WACN wins a Charlie

The winners of the Charles S. Roberts Awards for excellence in conflict simulation design were announced today—and I’m very, VERY pleased to report that We Are Coming, Nineveh! was selected as the best tactical wargame of 2023. It was also nominated in three other categories, which is also an honour in itself.

WACN had its origins as a student project in my conflict simulation course at McGill in 2018. One of my students, Juliette Le Ménahèze, was writing her Honours thesis on Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, and very much wanted to do a game on the 2017 liberation of Mosul from Daesh (ISIS) control. Much of the Western media coverage of war had focused on Coalition support for Iraq, but most of the actual fighting (and dying) had been done by Iraqi and Kurdish security forces—a point that she felt it was important to emphasize. Juliette recruited classmate Harrison Brewer to join her on the project. It should be noted that neither had extensive wargaming experience: Juliette was a complete neophyte, while Harrison’s experience was largely limited to digital gaming.

The Juliette (left) and Harrison (right) show off the initial prototype of WACN.

From the outset they wanted the game to be accessible to inexperienced wargamers, and hence be useful for teaching about the battle and urban operations more generally. Consequently, simplicity and elegance were key. The use of blocks was inspired by Sébastien de Peyret’s Urban Operations, which allowed for considerable “fog of war.” Harrison designed the area movement system. The inspiration here was 1812: Invasion of Canada, as well as a system for fast movement along major roads that was derived from some of the COIN series of games. The various urban areas on the map were carefully drawn to reflect natural discontinuities in urban space (notable neighbourhoods and larger roads) as well as building density. Key innovations in the game design included the use of capability cards to reflect operational planning and asset allocation before the battle started; the use of event cards to both generate collateral damage and to allow a richer description of the tactical challenges of urban combat; and the three-fold metrics for success (time, casualties, and collateral damage). This approach—like real-world asymmetric warfare—can result in some quite ambiguous victories.

You’ll find a fuller description of the game design and play in this YouTube video.

When the course was over, I urged Juliette and Harrison to further develop the game for possible publication. That’s when I formally joined the design team. I also brought on board renowned wargame designer Brian Train. Brian is not only very well known for his work on asymmetric warfare, but he and I go way back: we were both members of the “Strategy and Tactics” wargaming club at the University of Victoria in the early 1980s, and had spent many hours battling with Soviet microarmour when I was an undergraduate student and he was still in high school.

Next came the long process of refining and playtesting the game. As we were doing that, Juliette and Harrison graduated from McGill and went on to earn Masters degrees in Middle East security studies and urban planning respectively, which could hardly be more appropriate.

Brian and Juliette playtesting.

Nuts! Publishing soon showed interest in what we were developing. Although busy schedules and the COVID pandemic slowed progress, Florent Coupeau and the Nuts! team were an absolute pleasure to work with. Nicolas Roblin did a terrific job with graphic design for the project, which looks absolutely beautiful on the tabletop.

Finally, in 2023, the game was released.

Since then we’ve been very pleased with the response from wargamers. Since WACN was designed not just for hobbyists but for use as a serious game too, I’ve been especially gratified to see it mentioned by analysts of urban warfare, inspire other designs and designers, and be used in professional military education.

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Finally, there’s a lesson here for new wargame designers (including future students in my POLI 452 class): just do it!