Simulation and gaming miscellany, 11 August 2018

PAXsims is pleased to offer some recent items on conflict simulation and serious (and not-so-serious) gaming that may be of interest to our readers. Anders Russell and David Becker suggested material for this latest edition.

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Save the date! The next Connections US professional wargaming conference will be held on 13-16 August 2019 at the US Army War College in Carlisle, PA.

Also, don’t forget about the Connections North wargaming conference to be held in Montréal on 16 February 2019.

The Australian Army’s professional development website, The Cove, features a piece by Major Edward Farren (British Army) on using the Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) PC game Wargame Red Dragon at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

Being the commander of a rehabilitation platoon could easily be viewed as an undesirable posting. All my soldiers were unable, through injury or sickness, to participate in the full range of training that I was used to running as an infantry officer. The post also naturally comes with a heavier burden of medical, welfare and policy bureaucracy which must be learnt, if not entirely mastered, in order to promote the recovery of the platoon. The nature of a rehabilitation platoon, however, makes it ideal for conceptual development. Indeed the minds of the broken (no disrespect intended) are in desperate need of stimulation and focus to avoid fixating on their plight, often prolonging their recovery and, for some, triggering their intention to leave the service altogether. The format for a typical day would see the troops under dedicated physiotherapists and injury specialists in the morning so by the time I got them for afternoon lessons they were generally fatigued. Therefore, the more practical I could make the lessons, and the more interaction involved generally, the better the outcome. The example in this article is but one iteration of a series of practical professional military education (PME) activities, largely centred on the use of wargaming, I employed to teach my soldiers. Those that came before me, and those that followed me, not doubt did things differently. That is, of course, their prerogative and the pleasure of one’s own command. I do not seek to compare methods, only to share what I consider to be an effective technique that others could replicate and improve upon.

Birth of an idea

Walking into the lines after duty one evening I discovered several of my charges playing a commercial PC game ‘Wargame Red Dragon’ in some form of multiplayer engagement. There was an electric sense of competition and associated bragging rights for the winner. Some casual enquiries revealed who the ‘best’ players of this little clique were. After a short discussion I had their support for using the simulation to train them in the upcoming Defensive Doctrine module. I decided that the best way to incorporate the simulation was as a CPX timed to assess conceptual understanding of defensive doctrine taught by traditional methods….

You’ll find the rest of the article here.

Are you a teacher who wants some ideas on how to set up and run a gaming club at your high school? Look no further than On Sean’s Table.

This was year 16 for the Games Club I run at my high school. It reflected the trend in the larger gaming community: numbers were up overall, girls attended almost as much as boys, and the preferred type of game shifted decidedly from cardboard, dice, and counter to games focussed on more social interaction.

His blog has featured several other posts on high school gaming, including how he set it up, and what the best games are to have available for student play.

This is Not a Drill is an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television show that uses a seminar game/scenario discussion format to explore contemporary challenges, such as a crisis in the South China Sea or cybersecurity.

Recent episodes can be found on YouTube.

Shortly after last month’s Helsinki Summit (and its aftermath), the Washington Post ran a piece on Twilight Struggle–”perhaps the best board game ever.”

In 2018, of course, Twilight Struggle — with its re-creation of a world in which the United States and Russia locked horns — is closer to describing current reality than at any point since it was released. “It definitely feels relevant now,” says Ananda Gupta, 41, who invented the game with Matthews. “All you’d need to do is add a few more cards and you could just extend it to today. … If I had a mind to, I’m confident we could do a Cold War game along the lines of the current one that’s happening.”

Indeed, in various online forums, fans of the game have taken to inventing their own contemporary cards, like one addressing President Trump’s abandonment of our European allies to court Vladimir Putin; that card removes the game’s blue-colored U.S. influence markers in Europe to provide an opening for Russian red ones. The anonymous fan who created the card named it “The Art of the Deal.”

The article discusses more than the game, and also touches upon the current renaissance of board gaming.

Reminder: Carleton University in Ottawa will be offering a two-day course on serious games on 22-23 November 2018.

If all goes according to plan, I will be joined by two special international guests—one a well-known British wargamer and PAXsims associate editor, the other an American wargamer and occasional PAXsims contributor. I won’t tell you who they are yet, but here’s a hint…