Wargames Handbook, Third Edition : How to Play and Design Commercial and Professional Wargames

Rating:
Summary: A laugh
Review: I had a great time reading this book. Mr. Dunnigan argues that his gaming company, and not Avalon Hill, carried the wargames market, that he himself caused a minor renaissance of wargaming in the early 80s, that he himself predicted the fall of non-computed wargames...the list goes on. The self-promotion is so overt that I laughed out loud on more than one occasion. If there was ever a vanity piece, this is it.

Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment!
Review: I have an earlier edition of this book, and thought that this one would bring things up to date. However, the author is stuck somewhere during the 1970's through the early 1990's. He apparantly hasn't heard of games like TOAW from TalonSoft, or the Close Combat series from Atomic. He even mentions GEnie (wastes several pages instructing his readers how to play online games there) and refers to PC's as "IBM compatible". The maps he uses in his example game have been reduced in size, and to top it all off, there's no index (no real need for it--there's not much useful information here). This book is just hopelessly out-of-date. I wish that I wouldn't have to give it any stars. I wonder if Dunnigan actually revised this book himself, or that the publisher hired some hack to do the job. TWO THUMBS DOWN!

Rating:
Summary: Need to judge on the correct criteria to appreciate it.
Review: I think the other reviews for this book are a bit harsh. I've given this five start just to balance their rating, I would say it is worth about 3 1/2 stars really.
I will agree that the so called "update" of the book just isn't so, especially in the computer area, where it age certainly shows. However, from a history point of view, the book is great. If you keep in mind the author is one of the significant contributers to the paper wargame era on the 1980s, then you can enjoy this book for what it is.
By the way, it's nice to read the paper version, but the whole book is freely available on the internet at the author's website.
With so few books on wargaming available in print, this book is worth reading if you want to see how it was in the "good old days" of wargaming, when there was a large number of gamers. If you want up to date information on wargaming, you won't find it here.

Rating:
Summary: Need to judge on the correct criteria to appreciate it.
Review: I think the other reviews for this book are a bit harsh. I've given this five start just to balance their rating, I would say it is worth about 3 1/2 stars really.
I will agree that the so called "update" of the book just isn't so, especially in the computer area, where it age certainly shows. However, from a history point of view, the book is great. If you keep in mind the author is one of the significant contributers to the paper wargame era on the 1980s, then you can enjoy this book for what it is.
By the way, it's nice to read the paper version, but the whole book is freely available on the internet at the author's website.
With so few books on wargaming available in print, this book is worth reading if you want to see how it was in the "good old days" of wargaming, when there was a large number of gamers. If you want up to date information on wargaming, you won't find it here.

Rating:
Summary: Need to judge on the correct criteria to appreciate it.
Review: I think the other reviews for this book are a bit harsh. I've given this five start just to balance their rating, I would say it is worth about 3 1/2 stars really.
I will agree that the so called "update" of the book just isn't so, especially in the computer area, where it age certainly shows. However, from a history point of view, the book is great. If you keep in mind the author is one of the significant contributers to the paper wargame era on the 1980s, then you can enjoy this book for what it is.
By the way, it's nice to read the paper version, but the whole book is freely available on the internet at the author's website.
With so few books on wargaming available in print, this book is worth reading if you want to see how it was in the "good old days" of wargaming, when there was a large number of gamers. If you want up to date information on wargaming, you won't find it here.