Jobs in Professional Wargaming

 

Connections USA is the professional wargaming conference. Colonel Matt Caffrey, USAF, was ordered to run a conference to further professional wargaming, and the order was never rescinded. So, since 1993, the great and good of professional wargaming have gathered to discuss their art and craft.

Before the pandemic, I was sitting around a table in a bar during Connections USA. As I bought a round of drinks, I realised that the majority of the active professional wargamers in the world could fit around a single table: Peter Perla, Roger Mason, Ed McGrady, Yuna Wong, Tom Mouat, Tim Price, and a handful of others. Professional wargaming was a tiny world in 2017.

In 2026, professional wargaming is an integral part of military education, training and analysis. Practically every defence company of note now has at least a few staff with some responsibility for wargames. Many people are interested in getting into this world, and some of them ask me how to get a job in professional wargaming. I respond by suggesting how they might become a rounded professional because that's the skill set that will actually get them to an interview.

Know your domain

The first step is to become a master of your professional domain. If you want to run a space wargame, you need to know about satellites. The same goes for cyber, air, submarines, and any other area of modern warfare. You cannot expect a political party to let you umpire a game about a "run on the state currency" unless you can persuade them you understand national economics. It helps, of course, to have a subject matter expert to facilitate the game — but you still need to know more than the basics yourself. When I ran a game about a "run on the pound" some years ago, it helped enormously to have an advisor from the Bank of England on the team, but I still spent a week reading before the initial sponsor meetings. Wargaming is a skill, but it doesn't replace the need to be genuinely knowledgeable about the topic being gamed.

Know your craft

When I talk to professional wargamers, I'm often frustrated by how limited their mental toolbox of techniques can be. Wargamers who say they only use "simulations," or only “digital games”, or only “manual games”, are restricting their expertise to a narrow slice of the field. Some insist that every wargaming problem can be solved with a matrix game (or a board game, or whatever their comfort zone happens to be).

To be a master wargamer, you need to be familiar with a very wide range of games,  professional and hobby alike. You should have designed matrix games, used AI to assist a strategic-level game, and understood military course of action analysis (and why it isn't a wargame). You need to know what a hidden scenario is, what a committee game is, and stay aware of developments in roleplaying. Watching someone run a game of Dungeons & Dragons can be a masterclass in conjuring a scenario and immersing players in a game world. A roleplaying session of Call of Cthulhu can teach you a great deal about putting players under mounting stress. Practically every top-rank professional wargamer I know plays hobby games to some degree. So if you don't know what a megagame (or muggergame) is, or what confrontation analysis is, go and find out.

Getting to the interview

There's a wide range of professional wargaming jobs out there and some jobs in serious games, and even more in hobby wargaming, but to get to an interview you need to know the military domain being gamed to a good standard. You also need a genuinely broad base of wargaming experience, spanning miniatures, Eurogames, cyber, multi-domain operations etc.

When you're on that lifelong journey to becoming a master wargamer, I'll see you at the bar. The round's on me, while you tell me about the trials and tribulations of the professional wargaming world. Is professional wargaming an art or a craft? We have never been able to agree, but perhaps you will be able to tell us.
 

Something strange happened at Charing Cross Underground Station

In May 2026, the main stream media and social media reported that the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) set up a HQ on the platform to a NATO wargame about an invasion of the Baltic States in five years time.

Some people in defence thought it was fake news; the thought of a reported ‘top secret’ exercise held in the public eye seemed ridiculous. Actually, the exercise did take place, but it was not exactly what it seemed. Using an underground station does not protect from NBC attack. It offers some protection from N, but without back up generators, water supply and secure hardened communications channels, the HQ might survive but without communications. A HQ that cannot communicate is useless. Without forced air systems, an underground station offers little protection against B and C.

The ARRC HQ has 400+ staff and they simply would not fit on the platform at Charing Cross. Also the computer monitors were facing the track, so those passing on the trains could photograph what was on the screens.

Practising deploying to an underground carpark out of the public eye would have given the same training benefit to the HQ.

So what was the purpose of the exercise? It seems likely it was to be seen. It is part of an attempt to shift the narrative and prepare the British public for the threat of war affecting the UK homeland.

Actually, councils in the UK are considering civil resilience; issues such as climate change, floods, cyber-attack, food shortages, civil disorder etc. If the UK government mentioned civil defence, such councils would object on ideological grounds. However, everyone agrees that developing local resilience is sound apolitical policy. There is a surge in table top wargames about these topics up and down the UK.

Wargaming Publishing in 2026

 

Looking back, 2008 was perhaps a pivotal moment for "serious" and historical wargaming literature. Encouraged by John Basset, Tom Mouat and Tony Hawkins, I started to publish books in what became The History of Wargaming Project. This project aimed to  preserve the hobby's roots and create a literature base to support professional wargaming.

The History of Wargaming Project was the most prolific source of "wargaming" titles at time, including bringing out-of-print classics back to life. In 2010, I released several "expanded reprints," such as Joseph Morschauser's How to Play War Games in Miniature (thanks Bob for your work on this). My publishing included an updated edition of Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming, which remains a "bible" for both hobbyists and military professionals. Neither Peter Perla and I had any idea that my republication of an academic text from 1992 would become a best seller (within the tiny world of professional wargaming!)

The well-known military publisher Osprey noted the resurgence in wargaming publishing and in 2010 released of Field of Glory: Renaissance. This proved to be a major title and this helped cement Amazon as a primary storefront for rulesets that were previously only available in local hobby shops.

At the start of 2026 wargaming book sales are up and down; more sold, but on average fewer of each title. The exact number of books published each year is hard to work out as some books are published in hardback, paperback and as e-books, then go to second editions, which means they may count more than once in this total. An estimate of the number of titles published is to divide the total by 2.5 to allow for the various editions of the book. Also Amazon’s algorithms sometimes add in books titles that are closely related to ‘wargaming’ such as ‘Military strategy’.  I have not attempted to map the large number of roleplaying rules and even larger number of supporting roleplaying supplements.

With the above caveats in mind, the numbers are as follows:

2010 – 22 titles (the majority were History of Wargaming Project books).

2018 56. The traditional publishers such as Osprey Publishing, Helion & Company, and Pen & Sword dominated. There was also The Portable Wargame (published 2016), One hour wargames and a range of professional wargaming books by The History of Wargaming Project.

2023 104 titles.

2024 132 titles. This included the much anticipated The Third Portable Wargame Compendium.

2025 120 titles.

Currently, in 2026, 90% of wargaming books are now self-published There is a surge in solo wargaming book titles and AI assisted campaign generators. Using LLMs, there is a proliferation of low-quality and often short books. Supported by excellent marketing efforts, they catch many purchasers. It is easy to produce a wargaming book and associated marketing using an LLM.

An approximate breakdown of the wargaming books is as follows:

Rules & Supplements 45%   New systems for skirmish, fleet, and mass-battle gaming.

History & Analysis      20%      Deep dives into historical battles specifically for gamers.

Fiction/RPG     15%      Where "wargaming" is a central plot element or mechanic.

Journals & Logbooks 20%      Low-content books like The Ultimate Wargaming Battle Tracker. These so called ‘ghost titles’ have minimal content and many blank pages

In 2026 there is some frustration that academic wargaming books have low sales (and somehow this is my fault!). Part of this is the high price for some academic books. E.g. Cyber Wargaming: Research and Education for Security in a Dangerous Digital World is £100 hardback and £38 for the Kindle version. Politics of Play: Gaming with the US Military £59, but is now £14 on the Kindle.

One response in the USA has been some books published as pdfs for free. The authors get no money but get the prestige; the publisher of the organisation gets kudos which apparently translates into American government funding. Giving away large numbers of your books apparently demonstrates an organisations mastery of wargaming. Key examples of this are from the US Naval War College and the US Marine Corps.

Matt Caffrey (2019) On War https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/43/

Sebastian Bae (2026) Forging Wargamers: A Framework for Professional Military Education https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/Forging%20Wargamers_web.pdf

So, what is the future of wargaming publishing in 2026? Osprey will continue to publish a range of varying quality wargaming books. Not that expensive, some are excellent such as Frost Grave, but others suffer from lack of play sheets or key rule omissions that make the rules unplayable. There will continue to be a sprinkling of academic works that are expensive, with very limited sales, obscure, but achieve the objective of being seen as high value academic publications. There is no sign the proliferation of AI generated self-published wargaming books is slowing.

In such a crowded market place, brand name is king. Of course, the challenge is establishing that brand name so Amazon and Google find your work and push it out to those their algorithms identify as potential customers.

As for me, The History of Wargaming Project will continue to document the development of wargaming and publish what I consider to be important or merely interesting in this story. The potential level of sales is not one of my criteria when deciding what to publish. I am currently working on seven books at the same time, with a further nine more in my to do list. I also have approximately fifty more books that I could potentially publish if I get the time to write and edit them!