains to a wargame that re-creates a specific war, sometimes even a specific engagement. Often, significant research is dedicated to presenting the actual units involved, in their actual locations, with their actual offensive and defensive capabilities relative to each other, and the game is played to see if history will repeat itself.
SOP: Abbreviation for standard operating procedure, a step-by-step list of how to do virtually every task in the military.
Squadron: a squadron can refer to army, navy, or aircraft units. In land-based armed forces, a squadron is a group of armored troops (i.e., tanks and similar vehicles); a naval squadron typically involves three to 10 warships working in concert; and an aircraft squadron is composed of three or four flights (q.v.) of aircraft, with each flight having 12 to 24 aircraft.
Stands (or Movement Trays): sometimes, miniatures (q.v.) are grouped together onto a single base, or stand; other games place individually-based miniatures together on a movement tray. Usually, stands help to ensure uniform distances for frontage and flanking. Movement trays keep miniatures in the same unit together, and often figures are removed from the trays as a unit takes casualties.
Step: in hex-and-counter wargames (q.v.), military units are represented with cardboard counters (q.v.). Often, such units are destroyed when they are defeated in combat; for these units, combat statistics are printed on only one side of the counter, and the counter is removed when the unit is defeated. Stronger units can handle taking some losses without completely losing cohesion, and must be removed in steps. These strong units have combat statistics printed on both sides, with full strength statistics depicted on one side and reduced strength (representing battle losses) on the other. Thus, when a strong unit is damaged, the counter is flipped to its reduced strength side instead of being removed, and it must be battled again in order to fully defeat it. When a counter must be flipped in this way, many rule sets call the loss losing a step. Inversely, if a damaged unit is reinforced, the rules may call for the counter to be flipped back to full strength, which is often called gaining a step. The term Step can also apply to block wargames, when the combat statistics for a unit are printed on the edges of the blocks that represent units; as units are damaged, their controlling player rotates the blocks so that the current combat strength of each unit appears on the top edge of the block.
Strategy: strategy is a conceptual approach employed to defeat an enemy. Sample strategies include denying the enemy the ability to move, seizing high ground, capitalizing on an enemy weakness, or to entice the enemy to attack on ground of your choosing. Note that the strategy is only a concept – its implementation is what wargamers call tactics (q.v.).
Tactics: tactics are the specific methods used to implement a strategy (q.v.). For example, if the strategy is to limit the impact of enemy tanks, tactics may include hiding troops behind cover so the tanks can’t shoot at them, luring the tanks into a canyon or defile where their mobility or line of sight (q.v.) is limited, or deploying anti-tank guns in your army.
Tank: a vague term used to describe what wargamers typically call armor – tracked vehicles with some form of armor plating. The term is vague because there are many varieties of “tank.” Wargamers tend to use more specific terms, such as main battle tank (q.v.), infantry fighting vehicle (q.v.), or mobile artillery (q.v.).
Terrain: unless you are re-enacting ancient warfare, when most battles were fought on broad, open plains, your battlefield will probably include hills, mountains, forests, rivers, deserts, plateaus, ridges, swamps, or roads. Often, wargamers will purchase or make their own terrain pieces to represent these topographical features to scale on the tabletop.
TF: abbreviation for task force.
TOW: an abbreviation for Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire command link guided missile. It is a vehicle-mounted, anti-armor weapon used by NATO armies. The most common Russian version of this weapon is the Sagger Missile.
Troop: a term used to describe units of cavalry (q.v.) and armor (q.v.)
Turn-Based: The sort of game where one side moves, then the other. Other types of games involve simultaneous resolution of fire, or changing initiative (q.v.) in other ways. Most of the games played at Army Men Wargaming are the turn-based variety.
Units: an abstract representation of troops, often using miniatures (q.v.) or counters (q.v.). The exact number of troops represented in a unit varies with the game’s command level (q.v.); a unit can represent a single soldier, or an entire corps, depending on the scope of the game.
Umpire: not a baseball official, but a wargame umpire. Some games are sufficiently complex (or opponents so competitive) that a neutral third party must be present to ensure that the game is played fairly by both sides. Typically, you’ll only see umpires at wargame conventions or tournaments.
Victory Conditions: tasks that must be completed in order to win, aside from destroying all of your opponent’s forces. Sometimes, the point of a wargame is to be the last man standing. In actual warfare and better wargames, however, victory doesn’t always go to the side inflicting the most casualties. Sometimes, temporarily denying the enemy use of a critical bridge, preventing an opponent from retreating, or raiding a supply column can alter the course of a war. Applying victory conditions to a game helps to re-create situations like that on the wargame table.
Violence of Action: doctrine stating that whichever side of a conflict commits fully to combat will achieve dominance and victory. Thus, a small force willing and able to bring all of its guns to bear simultaneously can potentially drive off a much larger enemy that is unprepared, more timid, or less organized.
Warning Order: notice that formal orders are forthcoming, so preparations can begin in advance of the actual order being issued.
WP: Abbreviation for white phosporus, a chemical used in incendiary weapons and illumination flares. It causes ghastly burns to personnel.
Zeroed or Zeroed In: while preparing the defense of an area, units will often pre-register their artillery sights for specific areas they expect the enemy to move through or stage attacks from, such as street intersections, specific buildings, potential landing areas, or even geographic features such as tree lines or valleys. While preparing defenses, the exact bearing and range to these specific targets can be paced off and recorded, so that weapons can be pre-set to accurately fire on the areas as soon as enemies appear.
Army Men Wargaming 