Wargaming communities are built around knowledge, but not all knowledge at the table is equal. A club night, campaign weekend, convention game, or online rules discussion brings together many kinds of expertise: tactical experience, historical reading, rules familiarity, painting skill, probability, scenario design, modelling practice, and social judgement. These skills overlap, but they are not the same. The best figure painter in the room may not be the strongest tactician, the loudest rules lawyer may not understand the design purpose of the rules, and the player with the largest collection may not possess the clearest historical judgement. This makes tabletop wargaming especially vulnerable to misplaced confidence, because the hobby rewards strong opinion while often lacking formal ways to test whether that opinion is sound.

The problem is commonly described as the Dunning Kruger effect, although the phrase is often misused as a general insult for stupidity. In its more precise form, the effect refers to a pattern in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their own ability because they lack the knowledge required to recognise the limits of their performance.¹ The issue is not ignorance alone. It is ignorance combined with confidence. This combination can be disruptive in any field, but it becomes particularly visible in wargaming because the game table invites players to make decisions, explain outcomes, criticise rules, correct others, and present themselves as authorities.

Kruger and Dunning’s original study argued that poor performers suffer from a “double burden”: they perform badly, and the same lack of competence that produces poor performance also prevents them from recognising the poor quality of that performance.² David Dunning and his colleagues later developed this point by arguing that the skills needed to produce correct responses are often closely related to the skills needed to recognise correct responses.³ In wargaming terms, the player who does not understand command friction may not realise why a command rule is working as intended. The player who has never designed a balanced scenario may not recognise why a simple points total cannot solve an asymmetric historical battle. The player who has not studied probability may mistake an unlikely die roll for proof that the system is broken.

Wargaming gives this pattern an unusually rich field in which to operate because the hobby is both technical and interpretive. A player may need to understand written rules, distances, timing, probabilities, army composition, historical organisation, terrain effects, unit capabilities, morale systems, and the intentions of the scenario designer. At the same time, the player must read the social situation at the table, deciding when to press an argument, when to accept a ruling, when to offer advice, and when the pleasure of the game is more important than proving a point. Gary Alan Fine’s study of role playing games described gaming groups as social worlds, sustained by shared understandings and repeated interaction.⁴ Wargaming clubs are similar social worlds, but they add the weight of material display, tactical judgement, historical argument, and public performance.

The Dunning Kruger problem often appears first in rules discussion. A player reads a rule once, applies it badly, loses a game, and then announces that the rules are flawed. Sometimes the criticism is justified, because rules can certainly be badly written, badly edited, poorly tested, or internally contradictory. Yet sometimes the player has not understood the design logic. A morale rule may seem too severe if the player assumes the game is measuring physical casualties, but it may make sense if the rule is measuring cohesion, willingness to advance, and the psychological effect of fire. An activation system may appear unfair if the player expects perfect control over every unit, but it may be central to a design that seeks to represent uncertainty and lost opportunity. A command radius may feel artificial until the player recognises that the rule is trying to prevent the godlike control that tabletop commanders otherwise possess.

This is particularly important in historical wargaming, where players often treat themselves as interpreters of the past. Philip Sabin has argued that simulation games can help students and researchers understand conflict by forcing them to confront decision making under uncertainty rather than merely explaining events after the fact.⁵ That strength is also a danger. A player may believe that reading about a battle is the same as understanding how to model it. Another may know uniform details while misunderstanding doctrine, logistics, training, morale, command culture, or the political purpose of the campaign. Historical knowledge at the wargames table is therefore uneven. It may be deep in one area and shallow in another. The Dunning Kruger effect becomes damaging when narrow knowledge is mistaken for general authority.

One common form of this misplaced authority is the “fact collector” problem. The fact collector knows weapon ranges, armour thicknesses, unit names, battlefield dates, and the correct colour of facings, but may have little understanding of why armies behaved as they did. This does not make factual knowledge unimportant. Accuracy matters, and careful research can enrich a game enormously. The problem arises when isolated facts are used to overrule broader interpretation. A player who knows the theoretical range of a rifle may insist that troops should fire effectively across the whole table, while ignoring smoke, stress, terrain, poor visibility, command control, ammunition limits, and the difficulty of battlefield identification. A player who knows that cavalry could move quickly may miss the wider tactical problem of when mounted troops could move safely, when they could exploit disorder, and when they were vulnerable to fire.

The issue also appears in tactical self assessment. Newer players often explain defeat through bad dice, bad balance, or an overpowered opposing army, while stronger players are more likely to examine deployment, timing, movement, objective choice, concentration of force, reserve use, and risk management. This does not mean experienced players are immune to excuse making. Veterans can be just as defensive as beginners, and long experience can harden into arrogance. Yet tactical competence usually involves seeing decision chains rather than isolated moments. The beginner sees the failed morale test. The better player sees the exposed flank, unsupported advance, poor timing, and unnecessary risk that made the morale test decisive.

This is where overconfidence research beyond the original Dunning Kruger article becomes useful. Moore and Healy distinguish between different forms of overconfidence: overestimation of one’s actual performance, overplacement of oneself relative to others, and overprecision in one’s beliefs.⁶ All three appear in wargaming communities. The player who believes they played better than they did is overestimating. The player who assumes they are superior to most opponents after limited experience is overplacing. The player who insists that a unit, rule, army, or tactic is definitely broken after two games is displaying overprecision. These distinctions matter because each form requires a different response. A player who misreads their own performance needs feedback. A player who ranks themselves too highly needs stronger opposition. A player who is too certain needs evidence, repetition, and exposure to alternative interpretations.

Confirmation bias further deepens the problem. Raymond Nickerson defines confirmation bias as the tendency to seek or interpret evidence in ways that favour existing beliefs, expectations, or hypotheses.⁷ Wargamers do this constantly. A player who believes artillery is too powerful remembers every devastating barrage and forgets every game in which the guns were late, ineffective, badly placed, or irrelevant to the objective. A player who believes cavalry is useless remembers every failed charge and forgets every moment when cavalry shaped the enemy’s movement by threat alone. A player who dislikes a ruleset notices every awkward result while overlooking every occasion on which the design produced exactly the intended uncertainty. The table becomes an evidence machine, but the player collects only the evidence that confirms what they already think.

Probability is another area where confidence often exceeds understanding. Wargamers speak frequently about odds, averages, modifiers, and likely outcomes, but many rely more heavily on memory than mathematics. Extreme events are remembered because they are dramatic. Ordinary probabilities disappear because they are ordinary. A player may claim that a rule is absurd because a unit failed three morale tests in a row, even though unlikely sequences are inevitable across enough games. Another may insist that a weapon “never hits” because several misses occurred at a memorable point in a campaign. In reality, random systems produce clusters, streaks, and anomalies, and a small number of emotionally charged examples is a poor basis for design judgement.

There is a social dimension to this as well. Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital helps explain why some forms of knowledge carry status within hobby communities.⁸ In wargaming, authority may attach to age, collection size, tournament record, painting awards, historical reading, rules mastery, or simply length of membership in a club. These forms of capital are not meaningless. A long established player may indeed have valuable experience. A tournament player may understand competitive balance. A historical researcher may see errors others miss. Yet cultural capital can also protect overconfidence. If a club has always treated one player as the authority on a period, that player may continue to be believed even when they are wrong. If a tournament winner speaks on historical design, others may mistake competitive success for broad expertise. If an older member dismisses a newcomer’s correction, seniority becomes a substitute for evidence.

Commercial gaming can intensify this problem because army choice, list building, faction loyalty, and online commentary all become part of identity. Carter, Gibbs, and Harrop’s study of Warhammer 40,000 army construction showed that much of the game occurs before the battle itself, through collecting, modelling, preparation, list design, and engagement with the wider hobby culture.⁹ Once a player has invested money, time, emotion, and identity in a faction or style of play, criticism of that army or rule system can feel personal. Confidence then becomes defensive. The player is not merely arguing that a rule is fair. They are defending their purchases, their taste, their preparation, and their status within the community.

Online spaces magnify the Dunning Kruger problem because they reward speed and certainty more often than caution and method. A confident claim that a game is broken, a faction is unbeatable, a historical interpretation is obvious, or a rule is mathematically absurd can travel further than a careful explanation. Battle reports, tier lists, short videos, and forum arguments often remove the local context that makes a result meaningful. Was the table too open? Were the objectives poorly designed? Did one player forget a rule? Was the army list suited to the scenario? Did unusual dice distort the outcome? Without this context, one game becomes evidence, and repeated retelling turns it into doctrine.

Artificial intelligence now adds another layer to this problem. AI tools can help wargamers draft scenarios, calculate probabilities, summarise historical material, write campaign notes, and generate playtest questions. Used carefully, they can be valuable assistants. Used carelessly, they can produce confident nonsense. The danger is not only that an AI system may be wrong, but that a player may accept its output because it looks organised, authoritative, and complete. Recent research on human reliance on AI has examined how self assessment and overconfidence shape whether users rely appropriately on AI systems.¹⁰ For wargaming communities, the lesson is straightforward: AI can assist judgement, but it cannot replace tested knowledge, play experience, historical checking, and common sense.

The Dunning Kruger effect also interacts with the culture of house rules. House ruling is one of the great pleasures of wargaming. It allows groups to adapt games to local taste, historical interest, campaign needs, or neglected periods. Many excellent systems have grown out of dissatisfaction with existing rules. Yet premature house ruling is often a symptom of overconfidence. A player who does not yet understand a ruleset may begin altering it after a single game, removing friction, weakening morale, increasing movement, adding special rules, or changing combat results without recognising the consequences. The result may be a worse game, not because house rules are bad, but because the player has changed the machinery before understanding how it works.

Scenario design shows the same pattern. A confident but inexperienced designer may believe that equal points produce a fair game, that historical forces automatically produce historical interest, or that adding more special rules creates more realism. In practice, good scenarios depend on objectives, time pressure, terrain, force asymmetry, information, reserves, morale, and victory conditions. A small imbalance may create drama. A perfect points match may create boredom. A historically accurate force may need carefully written objectives to avoid becoming a simple massacre. Good scenario design therefore requires humility because the designer must ask not only whether the forces are correct, but whether the players will face meaningful decisions.

The community cost of misplaced confidence can be high. A player who is inexperienced can usually be taught. A player who is inexperienced and certain is much harder to help. They may reject advice, dominate conversation, correct others incorrectly, challenge umpires, derail campaign planning, or insist that every defeat proves a flaw in the rules. Over time, this can damage the generosity of a club. Experienced players stop offering advice because it is ignored. New players receive bad guidance from the loudest voice in the room. Rules discussions become performances of certainty rather than attempts to understand the game. The table slows down, not because the rules are too complex, but because confidence has become detached from competence.

The opposite problem also exists. Some genuinely competent players underestimate their ability, especially when they compare their own uncertainty with the apparent confidence of others. This is important because the popular version of the Dunning Kruger effect often imagines a simple world in which fools are confident and experts are humble. Reality is more complicated. Moore and Healy’s distinction between forms of overconfidence helps here, because confidence varies according to the task, the comparison group, and the kind of judgement being made.¹¹ A thoughtful player may be cautious because they understand complexity, while a shallow player may be certain because they do not. A community that rewards certainty too strongly may therefore silence some of its best thinkers.

The answer is not to suppress argument. Wargaming would be poorer without argument, theory, enthusiasm, after action debate, and strong views about rules and history. The answer is to connect confidence to evidence. Clubs can do this by encouraging post game discussion that begins with decisions rather than excuses. Campaign groups can record outcomes over time so balance claims are tested against patterns rather than memories. Scenario designers can ask players what choices felt meaningful rather than merely who won. Umpires can distinguish between genuine ambiguity and disappointment. Experienced members can model uncertainty by saying, “I may be wrong, but this is how I understand the rule,” which invites correction without surrendering authority.

Friendly rigour is the best community response. A club should welcome enthusiasm, but test claims. It should encourage newcomers, but not allow confident misunderstanding to become doctrine. It should respect veterans, but not treat seniority as proof. It should value tournament experience, but not mistake it for historical expertise. It should use AI tools, online commentary, and published reviews, but not accept them without checking. The important questions are simple: How do we know? Have we tested it? Does the rule actually say that? Did the scenario create the result? Is this a repeated pattern or one memorable game? Are we criticising the design, or objecting to losing?

In this sense, the Dunning Kruger effect is not merely an individual flaw. It is a community management problem. Every gaming group creates incentives for how knowledge is displayed and rewarded. If the loudest player gains authority, volume becomes expertise. If the most confident player is always followed, certainty becomes evidence. If the best painter is treated as the best historian, skill in one area becomes false authority in another. If online opinion is repeated without testing, popularity becomes proof. A healthy wargaming community resists these shortcuts by making room for correction, reflection, experiment, and humility.

The deeper issue is the politics of expertise. Who gets believed at the table? Who gets corrected? Who is allowed to be wrong? Who is encouraged to learn? Who is dismissed before speaking? These questions shape the life of a club as surely as rules, armies, and terrain. Misplaced confidence can damage games, but well managed uncertainty can strengthen them. A good wargaming community does not require everyone to be an expert. It requires players to know that expertise is partial, earned, and always open to testing. When players learn to distrust easy certainty, the games become better, the history becomes richer, the rules are read more carefully, and the community becomes less dependent on whoever speaks first, loudest, or longest.

Footnotes

1. Justin Kruger and David Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self Assessments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77, no. 6 (1999): 1121–1134.
2. Kruger and Dunning, “Unskilled and Unaware of It,” 1121–1134.
3. David Dunning, Kerri Johnson, Joyce Ehrlinger, and Justin Kruger, “Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 12, no. 3 (2003): 83–87.
4. Gary Alan Fine, Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 1–16.
5. Philip Sabin, Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 1–18.
6. Don A. Moore and Paul J. Healy, “The Trouble with Overconfidence,” Psychological Review 115, no. 2 (2008): 502–517.
7. Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2, no. 2 (1998): 175–220.
8. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 1–7.
9. Marcus Carter, Martin Gibbs, and Mitchell Harrop, “Drafting an Army: The Playful Pastime of Warhammer 40,000,” Games and Culture 9, no. 2 (2014): 122–147.
10. Gaole He, Lucie Kuiper, and Ujwal Gadiraju, “Knowing About Knowing: An Illusion of Human Competence Can Hinder Appropriate Reliance on AI Systems,” arXiv, 2023.
11. Moore and Healy, “The Trouble with Overconfidence,” 502–517.
12. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 199–208.
13. Thomas Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (New York: Free Press, 1991), 29–48.
14. Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1–20.
15. Donald Featherstone, War Games: Battles and Manoeuvres with Model Soldiers (London: Stanley Paul, 1962), 9–24.
16. Tony Bath, Setting Up a Wargames Campaign (Worthing: Wargames Research Group, 1973), 3–18.