Little Wars (A Game for Boys from twelve years of age to one hundred
Long before Dungeons & Dragons, before Axis & Allies, there was Little Wars: the first tabletop war game ever published. H.G. Wells, the father of science fiction and a man obsessed with military strategy, invented a game played with toy soldiers on a living room floor. This 1913 rulebook contains his complete system for conducting strategic campaigns: terrain arrangement, troop movement, artillery placement, and combat resolution. Wells believed play wargaming taught genuine military thinking and offered a civilized outlet for the martial instinct. What makes Little Wars remarkable is not merely its historical priority but Wells's infectious enthusiasm. He writes with the glee of a boy describing his favorite game, yet with the precision of a strategist who studied warfare seriously. The book includes Wells's philosophical argument that such games prepare minds for thinking about conflict systematically. Here is Wells the futurist imagining how warfare might be studied, practiced, and understood through miniature representation. Today the book fascinates as a time capsule of Edwardian play and as the origin story of an entire hobby. Tabletop gaming has evolved enormously, but Little Wars remains a remarkable artifact: the moment one of the twentieth century's greatest imaginative minds decided to bring war down to table height.
