Wargame
The abstractness is harnessed in the game by having the deck produce random terrain, and chances to fire, and the like, simulating uncertainty as to the local conditions (nature of the terrain, etc.).
Dan Verssen Games is a specialist designer and publisher of card games for several genres, including air combat and World War II and modern land combat.
Also, card driven games (CDGs), first introduced in 1993, use a deck of (custom) cards to drive most elements of the game, such as unit movement (activation) and random events. These are, however, distinctly board games, the deck is merely one of the most important elements of the game.

Computer: The term "wargame" is rarely used in the video gaming hobby; the term "strategy game" is preferred. "Computer wargame" distinguishes a game from a "tabletop wargame".
Computer wargames have many advantages over traditional wargames. In a computer game, all the routine procedures and calculations are automated. The player needs only to make strategic and tactical decisions. The learning curve for the player is smaller, as the game can be played without mastering all its mechanics. The gameplay is faster, as a computer can process calculations much faster than a human. Computer wargames often have more sophisticated mechanics than traditional wargames thanks to automation. Computer games tend to be cheaper than traditional wargames because, being software, they can be copied and distributed very efficiently. It's easier for a player to find opponents with a computer game: a computer game can use artificial intelligence to provide a virtual opponent, or connect him to another human player over the Internet. For these reasons, computers are now the dominant medium for wargaming.

Computer-assisted: In the recent years, programs have been developed for computer-assisted gaming as regards to wargaming. Two different categories can be distinguished: local computer assisted wargames and remote computer assisted wargames.
Local computer assisted wargames are mostly not designed toward recreating the battlefield inside computer memory, but employing the computer to play the role of game master by storing game rules and unit characteristics, tracking unit status and positions or distances, animating the game with sounds and voice and resolving combat. Flow of play is simple: each turn, the units come up in a random order. Therefore, the more units an opponent has, the more chance he will be selected for the next turn. When a unit comes up, the commander specifies an order and if offensive action is being taken, a target, along with details about distance. The results of the order, base move distance and effect to target, are reported, and the unit is moved on the tabletop. All distance relationships are tracked on the tabletop. All record-keeping is tracked by the computer.
Remote computer assisted wargames can be considered as extensions to the concept of play-by-email gaming, however the presentation and actual capabilities are completely different. They have been designed to replicate the look and feel of existing board or miniatures wargames on the computer. The map and counters are presented to the user who can then manipulate these, more-or-less as if he were playing the physical game, and send a saved file off to his opponent, who can review what has been done without having to duplicate everything on his physical set-up of the game, and respond. Some allow for both players to get on-line and see each other's moves in real-time.
These systems are generally set up so that while one can play the game, the program has no knowledge of the rules, and cannot enforce them. The human players must have a knowledge of the rules themselves. The idea is to promote the playing of the games (by making play against a remote opponent easier), while supporting the industry (and reducing copyright issues) by ensuring that the players have access to the actual physical game.
The four main programs that can be used to play a number of games each are Aide de Camp, Cyberboard, Vassal and ZunTzu. Aide de Camp is available for purchase, while the other three are offered free. Vassal is in turn an outgrowth of the VASL (Virtual ASL) project, and uses Java, making it accessible to any computer that can run a modern JVM, while the other three are Microsoft Windows programs.

Play-by-mail (PBM): Wargames were played remotely through the mail, with players sending lists of moves, or orders, to each other through the mail.
In some early PBM systems, six sided dice rolling was simulated by designating a specific stock and a future date and once that date passed, the players would determine an action's outcome using the sales in hundreds value for specific stocks on a specific date and then dividing the NYSE published sales in hundreds by six, using the remainder as the dice result.
Nuclear Destruction, by the Flying Buffalo, was an early PBM game in 1970. Origins Award Hall-of-Fame member Middle-Earth Play-By-Mail is still active today.
Reality Simulations, Inc. still runs a number of PBM games, such as Duel2 (formerly known as Duelmasters), Hyborian War, and Forgotten Realms: War of the Avatars.

E-mail and traditional: Since e-mail is faster than the standard postal service, the rise of the Internet saw a shift of people playing board wargames from play-by-mail (PBM) to play-by-email (PBEM) or play-by-web (PBW). The mechanics were the same, merely the medium was faster.
At this time, turn-based strategy computer games still had a decent amount of popularity, and many started explicitly supporting the sending of saved-game files through email (instead of needing to find the file to send to the opponent by hand). As with all types of video games, the rise in home networking solutions and Internet access has also meant that networked games are now common and easy to set up.

History: 

Early Prussian wargames (1780–1806): The first wargame was invented in Prussia in 1780 by Johann Christian Ludwig Hellwig. Hellwig's wargame was the first true wargame because it attempted to be realistic enough to teach useful lessons in military strategy to future army officers. Hellwig was a college professor and many of his students were aristocrats destined for military service. But Hellwig also wanted to sell his wargame commercially as a recreational item. Hellwig chose to base his game on chess so as to make it attractive and accessible to chess players. Hellwig published a second edition of his rulebook in 1803.
As in chess, Hellwig's game was played on a grid of squares, but it was a much larger grid, and the squares were color-coded to represent different types of terrain: mountains, swamp, water, trenches, etc. The layout of the terrain was not fixed, which allowed players to create their own custom battlefields. The pieces in the game represented real military units: cavalry, infantry, artillery, and various support units. As in chess, only a single piece could occupy a square, and the pieces moved square by square, either laterally or diagonally. Over normal terrain, infantry could move a maximum distance of eight squares, dragoons could move twelve squares, and light cavalry could move sixteen squares—intuitively mirroring the speed at which these units move in the real world. But terrain could impede movement: mountains were impassable, swamps slowed units down, rivers could only be crossed with the help of a special pontoon unit, etc. A player could only move one piece per turn, or one group of pieces if they were arranged in a rectangle. A piece could capture an enemy piece by moving into its square, just like in chess, but infantry and artillery pieces could also shoot enemy pieces, at a maximum ranges of two to three squares. Unlike chess, the pieces had orientation: for instance, an infantry piece could only shoot an enemy piece if they were facing it and flanking it. Hellwig's wargame could also simulate the fog of war to limited degree: while the players were arranging their pieces in their starting positions, they had the option of placing a screen across the board so that they could not observe their opponent's arrangement until the game started. Once the game was in progress, however, there was no hiding anything.
Hellwig's wargame was a commercial success, and inspired other inventors to develop their own chess-like wargames. In 1796, another Prussian named Johann Georg Julius Venturini invented his own wargame, inspired by Hellwig's game. Venturini's game was played on an even larger grid. Venturini's game also added rules governing logistics, such as supply convoys and mobile bakeries, and the effects of weather and seasons, making this perhaps the first operational-level wargame. In 1806, an Austrian named Johann Ferdinand Opiz developed a wargame aimed at both civilian and military markets. Like Hellwig's game, it used a modular grid-based board. But unlike Hellwig's game, Opiz's game used dice rolls to simulate the unpredictability of real warfare. This innovation was controversial at the time. Hellwig, who designed his wargame for both leisure as well as instruction, felt that introducing chance would spoil the fun.
A criticism of the chess-like wargames of Hellwig, Venturini, and Opiz was that the pieces were constrained to move across a grid in chess-like fashion.