War is a simple minded game with no real choices. You just go through the motions and see what happens. I thought it would be fun to see the balance of power shift back and forth as game after game were played at high speed.
Fortran
I programmed this once as a freshman at Purdue University. Each play took a line of fan-fold output. I got many pages. I was interested in how often wars occurred (play of equal cards) and especially multi-round wars.
HyperCard
I often wrote HyperCard stacks with my kids. This one came up after playing a game or two of war over lunch at the local pub.
Layer two of the layered and visualized implementation of the Game of War. Buttons provided single-step access to lower levels.
The stack uses text fields to store each player's hands. These grow and shrink as a player's fortune waxes and wains. A few more cards in the stack deal the hands and collect statistics on the play.
Real strength moves back and forth with the aces, not the total number of cards.