How to Develop a Successful War Game Strategy and Why It Matters

Strategy games are a lot of fun, and they can push even the most seasoned of gamers to their limits. These games come in all shapes and sizes, popping up in every genre, from sci-fi and cyberpunk to high fantasy and drama.

One genre that’s particularly intertwined with the strategy niche is the war and military genre. When someone is talking about a war game, nine times out of 10, they usually mean a war-themed RTS or military strategy simulation. 

It’s essential to have a good war game strategy at your disposal, no matter which game you’re playing. Here’s a quick guide on how to create the perfect war game strategy and why it’s worth your time to sit down and come up with one. 

Why Should You Create a War Game Strategy?

One of the most essential reasons why you should write up a strategy whenever you’re taking part in games of war is that war games can change incredibly quickly. 

Even the smallest decision from your opponent can cause a knock-on effect that alters the entire game. It’s good to have a reliable plan in your mind that you can fall back on and use if the game swings in your opponent’s favor. 

Spending time developing a strategy can also help you understand the game on a new level, too. You may have a passing understanding of the various troops and tools at your disposal already, but spending time on an actual strategy to use in matches can help improve your knowledge tenfold. 

If you’re an aspiring competitive gamer, spending time learning specific strategies and writing your favorites down can also help with your tournament performance and overall success. It’s worth trying out a few different strategies and seeing which elements fit your playstyle the best.

How to Create the Perfect War Game Strategy

To start, evaluate what you already know about the game. If you’re playing a new war game and you’re not sure where, to begin with developing a strategy, here are a few things to start with:

• The resources that you need during your game
• How turns work and how long matches are
• The types of troops and items at your disposal
• Any external factors to consider, e.g., a weather system in the game that affects movement
• How to upgrade troops and enhance abilities
• How to see what your opponent is doing and find them on the map 
• The win conditions for your chosen game

Having a decent understanding of these factors is a great foundation for a strategy. Even if you’ve got some experience with your chosen game, it’s worth going over these elements again just to make sure that you’re on top of things.

If the game that you’re playing is played competitively at all, spend some time looking into what the current meta is and whether there are any popular strategies that you can adapt to fit your playstyle. You could take notes on a tournament live stream, for example. 

Once you’ve looked at the basic elements of a strategy and competitive ideas, write down what your ideal match would look like. Look at the win conditions and how you could get there the quickest, then work backward and consider what could go wrong at each stage. 

Then, write out a counter for every possible obstacle.

After this, you’ll have a bare-bones strategy that you can refine and try out in your next match. You could have this in a Word document, saved on your phone, or even on a slip of paper on your desk. Keep it nearby until it becomes muscle memory.

It’s important to make sure that your war game strategy is constantly evolving, though. You may find that your initial strategy works like a charm for the first few matches, but then you come across a counter.

If this happens, go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate how you could make your composition and overall strategy more effective. It helps to have notes on what specifically led to your downfall in the game so that you can reverse engineer a new strategy.