Accessible wargame, but not dumb!
Wargames tend to scare people, mostly because they have these preconceptions that these are some outwardly creations that can only be sunk into if you have a long list of prerequisites: a love for history, a mind capable of thinking so deep that it can drill a hole into the fabric of space time, an innate understanding of capacious and reclusive game mechanics and so on! The problem is that there are lots of flawed wargames out there that, for a regular player would look just the same as the ones that are said to be good. Heck, there isn't even a way to tell when the game is good or bad, easy but badly design, hard but badly designed and all the other permutations. But definitely there is a lot to be lost if you scrape these games from your list of games you give a try, especially if you don't mind the occasional strategy game, or the occasional game of checkers or Chess. Because if you can sink into these, the well designed and simple to interact with wargames, such as Colonial Conquest is, are just a beauty to play and behold. So, here you go, if you don't really play wargames but would like to see what the fuss is all about, Colonial Conquest is a deep but very easy game. It's built on the same ideas as RISK, with just so much additional content that isn't thrown in your face from the very begging. Thus, you have the time to learn the basics and only then get into these additional elements, which deepen the experience. Or, if you were already okay with wargames, but look for more American history simulation, see Decisive Battles of American Civil War, not as easy as CC a wargame, but more satisfying from a historic recreation perspective.
