We just updated our exhibit on wargaming at the Naval War College, and I thought some here might like to see it. Wargaming made its debut at the college in 1889 when the U.S. naval attache in London, Commander French E. Chadwick, purchased a copy of Kriegsspiel and sent it back to the NWC for study. Faculty at the college used it as the inspiration for their own naval games. I wish more than anything that I could have found an original Kriegsspiel set to place in this display, but lacking that, a copy of Command Post Games' Pub Battles had to do!
The second display shows a game currently in use by the Joint Maritime Operations department. It's called War at Sea (not the same one of Avalon Hill fame, obviously!) and focuses on air/land/sea warfare at the operational level. The units in the game are the cups of dice, so it literally uses a buckets o' dice system for resolving combat. The actual game is umpired with both sides only seeing what has been revealed to them through reconnaissance and intelligence. There wasn't quite room to show all that in our limited display area, but you get the picture. The scenario shown is Leyte Gulf, although the same system can be used to play battles up through the 1980s with some minor modifications.