“Wargame” has always been a wonky category, and as more board games experiment with systems and modes of expression, it only grows flimsier. To wit, today we’re looking at the best titles of 2023 that blur the boundaries of the genre, whether by covering war-adjacent topics or by using card-driven mechanisms traditionally at home in conflict sims. These are the year’s best board games about war… by other means.

#6. Witchcraft!

Designed by Trevor Benjamin, Roger Tankersley, and David Thompson. Published by Salt & Pepper Games.

Based on last year’s Resist!, itself a wargame derivation, Witchcraft! is a refinement of the system, not to mention a more fictionalized setting — a boon for audiences who balk at some games’ real-world implications. As a coven of witches in Puritan Times™, the locals are beating down the doors with torches and pitchforks to invite you to an old-fashioned witchbake. It probably doesn’t help that evil is very much alive, befouling the village with mischief. To clear your name, you’ll have to both dispel the miasma and persuade the magistrates of your innocence. Witchcraft! draws on its creators’ background as wargame designers, along with some uncomfortable history, to create a compelling, and even, dare I say it, empowering tale.

Review: Something Familiar This Way Comes

#5. Doubt Is Our Product

Designed by Amabel Holland. Published by Hollandspiele.

There are two sides to Amabel Holland’s Doubt Is Our Product, but don’t confuse this for grubby-handed bothsidesism. As the tobacco industry, your cards are washed-out and frank in their corruption, exploiting legal loopholes, filling the airwaves with cartoon mascots, and engaging in intimidation to hook adults and children alike on your products. The movement against smoking, meanwhile, is slow to get rolling, but may soon turn the cultural tide toward science and transparency. Like many of Holland’s games, this is a timely and provocative game that uses history to raise some uncomfortable questions about today’s political landscape.

Review: The Banalities of Yesterday

#4. Endurance

Designed by Amabel Holland. Published by Hollandspiele.

Does war against nature count as a wargame? If difficulty is anything to go by, I think it might as well. The second title by Amabel Holland on this list, Endurance doesn’t assume that the historical outcome of Shackleton’s antarctic voyage is a given. Instead, it’s entirely possible that nobody will make it home. As with many real-life conflicts, Endurance defies easy characterization, refusing to label a threshold for victory. The result is a game that’s mystifyingly difficult to “game.” All that remains is your own effort and hindsight. Is it a success if only a few men survive the cold? Is it a failure if even one man is lost? What if you sacrifice the voyage’s sled dogs and cat? Perhaps that’s a question that should stick with you long after the game has concluded.

Review: They Survived

#3. Votes for Women

Designed by Tory Brown. Published by Fort Circle Games.

From one angle, Votes for Women is the most traditional wargame on this list, building on a long convention of utilizing card-driven events to portray historical transformation and cultural conflict. This time around, that cultural conflict is female suffrage; its battleground, the United States of America. It’s a snug fit, not to mention an utterly approachable take on the genre, casting states as flashpoints in a legislative battle to enshrine better equality in this imperfect Union. Votes for Women has attracted some controversy for defying genre boundaries; I couldn’t think of a better game, or a better topic, to do so.

Review: Justice, Not Favors

#2. Land and Freedom

Designed by Alex Knight. Published by Blue Panther.

Hark! Kinetic warfare! In the background, anyway. Land and Freedom drags players off to the Spanish Civil War. Not as direct combatants as such, but rather as collaborating political parties striving for dominance despite the fascists battering their entrenchments. There are two simultaneous conflicts to win, first against the fascists and second against your own allies. Either one might see you lined up against a wall and shot. Semi-cooperative games are often considered troublesome, but in Alex Knight’s hands that uncertainty becomes an opportunity to highlight just how tenuous and frightening political expediency can be.

Review: Non Plus Ultra

#1. The Battle of Versailles

Designed by Eloi Pujadas and Ferran Renalias. Published by Salt & Pepper Games.

Nobody is getting shot in The Battle of Versailles. There will be no frostbite, no lung cancer. Okay, there will be some lung cancer. Based on the card-driven systems that underlie many modern wargames, this is a brutal (and catty) battle for cultural dominance over the world of high fashion. One side is driven to retain the French’s reputation as global tastemakers; the other, to prove that America’s celebrities and cosmopolitanism are more than flashes in the pan. Either way, players are treated to one of the fastest and roughest duels in modern memory. The Battle of Versailles is scintillating from start to finish, and proves that our hobby has countless untapped reservoirs waiting to be explored.

Review: Fashion Is Danger

What were your favorite “war by other means” games of 2023?

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