My littlest wars

 I am generally quite averse to score based reviews as I feel they miss out on all the nuance of a full review. This is for the very good reason that they, in fact, do miss out on all the nuance of a full review. Add to this the strange skewing of a lot of scales (that I have seen) where 6 or even 7 is considered the average and you end up with something that is as close to worthless as you'll find without watching a Disney+ original. A number is a cold, objective full stop where the truth could be a warm, subjective semicolon so greater depth is required in my humble, but very correct, opinion.

However where score based reviews do have a use is in the quick scan, instant gratification category. Something to take in in a second and mentally bookmark for later investigation or noted as something to ignore. Yes, I'm aware noting it to ignore it is technically not ignoring it but what can I say? Life is complex.

For some of us from a writing point of view they can also have the advantage of a limitation, something akin to having a deadline to make you "get it done". Personally I don't like pressure or limitations and have never even liked DIY, being far more a fan of YDI (You Do It) but as a way to get going when it comes to writing something as well as putting some otherwise random thoughts in order this seems as good a method as I have come up with in the, ooh... five minutes thought I put into this.

You see I am attempting to write some wargames. More accurately I have written some wargames and I want to be able to order them into the best versions of themselves that I can. It seems a fairly sensible idea then to look over what are some of my favourites and some of my less liked games and see if there are common threads, things I want to emulate (in style, not just nick straight off the page, you suspicious reader, you). Perhaps I'll find that games I like rate lower than I expect but are elevated by intangibles. Or perhaps that's just flowery nonsense and if it's good it will just score well.

Speaking of scoring - how do I classify my scores? 

Well, starting at the bottom, we have the lowly 1. I am tempted to include a "zero" option but ultimately I think a zero would have to represent something that is completely missing and however bad something may be it had to turn up first to be found to be so poor. "The last Jedi" for example still scores a 1 despite everything about it.

But this 1, it is the lowest of the low. If it was for the Presentation of a book it would have to be for one where the print itself is blurred towards being unreadable, the wrong terms would be used, typos and mistakes would be abundant and the pages would be falling out. Even in the PDF version.

At the other end we have, obviously, a 10. This is genre defining, flawless and would probably lend you a fiver and not ask for it back. 1s and 10s almost never exist.

In the middle is the oft maligned 5. It's fine. Nothing about it is remarkably good but equally it doesn't get much wrong. It's the cheese pizza of scores.

So now we have a scale but it's a bit too vague for me to just slap an overall score on something and call it a day. I want to include a little more of the "why". Handily there is a YouTube channel out there that if you're a wargamer you may know called "Little wars TV" who have a semi regular series of rule reviews. In them they use a "weighted" review score where the more important categories are worth more in the final tally. Being quite a fan of their videos and this idea I will now shamelessly swipe their structure and hope they don't mind. Or that if they do that they don't find out.

First up we have a category worth 10% with "Presentation". Attentive readers will remember I already mentioned this above in a mild spoiler to what comes now. I will be using this to cover the look, feel, quality and layout of each book. PDFs are clearly cheating by not being able to be held and assessed for physical quality. But as they are unlikely to lose pages or get ring stains from mugs on them I'll let them off. Phrasing and organisation of the chapters will also be important here I think.

Next is a big one, possibly the most important - "Playability". This is worth 30% of the total score. As well as considering how easy it is to play there needs to be some thought here about the learning curve and if the end product is worth it for the relative effort. Some of the learning curve can be mitigated or aggravated by the layout so some of this may bleed across to the less important category of Presentation which may seem at odds with their relative importance but, again, life is complex.

Then we have the other main section which is another 30% in "Mechanics". These are the things which can almost stand in isolation here because how well they integrate will be represented in the playability score. So why are they still worth 30%? Well, you see... they... taken as a whole... shut up.

Next is "Flavour" worth 20%. Little wars TV call it "Historical flavor" which doesn't quite work for me as the rules may not be historical ones (though they most likely will be) and because they're American which causes them to make mistakes im there speling. Flavour for me will require a good attempt at accuracy for the setting it's supposed to represent but only needs to nail it's verisimilitude (look it up, it's a very useful word). What works for you may be somewhere else on the scale but that's the subjective nature of a review.

Finally we have "Support" which covers supplements, ongoing content from (or at least communication with) the author(s), community works and the existence of forums, groups etc where you can get answers to questions. Despite all these potential components it's only worth 10% which I think is ok as a sufficiently stuffed book may negate a need for a lot of these. I seriously bloody doubt it but the potential is there.

Somewhere in all that I feel like price needs to be considered but I'm unsure where exactly. It'll probably end up biting into the Presentation or Support scores as it definitely doesn't fit the other three. As with everything else I'll be winging it on this.

Writing this has taken far longer than I expected and was much trickier too so I'll come back to this for my first review at a later time but it should be a fun one as I plan to start with my favourite game...