I think that this applies to a lot of board games in general, today too. It feels like many were play-tested like two times or something by people that were bad

I think that this applies to a lot of board games in general, today too. It feels like many were play-tested like two times or something by people that were bad at playing board-games, because some mechanics/races/strategies are so powerful or useless. For war games though, it was probably really hard to find someone to play against that wanted to put in the hours ...