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In abstract strategy games, the game is only loosely tied to a real-world theme, if at all.Wargames are simulations of military battles, campaigns or entire wars.  The mechanics do not attempt to simulate reality, but rather serve the internal logic of the game.Players will have to consider situations that are analogous to the situations faced by leaders of historical battles.

A purist's definition of an abstract strategy game requires that it cannot have random elements or hidden information.As such, war games are usually heavy on simulation elements, and while they are all "strategy games", they can also be "strategic" or "tactical" in the military jargon sense.Traditionally, war games have been played either with miniatures, using physical models of detailed terrain and miniature representations of people and equipment to depict the game state; or on a board, which commonly uses cardboard counters on a hex map.  However, many games are commonly classed as abstract strategy games which do not meet these criteria.

Popular miniature wargames include Warhammer 40,000 or its fantasy counterpart Warhammer Fantasy.  Games such as Backgammon, Octiles, Can't Stop, Sequence and Mentalis have all been described as "abstract strategy"[citation needed], despite having a luck element.Popular strategic board wargames include Risk, Axis and Allies, and Diplomacy.  A smaller category of non-perfect abstract strategy games incorporate hidden information without using any random elements.Advanced Squad Leader is a successful tactical scale wargame..  An example is Stratego.

This type of game is an attempt to simulate the decisions and processes inherent to some real-world situation.  Most of the mechanics are chosen to reflect what the real-world consequences would be of each player action and decision.  Abstract games cannot be completely divided from simulations and so games can be thought of as existing on a continuum of almost pure abstraction (like Abalone) to almost pure simulation (like Strat-o-Matic Baseball).