simulations miscellany: 10 January 2012

Some recent simulation and gaming items of interest:

* * *

In his regular gaming column at Foreign Policy Magazine this week, Michael Peck invades Syria. Milgeek note to Michael: the Turks have several hundred Leopard 1s and 2A4s, so perhaps using a modern German Army wasn’t entirely unrealistic after all.

* * *

At the Smart War Blog, a graduate student discusses his ongoing work on developing an insurgency/counter-insurgency simulation of the 2007 Baghdad Security Plan for his class assignment  in Professor Philip Sabin’s well-known course on conflict simulation at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London:

• Picking my battles… Conflict Simulation at King’s College London (20 October 2011)
• Fardh al-Qanoon: Designing a Simulation (24 October 2011)
• Fardh al-Qanoon: Creating a Map  (9 January 2012)

Free tip from PAXsims: black counters with white printing might work nicely for the Sadrists’ “Mahdi Army,” given their usual parade uniform. Also, while periodic PAXsims contributor Brian Train is rightly considered the reigning king of small-box insurgency simulations, judging from your draft map you may already have him beaten on the graphic arts front. Watch out, Brian!

* * *

As for Professor Sabin, this seems a good time to mention that his forthcoming book Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games (Continuum Press) will be published shortly. It seems destined to join Peter Perla’s The Art of Wargaming (1990) as an instant classic in the field.

Simulating War explores the theory and practice of conflict simulation, as applied in the many thousands of wargames published over the past 50 years. It discusses the utility of this form of conflict simulation by setting it in its proper context alongside military and professional wargaming, as well as more academically familiar techniques such as game theory and operational analysis. The book explains in detail the analytical and modelling techniques involved, and provides complete illustrative simulations of three specific historical conflicts, as used in Professor Sabin’s own courses on the wars concerned. It gives readers all the intellectual skills they need to use published wargames and to design their own simulations of conflicts of their choice, whether for interest or as a vehicle for teaching or research.

You can preorder it via Amazon.com and elsewhere.