Tactics (game)

Tactics is a board wargame designed by Charles S. Roberts and published by Avalon Hill Games in 1954, widely regarded as the first commercially successful board wargame. Rather than requiring players to supply their own miniatures and terrain as earlier hobby wargaming had done, Roberts packaged a complete self contained product with a printed map, cardboard counters, rules and box art. Two players command opposing Blue and Red forces across a mapped territory, taking alternating turns in an I go you go structure while moving units at costs that vary by terrain type and resolving combat through an odds ratio combat results table, both innovations that became standard across the wargaming hobby that followed. Roberts himself observed that the design confounded new players more accustomed to chess and checkers, since it asked them to reason in terms of unit strength ratios and terrain rather than fixed piece movement. The game and its later revisions stayed in print through Avalon Hill for decades, establishing the company as the dominant force in commercial wargaming.