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Top 5

The five best wargames

Historical conflict in detail, for players who want the map, the counters and the decisions the commanders actually faced.

  1. 1

    War of the Ring: Second Edition (2011)

    👥 2–4 players ⏰ 180 min 🎂 Age 13+ ⚖ Weight 4.2/5
    8.6avg rating
  2. 2

    Twilight Struggle (2005)

    👥 2–2 players ⏰ 180 min 🎂 Age 13+ ⚖ Weight 3.6/5
    8.2avg rating
  3. 3

    Root (2018)

    👥 2–4 players ⏰ 90 min 🎂 Age 10+ ⚖ Weight 3.8/5
    8.1avg rating
  4. 4

    Undaunted: Normandy (2019)

    👥 2–2 players ⏰ 60 min 🎂 Age 14+ ⚖ Weight 2.3/5
    7.8avg rating
  5. 5

    Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game (2012)

    👥 2–2 players ⏰ 45 min 🎂 Age 14+ ⚖ Weight 2.5/5
    7.6avg rating

Wargames are the most demanding corner of the hobby and the most rewarding for the right person. Rules are long, sessions are long, and the payoff is a genuine sense of the problem a historical commander was handed.

Many are designed for exactly two players, and most assume you will read the rulebook properly before setting up. If that sounds like a cost rather than a pleasure, start with thematic games instead.

How this list is chosen

These five come from the same query that powers the finder, run with one filter pre-set. Expansions are excluded, so everything here is a game you can buy and play on its own, and only games with at least a hundred ratings are eligible.

Ranking is by community rating adjusted for how many people voted, not by raw average — otherwise a game rated 9.0 by a hundred devotees would outrank a classic rated 8.6 by forty thousand. The full method is here, and you can set your own filters to narrow this further by age, complexity or player count.

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