What is the most effective way to level up you wargaming skill?
Certainly watching tactica videos, reading posts, reviewing lists, and understanding the meta is important.
Those are tools that will make an impact.
But the real fuel is found in playing games.
Playing actual games, working through the rules, the armies/units, the tactics, and being able to make those intersecting decisions on the table.
But there is a way to optimize this and a tactica that I have often used to prepare for a tournament.
This is not a narrative or traditional way to play a wargame, this is more direct, like an exercise to cut down that learning curve of games required to gain proficiency.
If I can get in a single game at the gaming club each week, that is four games a month.
If I can get 2-3 games in a week at the club each week, that is 8-12 game a month.
The math wins.
The tactica is like this:
Play the game to the mid point.
If it is a fixed game of six rounds, stop at round 3.
If it is an open ended game, stop at around the mid-point more or less.
At this mid point, ask yourself, if the game continued to play out, what would be the most honest and likely outcome?
Sure the dice could save you, maybe you pull out an end game reversal, or your opponent makes a big mistake.
I’m not discounting these things and saying that don’t happen, but if the game steadily played out who would win.
Now you have this, reset everything back up and play again to the mid-point.
2-3 games in the time it takes for one.
Keep in mind this is a training like exercise and should be used as such, certainly not a way to regularly play, just when you need to power up quickly.
See you in the game.