I’m often accused of being “weird”, when speaking about my taste in miniature games; the word… chaotic is frequently used. It’s true my preferences tend to be a bit of a wild mix of systems, styles, and scales that don’t appear to follow any clear pattern.

But that only holds true until you understand one core principle I care deeply about, which we are going to talk about today!

The creeping gamification of tabletop miniature games, and how it quietly chips away at what makes this hobby special in the first place. My opinion, of course.

Understanding the Underlying Principle of Miniature Game Assumption

To really understand this “theory”, we need to take a small step back, just a quick glance into the history of miniature games and where they actually come from, how they got their start. In a word, my foundation in the hobby.

It’s not some hidden or complicated truth. In fact, it’s quite simple and surface-level. It’s just something many modern players may not even notice, nor is it usually relevant to modern gaming because it’s a piece of history.

The gist of it is that at their core, miniature games began as pure simulations. It’s a foundational construct of miniature war games, originally, that they all had an internal logic based on trying to simulate the battlefield.

Back even in the early days of the modern hobby as we know it today, think the 70s and 80s, the goal of a miniature game wasn’t just to “win” in a mechanical sense. The goal was to recreate, as faithfully as possible, the feeling and logic of a battlefield, a concept that heralded an even earlier variant of the game, historical war game simulation. Whether that battlefield was historical, fantastical, or somewhere in between, the idea was the same: what would this actually look like if it played out? What do expected results look like, and how does the game surprise you, and most importantly, is that consistent with the internal logic of the setting or piece of history? All mechanics were designed toward that goal.

That’s the foundation.

Historically, this came from simulation-heavy war games, systems designed to recreate real battles, real tactics, and real consequences. But that philosophy didn’t disappear when fantasy and sci-fi entered the scene. It simply adapted.

Because simulation doesn’t mean “realistic”, it means internally logical.

Take early Warhammer Fantasy as an example. You had dragons, wizards, and undead legions, hardly realistic. But the game still tried to simulate how those things would behave within their own world. We derived that from the setting, much in the way you would derive a historical period battle from history books.

A dragon breathes fire? That’s terrifying, but what is the impact on the battlefield? How would that work if you wanted to simulate the effect?

Morale is a perfect example of a mechanic with internal logic. A unit of soldiers faces overwhelming odds? They might break and run. It exists in many games because, in real battles, soldiers don’t fight to the last man, they panic, retreat, and survive. So morale became a core mechanic when simulating tabletop battles. But then you apply fantasy logic: skeletons and mummies don’t feel fear, because they are dead, so they might ignore morale rules, for example.

So even within a fantasy, there is internal logic.

It all tracks. It all makes sense, within the simulation.

And that’s the key idea.

Even the most fantastical elements, magic spells, immortal beings, dragonfire, were governed by rules that felt like they belonged in a living, breathing battlefield as part of a simulation.

So when I talk about the gamification of miniature games, this is what I’m contrasting it against.

I’m talking about rulesets that move away from this idea of simulating a battle, and instead lean into abstract mechanics that exist purely for the sake of the game, rather than the world it’s trying to simulate.

Example of Gamification

The easiest way to understand the difference between simulation and gamification is through a concrete example.

So let’s talk about A Song of Ice and Fire: The Miniatures Game, because if we’re looking for a clear case study, this one puts it front and center.

On the surface, the game does a lot right in terms of simulation.

You’ve got two armies clashing on the battlefield. Units have speed, strength, defenses, morale, all the things you’d expect if the goal is to simulate combat in the Game of Thrones universe. You maneuver, you fight, you hold objectives, you try to outplay your opponent using positioning, timing, various advantages different unit types have, tough, fast, or ranged, perhaps. You use the terrain to your advantage, so on and so forth.

So far, so good. This is the simulation part working exactly as intended, even so far as the fantastical elements go, like Dragons.

But then… we step sideways.

Enter the NCU board.

This is where characters from the setting, Cersei, Joffrey, and Tyrion for example, operate completely outside the battlefield itself. They occupy abstract “zones” that trigger powerful effects on the game. And this is where the shift happens.

Suddenly, you have a character like Joffery who can activate an ability on the NCU board that forces a morale check on a unit across the battlefield. Fail that check, and suddenly soldiers start dropping.

Now, pause for a moment.

Why are troops, possibly hundreds of miles away from Joffrey, losing men because Joffrey sat in a chair somewhere and did something political? Why would a dragon care? Why does this have an effect on a battlefield action?

The answer is simple:

It’s not part of the simulation; it’s not designed into the game to make sense or have any internal logic. It’s a game mechanic. This is gamification, not simulation.

It’s an abstract system layered on top of the battlefield, one that exists to create interesting decisions and strategic depth, but not necessarily to represent anything that logically plays out in the battle itself. It’s not part of a simulation of the battle; it’s part of a game.

And to be clear, this isn’t inherently bad, but for me personally, this creates a dilemma and breaks the immersion of what the game is trying to represent. It’s a bit like adding a knock-knock joke in the middle of a Star Wars lightsaber duel between two Jedi; it might be hilarious, but it’s out of place, out of context.

Is Gamification Bad?

Gamification can be incredibly fun. It adds layers of decision-making, clever interactions, and those satisfying “gotcha” moments that make games memorable. But it does change the nature of the experience, and that’s where things, at least for me, start to disconnect.

Because at its core, this comes down to a simple distinction: Are you playing a game… or are you simulating a battle?

Now, that might sound like splitting hairs, but it really isn’t.

“Playing a game” leans toward board game logic, optimizing mechanics, managing resources, triggering abilities, and outmaneuvering your opponent within a defined system of rules. Victory comes from mastering those systems. It’s not a game about trying to understand the concept of “battles” and using inherent internal logic to make decisions; it’s about the manipulation and execution of mechanics, creating synergy, and trying to “win” in a game.

“Simulating a battle” is a bit different; it is about applying battlefield logic and seeing what happens. It’s an external experience; you are as much the controller as the audience. It’s almost a kind of experiment. What would happen under X, Y, Z conditions within the construct of this setting/universe, or historical period, or historical battle? How can I change the results with my decisions? Can I do it better than the history or the expected outcome? Simulation is a kind of discovery in the form of entertainment. It’s a spectacle more than a game.

Positioning, timing, morale, flanking, and decisions that feel grounded in how a conflict might actually unfold are the key to creating a simulation. The dice step in to represent chaos, uncertainty, and the unpredictable nature of war. Most importantly, in a battle simulation, most of the information, in particular when it comes to consequences, risk vs. reward, and the general understanding of what can happen in any given situation, is open information. The only “gotcha” moments in a simulation are derived from someone using a strategy you didn’t expect or an unexpected or unusual dice outcome.

Both approaches are valid. But they create very different experiences.

Gamification tends to introduce what I like to call… shenanigans.

These are mechanics that pull your focus away from the battlefield itself and toward the system behind it. Instead of asking, “What would Jon Snow do in this situation?” you start asking, “What combination of abilities or effects can combo with the cards in my hand that I can trigger right now to let Jon Snow do something my opponent does not expect or can’t counter?” In a way, you can say it’s about breaking your opponent’s strategy by altering the rules of the game that are visible and can be anticipated.

In a simulation-driven game, when two armies clash, the outcome is shaped by their inherent strengths and weaknesses. Maybe one side has better morale. Maybe the other gains an advantage through positioning, flanking, terrain, or timing. And ultimately, the dice decide how that moment resolves. It’s a combination of strategy and fate, but both players can see what is happening in the field. It’s not the result of a gamist mechanic; it’s a result of the resolution of core mechanics that both players understand and can see. In a sense, seeing what happens is the result of watching the simulation execute. It doesn’t mean the results can be predicted, but the odds can be calculated.

It feels organic. Grounded. Earned. You make decisions about movement and position by accessing these factors, and while the results may still surprise, the surprise isn’t going to be your opponent playing a hidden card in their hand that lets them do some internal logic-breaking thing. It’s going to be a statistical anomaly in the randomization used in the game, typically dice. There is an expected outcome from the clash, but fate might intervene with unusual dice results. A miss that should have been a hit. In a simulation, you “do stuff” and then “see what happens” within the scope of predictable factors, statistics, strengths, and weaknesses. There are no shenanigans that are going to alter the outcome.

In a more heavily gamified system, that same clash can be dramatically altered by effects that have little to do with the units or situation themselves. A card is played. A hidden ability is triggered. Suddenly, the outcome hinges less on the clashing units and the battle… and more on the mechanics layered on top of it. What hidden shinaningans does each player have that they can execute?

And again, that’s not wrong in any sort of “mechanical” or “design” sense. I want to be clear about this, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s a different kind of gaming experience.

The reality is that most miniature games sit somewhere on a spectrum. Very few are purely simulation-driven, and very few are entirely abstract. The issue isn’t the presence of gamification, it’s the degree of it. There is a tipping point in a miniature game where too much gamification kind of erases the need for internal logic and simulation consistency; it becomes abstract enough that you are no longer seeing it as a simulated battle, and it’s just a tactical/strategic game., closer to a board game or a card game It becomes a game about the shenanigans instead of the simulation.

The more abstract, disconnected, and prominent these mechanics become, the further the game drifts away from simulating a battle, and the more it becomes about executing systems within a game engine.

At some point, you’re no longer commanding an army. You’re solving a mechanical puzzle.

And whether that’s a good thing or not… depends entirely on what you came to the table for, but at this point, I think my personal taste and bias start to kick in.

Why I Think Simulation Is Better

At the heart of it, my preference for simulation comes down to one thing: Clarity and longevity, and though I think there are some added minor issues that conflate my problem with gamist systems on top of those two things.

In a simulation-driven game, you can see the battlefield, not just a game construct, but as an imagined real thing that works as close to “reality” as game mechanics can get it, even when abstracted. You understand the state of play. You can evaluate risks, predict outcomes, and make informed decisions based on what’s actually in front of you. You can also create scenarios that present unique challenges (circumstances) that are overcome by unique tactics using the same internal logic of the simulation that inherently exists in such games. Unique game states that require unique solutions within the confines of the same base rules structure that replicates that reality, which again is driven by recognizable internal logic and a visible game state.

That kind of visibility, combined with a solid grasp of probabilities, beats surprise-driven gamist “gotcha” mechanics every time, at least for me.

Because once you lose that clarity, the experience starts to shift.

The Balance Problem

One of the biggest issues with heavily gamified systems is balance. Or more accurately… the lack of it.

In my experience, the more a game leans into abstract mechanics, cards, hidden triggered abilities, off-board effects, or mechanics that circumvent internal logic, the harder it becomes to keep things fair. And things are usually not just slightly off, but noticeably off.

Take A Song of Ice and Fire again as an example. Many of its most glaring balance issues don’t come from the core unit design; they come from the layers on top of it. The cards. The NCU board. The external effects that interfere with the battlefield. Even when a unit is designed in a reasonable way, the various cards and NCU board effects can make that unit bizarrely stronger in one army than another. These aren’t equivocal in the same way, there is a difference between a Targaryan cavalry and a Lannister cavalry, not because their stats are different, but because of the way the game can be manipulated by the gamist mechanics like NCU boards and hidden cards the players have access to. A cavalry unit is not just a cavalry unit in a Songs of Ice and Fire

These mechanics often override the very things that are supposed to define units and the internal logic of the battlefield simulation.

A slow unit suddenly isn’t slow anymore. An already-activated unit acts again. A weak unit spikes damage out of nowhere or makes a surprise move. The base information isn’t fixed, the gamist mechanics can alter without much warning the functionality of units and the execution of the core mechanic.

At that point, the carefully constructed strengths and weaknesses of the army start to lose meaning, as does the simulation itself, as it does not function reliably.

And when that happens, player decisions also lose their purpose and meaning.

You might make the perfect tactical move based on everything you can see and control, only for it to be undone by something you couldn’t see or control. Not because you misplayed or miscalculated, but because the system allowed your opponent to circumvent the rules themselves through the execution of gamist mechanics.

That’s where simulation starts to crack. Because now, the game on the table and the game you’re actually playing aren’t quite the same thing. There’s an invisible layer sitting on top, constantly threatening to rewrite the outcome.

The “Feel Bad” Problem

Then there’s the emotional side of it, the infamous feel-bad moment. In a simulation-driven game, the potential for failure is part of the deal.

You miss a charge. You fail a morale check. You whiff an attack roll. It stings, but it makes sense. You knew the odds going in. You chose to take the risk. The dice decided the outcome. It’s a kind of controlled chaos.

It’s frustrating to fail, sure, but it’s fair. It lives within the logic of the system, within the expected range of outcomes in a simulation.

And honestly, that tension, the chance of failure, is a big part of why we play.

Gamified systems create a very different kind of failure potential and feel-bad moments.

Instead of failing because of risk and probability, you fail, for example, because someone played a card that says, essentially, “No, what you just tried to do within the rules doesn’t work after all.” Or worse, “I do something that is normally against the rules of the game and could not be predicted”.

You made a sound decision. You understood the odds. And then… none of it mattered. That kind of moment doesn’t feel like a failed gamble or the result of poor decision; it feels like the rug got pulled out from under you in an unfair game.

Not outplayed. Not outmaneuvered. Just… overridden by rule-altering mechanics, the goal post was moved dynamically. And that’s where frustration starts to creep in. That’s when a mechanic that seems interesting and clever at first, because of a balance problem and frustration that sucks the fun out of the game on repeated plays.

Because there was no meaningful decision that led to that outcome. No visible risk. No way to prepare for it. Just an abstract mechanic firing at the perfect (or worst possible) moment. It’s not clever to execute an effect that says “Sorry, I’m changing the rules”, it feels more like a cheap shot.

The whole game can quickly start to feel less like a game of strategy… and more like playing against a system that occasionally cheats, legally.

The Immersion Problem

Perhaps one of the biggest impacts on me, is that gamification breaks immersion, which leads to stagnation and boredom.

In a simulation-driven game, you’re in it. You’re thinking like a commander. You’re reading the battlefield, planning maneuvers, anticipating outcomes, and experiencing the battle almost like an observer. Your focus is entirely on the clash unfolding in front of you. Each battle functions under the same internal logic, while the circumstances are different every time. It’s exciting, it’s something you can build experience at and become better at navigating. There is a route to becoming a better commander, but Lady Luck will always play her hand, and even the most brilliant of plans can fail, and that becomes a kind of story that can be told in the same way you might describe a historical battle, but it’s a piece of history you wrote at the table together with an opponent. The game is about finding out what happens when all those factors come together.

But when heavy gamified elements enter the picture, that focus shifts.

Now you’re thinking about cards in hand. Triggers. Combos. Hidden interactions. Not just what’s happening on the battlefield, but what might happen outside of it. Your card draw can define whether you will win or lose a scenario. Did you get the right combo of effects you’ll be able to nail your opponent with? Did your opponent draw the counters he will need to circumvent your cards? The story becomes about how many points you scored and how X card or Y hidden effect resulted in you winning the game. There is a kind of cheapness to that story, told not through the eyes of commanders but through the eyes of players, playing a game of abstraction.

And that changes the feel of the game and the experience dramatically.

What should be a decisive cavalry charge into an exposed flank suddenly becomes a question of, “What mechanic is about to interrupt this?” The tension isn’t about tactics anymore, or dice outcomes, it’s about the timing of hidden effects and abilities, the gamist elements that are the true drivers of the game.

Some gamist and abstracted elements can be fine. Even enjoyable in moderation.

But when those mechanics become powerful enough to completely unravel battlefield strategy, the illusion breaks. The battle stops feeling like a battle and starts feeling like a system being manipulated.

You’re no longer commanding an army. You’re managing interactions.

From Intrigue to Exhaustion

The final thing here is the irony that these gamified systems are often very appealing at first. They feel modern and clever, even. I find myself attracted to such systems, but it never lasts. There is a kind of exhaustion that kicks in because you’re analyzing the game, not the battles.

Gamist systems often feel clever. Dynamic. Full of surprising moments and interesting interactions. There’s a lot to explore, and that initial discovery phase can be genuinely exciting.

But over time, those same mechanics can start to feel repetitive and oppressive; they become the source of the frustration rather than the source of the fun.

Players learn these tricks. The combos. The optimal plays. And what begins as variety slowly turns into a cycle of shenanigans and counter-shenanigans. Army building becomes a matter of trying to build the synergies with these gamified mechanics, and usually, very clear winners rise to the top. Games become predictable, and spice turns into boredom.

For me, that’s where the interest starts to fade. Because what I’m looking for isn’t just a game to play. It’s a battle to experience. It’s the act of sitting at a table with a friend, with two forces on the table where the battle will be decided by movement, positioning, tactics, and the chaotic results of the dice within the setting of the world we are playing in.

If all of that is undone by hidden mechanics and abilities, the game’s shelf life is going to be limited to how long these gamist mechanics remain interesting, before the game becomes played out and boring.

I’ve seen this pattern repeat over and over again, and I have a shelf full of miniature games I don’t play to prove it.

Long-Term Success vs. Flash In The Pan

If you really want to see this principle in action, you don’t have to look any further than the history of miniature gaming itself.

Because over time, patterns emerge.

The games that endure, the ones that stick around for decades, build loyal communities and continue to evolve, tend to lean heavily toward simulation. They create a foundation that players can understand, trust, and invest in long-term.

They feel consistent. Predictable in the right ways. Deep with just the right amount of chaos. These aren’t even necessarily always “better games” or even “modern designs”, but the stability over time and the variability of the simulation versus the shinanigan mechanics tends to win long term.

And that matters more than you might think.

Because miniature games aren’t just games, they’re hobbies. They demand time, money, effort. You build armies, paint models, learn rules, and invest in systems. Players want to feel like that investment has stability and longevity.

Simulation-driven systems provide that.

They offer a kind of rules “gravity.” Even as editions change and mechanics evolve, the core logic of the game remains intact. Movement matters. Positioning matters. Morale matters. The battlefield still behaves like a battlefield. The core is a core architecture upon which the game sits.

You can leave the game for a year or five, and come back without feeling like everything you knew has been flipped upside down, and perhaps more importantly, the game will still be in print, which is rarely the case for gamist systems. The hotness today is gone tomorrow.

Gamified systems often struggle with that kind of longevity.

Because when a game leans heavily on layered mechanics, cards, combos, triggered effects, and abstract interactions, it becomes much harder to maintain balance and clarity over time. Each new addition risks compounding complexity, introducing new edge cases, and shifting the meta in unpredictable ways. Perhaps more importantly, the game starts to crack under its own weight, and demands from the player base for balance and fairness are muted by the fact that gamist systems see balance and fairness as an adjustment to the gamist mechanics, not as a core construct of the simulation.

What starts as exciting… can quickly become unstable. And when that instability builds, players drift away.

Not always immediately. Sometimes these games explode onto the scene with energy and enthusiasm. They feel fresh, dynamic, full of possibility.

But that energy can and very often does fade.

That’s where you see the “flash in the pan” effect. A strong launch. A burst of popularity. And then… a slow decline.

Now, to be fair, this isn’t a universal rule. There are exceptions on both sides. Some gamified systems find ways to stabilize, and some simulation-heavy games stumble for entirely different reasons.

But as a general trend, I think this tends to be true. The more a game roots itself in simulation, clear logic, visible systems, grounded interactions, the better its chances of standing the test of time.

Because at the end of the day, players aren’t just looking for something new. They’re looking for something that lasts.

Battletech

If you want a textbook example of longevity in miniature gaming, look no further than Battletech.

Launched in the mid-80s, this is a game built on pure simulation principles, and it shows. Its core rules have remained remarkably consistent for over 40 years. It has never truly disappeared, never fallen out of print, and today it stands as one of the highest-grossing miniature games on the market.

That kind of staying power doesn’t happen by accident.

And I think the reason is simple: Battletech doesn’t need gimmicks to stay interesting.

You can play the exact same scenario, same mechs, same map, same players a hundred times, and you’ll get a hundred completely different outcomes. A hundred different stories. There is no puzzle to solve in Battletech; there is no meta, it really is simulation purity.

There are no hidden cards. No off-board mechanics. No surprise systems waiting to override what’s happening on the table. Everything is visible. Everything is grounded in the simulation. The dice are the only surprise factor.

It’s just you, your opponent, and a battlefield full of giant war machines where every decision carries weight.

That’s it.

And it’s more than enough.

Star Wars: X-Wing

Star Wars: X-Wing is perhaps the most fascinating example of both sides of this argument, and prime proof that there is something to this theory. It showed how powerful a good simulation can be… and how fragile it becomes when that foundation is compromised.

When X-Wing first launched, it was beautifully clean. At its core was a simple but brilliant idea: movement is everything.

Players secretly selected maneuvers using dials, revealing them simultaneously to simulate the uncertainty and tension of a dogfight. Ships had firing arcs, usually in the front, so getting a clean shot was all about positioning, which required different levels of risk and prediction. It was quite perfect as a simulation; everything that made the game tick.

Beyond that, the system was open. Transparent. Logical. No “gotchas.” No hidden layers. Just ships, movement, dice, and decisions.

And it exploded in popularity as a game.

For the first time in decades, a miniature game seriously challenged, and according to some reports, even surpassed, Warhammer 40k in popularity. It wasn’t just a hit, it was a phenomenon.

Now, to be fair, it had other advantages. It was Star Wars. It had pre-painted miniatures. It was accessible and relatively affordable.

But none of that works without a solid game underneath it. And X-Wing had that.

Until it didn’t.

Over time, the designers began introducing more and more gamified elements, mechanics that layered on top of the core system that undermined rather than reinforced them.

The most infamous example was the Twin Laser Turrets.

This upgrade fundamentally bypassed one of the game’s core pillars: positioning and firing arcs. Suddenly, careful maneuvering, arc-dodging, and spatial awareness didn’t matter. With a single change to the game, the simulation of a dogfight, of outmaneuvering your opponent, was undermined by a mechanic that simply… ignored it.

And once that door opened, more followed. Abilities that bent the rules.
Interactions that overrode core mechanics got to such an extreme that the act of rolling dice was a formality; everything could be manipulated. Systems that prioritized clever combos over battlefield decisions. The game became about list-building synergies that resulted in players being able to compare lists and declare a winner; playing the game to determine a winner was also mostly a formality by the end of the game’s run.

The result was a very rapid and steady erosion of what made the game special. The simulation faded. The “shenanigans” took over. And the decline was just as dramatic as the rise.

A second edition failed to recapture the magic, arguably leaning even further into these layered mechanics. The game lost momentum, lost players, and eventually was passed between publishers before quietly fading out altogether.

There were, of course, multiple factors behind X-Wing’s fall. But for me, the turning point is clear:

The moment the game stopped being a simulation… was the moment it started dying.

Warhammer 40k & Age of Sigmar

Even Warhammer 40k tells a similar story, just with a different ending.

Over its long history, 40k has swung back and forth between simulation and gamification. There were periods where the game leaned heavily into abstract mechanics and bloated systems, to the point where it nearly collapsed under its own weight, dragging the company down with it.

But then GW course corrected, thanks to the company not being afraid to make big changes, and thank god they did.

Modern 40k, particularly in its latest editions, has moved back toward a more grounded approach. It still carries a fair share of gamified elements, stratagems, mission structures, and layered interactions, but much of it is at least open and visible, trackable, and something players can plan around. There is too much of it, which is a bit of an issue, making it highly complex and very involved, so it can still sometimes feel like the game has a lot of gotchas, but with game mastery its something you can overcome.

There’s a lot going on. A lot to process. And mechanics like widespread re-rolls can sometimes dilute the tension that makes simulation-based systems feel so compelling.

It’s better, but it’s still walking that line, and also still improving with each iteration of the game, and there is a lot of hope for 11th edition coming out this summer.

Age of Sigmar, GW’s other big game, interestingly, might be the cleaner of the two.

While it had a rocky start, it has steadily refined itself over time. It trims away many of the excess layers, fewer re-rolls, fewer disruptive mechanics, and focuses more on flow, clarity, and battlefield interaction.

It’s not a pure simulation by any means, but it leans in that direction more confidently.

And I think that’s a big part of why it continues to grow.

Because as long as it stays grounded, focused on the battle rather than the systems around it, it has a very strong foundation to build on.

Conclusion

I don’t think most players consciously think about this when they pick up a game, but the patterns emerge just the same. And one of the most consistent patterns I’ve seen is this:

Simulation-driven games last.
Gamist systems… don’t.

Gamist games tend to explode onto the scene. They’re praised for their innovation, their “modern design,” their clever mechanics. And to be fair, they are clever. They’re exciting. They’re fresh.

At first. But over time, those mechanics start to settle. The community figures them out. The puzzle gets solved.

And once that happens, something important is lost.

Because at their core, many gamified systems are puzzles. And puzzles, once solved, don’t have the same pull the second, or tenth, time around.

They become repetitive. Predictable in the wrong way.

Simulation systems, on the other hand, thrive on unpredictability. They aren’t puzzles, they’re systems of controlled chaos.

You can play the same battle, under the same conditions, with the same armies, making the same decisions, and still get wildly different outcomes. Not because of hidden mechanics, but because of the inherent uncertainty of the simulation itself.

That’s where the longevity comes from. That’s where the stories come from. And ultimately, that’s what keeps people coming back.

When I look at the games I’ve loved over the years, vs. games I have played and more importantly, the ones I still have interest in today, the list is surprisingly small.

Battletech.
Warhammer 40k
The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.
X-Wing (but only the early edition stuff)

These are the games that stuck.

That doesn’t mean the others weren’t great. I’ve had fantastic experiences with plenty of gamified systems. Some of them were incredibly fun, creative, and memorable. They review well.

But the issue is that they didn’t last. I don’t play Songs of Ice and Fire anymore. I loved Warcrow, but ultimately, I’m not driven to get it to the table. I love my Runewars miniatures, but I know I will never play that game again. They burned bright and then faded into obscurity. There is a graveyard of games on my shelves.

And for me, that difference comes down to one thing:

Whether the game was asking me to solve a system…

Or to command an army. That is, in the end, the crux of the whole thing.