Coming soon to Kickstarter: EuroWarGames!

EuroWarGames_Cover

Invasion! Sie kommen!

From the editors:

Against all odds and after four years I am super excited that I can eventually make this announcement: Our anthology is finally done!
“EuroWarGames. The history, state and future of professional and public (war)gaming in Europe”, edited by Riccardo Masini, Frédéric Serval and me [Jan Heinemann] will be published by Nuts Publishing.
A big thank you to Florent Coupeau from Nuts! for believing in this project, picking it up and investing time and money to get it across the finish line.
EuroWarGames has articles written by us, the editors, Andrea Alonge, Alfio Ferrara, Andrea Angiolino, Stephane Goria, Zoltan Harangi-Tóth, Paul Hodson, Brian Train, Lorenzo Nannetti, Xavier Rubio Campillo, Salvatore Santangelo, Volko Ruhnke, Ranald Shepherd, Maurice Suckling, Giuseppe Tamba and Daniela Kuschel about various different topics related to wargames, eurogames, game design and history.
The Kickstarter campaign will start soon and we will be sharing a few snippets and do some livestreams to talk about the contents. For now you can sign up for the campaign and be notified as soon as it kicks off. Your support would mean a lot to us.

I don’t have a current index of the contributors and their articles, but my contribution is “Analog Newsgames” – yes, you have heard me spout off about this topic before, but this one is at length, illustrated and there is a whole book full of other, more interesting stuff for you to look at instead.

Here is the link for the KS, when it starts (probably 19 November, but subject to change).

MSRP will be 32 Euros, but Kickstarter price is 20% off or 26 Euros.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nuts-publishing/eurowargames

I hope you’ll sign up! This one has been four years in the making.

Duffelblog does USA CGSC DSE

Okay, this is going to show up all kinds of places in the next few days but I’ll put it here where I can find it again. 

All praise to the cleverly disguised Directorate of Simulation Education!

From https://www.duffelblog.com/p/command-and-staff-students-excited

Command and Staff students excited to wargame upcoming civil war
“No one gets to launch tactical nukes at Philadelphia until they’re 100% complete on annual training.”

Kay Too Ess Ohhhhh
Oct 23, 2024

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Wargaming is a staple of professional military education courses across the Defense Department, and students at the Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) are pretty excited about their wargame scenario for Academic Year 2025.

“I thought maybe we’d play out a scenario for defending Taiwan or perhaps countering Russian aggression in Scandinavia,” said Maj. Molly Swift. “So I was surprised when we were told we’d be planning something called Operation EYELINER. Then, the instructor opened the road to war brief with a close-up of J.D. Vance. And as I gazed into those eyes, I thought, ‘Yeah, I can see how those baby blues could get the country in trouble.’ That’s when I knew this wargame was going to be special.”

Dr. Burgerlich Krieg, head of the Murderology, Murderonomy, and Statistics Department that oversees CGSC’s game exercises, noted that wargames are intended to prepare students for future conflicts.

“All of our officers take an oath to defend America against enemies foreign and domestic. So we figured that given the polarization of the upcoming election, we should game out a few homeland courses of action just in case the sweet meteor of death doesn’t put us out of our misery before November 5th.”

Using a modified version of the classic Axis and Allies wargame, each CGSC conference group was assigned a unique branch plan of national dissolution to explore.

“Operation EYELINER assumes that Vance takes over the presidency after Trump chokes to death on a Big Mac at his inauguration ball,” Swift said as she casually rolled a pair of dice in her hand. “Naturally, Vance’s immediate national security priority would be forcibly nationalizing the means of production at major cosmetics centers in California and Florida. So we’ve planned out combined armored thrusts and airborne assaults leveraging the closest Army bases to each maquillage center of gravity.”

Krieg elaborated on some of the other branch plans: “The American taxpayer can rest assured that the iron majors here at CGSC are gaming out every possible scenario. For example, Operation WORD SALAD follows an executive order by President-elect Harris to deploy special operators in direct action missions to eliminate any journalist who asks her a question harder than ‘What’s your favorite color?’ With a Trump victory, Operation CHAINSAW has the Corps of Engineers provide logistical support to irregular forces led by RFK Jr. that hunt down immigrants. Sure, using severed Haitian heads is kind of a dark way to track victory points, but it’s these types of realistic wargame scenarios that really make the military decision-making process come alive.”

Minute Men Mark II

China’s War: nearing the home stretch!

(quick look at some of the Event Cards)

In today’s update from GMT, it’s announced that solo development for China’s War is about done, other playtesting was completed some time ago, and we’ve signed off on map art, counter art, and Event Card graphics (see above). Final touches on the tutorial scenario have been made and now there will be final formatting of rules book, playbook, and player aids.

Pre-orders are now up to 1,725.

With luck, this game should be printed in early 2025.

All praise to the invaluable work of Jason Carr and Joe Dewhurst to bring this into the world! This game has had one of the longest gestation periods of any of my games, from design to formal publication.

Canadian Army Journal: special issue on urban warfare

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Everyone, everyone, you have to check this out!

Today I received an advance print copy of volume 21.1 of the Canadian Army Journal; it is a special issue devoted to urban warfare – “Part 1: Planning and Preparation for Urban Operations.” It will be followed in due course by Part 2, which will focus on useful new military technologies for and case studies of urban warfare.

The guest editor for both issues is MAJ Jayson Geroux, who I have come to know through my participation in the Urban Operations Planner Course – where I was the wargame designer and facilitator, he was one of the original and principal lecturers and curriculum designers of the course. He is probably one of the most knowledgeable people about urban warfare throughout history in the English-speaking world; he is definitely Canada’s foremost expert.

The lineup of articles in this issue is amazing, and includes several by other urban warfare experts: “The Role of Wargaming in Urban Operations Training” by DSTL’s Stuart Lyle; “Understanding Risks and Mitigating Civilian Harm in Urban Operations” by Sahr Muhammedally; “Military History: A Guide to 21st Century Urban Warfare” by Louis DiMarco; and “What does the War in Ukraine tell us about Urban Warfare?” by Anthony King. Also reviews of three very important books on the subject: Urban Warfare by Anthony King, The Battle of Marawi by Criselda Yabes, and Understanding Urban Warfare, by Liam Collins and John Spencer.

It won’t be long before the online version of the journal will be available for everyone to read, it will be posted at https://www.canada.ca/en/army/services/canadian-army-journal/caj-volume.html

Be sure and check it out!

A QUICK Defence of Marijampole

Marijampole1

Not an actual hasty defence of this small city in Lithuania, but one using the QUICK game to model one, as practiced at GameOn, a recent video-game-themed gaming event in Vilnius.

Friend of the blog Pijus Kruminas (who has an excellent Substack blog of his own concerning the use of games in academia) used QUICK Junior (which he played with me at Connections-UK this September) to construct a Lithuanian scenario.

In the scenario, the Russian 275th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment emerges from the Kaliningrad enclave and heads east towards Vilnius, with its advance blocked at Marijampole by the Grand Duke Vytenis Logistics Battalion and elements of the NATO enhanced forward presence battle group in Lithuania (mostly German, but with elements from the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, and Czechia).

Read his account of how the day went! I hope that he will be able to use the game in other settings in the future.

https://pijus.substack.com/p/how-we-defended-marijampole

[By the way, I have now posted the print-and-play files for QUICK Junior (Daugavpils) over on The QUICK Page. Scroll down to the bottom. ]

Brief Border Wars 1 and 2 on sale – again

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The Compass Games holiday sale (which will be on until 31 January 2024 2025) has Brief Border Wars on sale at the holiday price of $45.00 (that’s a shade over $11 for each game, friends!).

Also, Brief Border Wars Volume 2 is available for the reduced pay-later price of $54.00. It’s marked “mid 2024” “this item will be released at a future date”, and now you know as much as I do about that (though last I heard it was likely mid 2025).

Miss out on this and you’ll have to pay $65.00 later! Just think of what you could do with that spare eleven bucks.

https://www.compassgames.com/product/brief-border-wars-2-pay-later/

Game On! at Georgetown University, 6-7 November 2024

 

I’m preparing my talk for the “Game On! Wargaming and the Operational Environment” conference at Georgetown University in Washington DC, 6-7 November. This is a conference put on by the Army Mad Scientist Initiative at TRADOC and the Georgetown University Wargame Society, a group that is doing some amazing things since Sebastian Bae got it going several years ago. 

I’ll be speaking on “Gaming Neglected Aspects of the Operational Environment” (OE). Agenda is still in draft but speakers and panelists who I know and will be there include: the ubiquitous Sebastian Bae (CNA), Ian Brown (Group W), Mitchell Land (game designer), Joseph Chretien (used to run wargaming at US Army War College), Mike Dunn (USA CGSC), Yuna Wong (JHU-APL), and COL Arnel David (SHAPE and Fight Club).

There will be panels on: “gaming unconventional aspects of the OE”; using wargaming for professional military education, readiness and decision support; wargaming a total national response; and advances in wargaming technology and digital wargaming. 

There’s a Game Night too! I’ll be bringing QUICK, O Canada and Strongman (redesign of Caudillo that is reaching culmination).

If you are in the area and would like to attend, here is the link for the Eventbrite registration. There will be no synchronous online content; I don’t know if talks or panels will be streamed later but if they are I will let y’all know. 

It will be a quick trip for me, I will be leaving right afterwards to get back to Vancouver, for BottosCon 2024. 

QUICK in Lithuania

quickjr marijampole

When I was running games of “QUICK Junior” (the scaled down version of the urban combat game, where the maneuver units are NATO platoons and Russian company size storm groups and detached platoons – yes, I know I am bad with titles) Pijus Kruminas was one of the participants.

He wanted to create a version of the game set in Lithuania, so I let him have the files (I will likely put them up on the QUICK Page soon for general distribution since they seem to be fairly sound) and here he has tried out a prototype, set in the small town of Marijampole.

The antagonists are a battalion of the 275 Motor Rifle Regiment from the Kaliningrad enclave, versus troops from a multinational NATO “Enhanced Forward Presence” Battle Group company led by Germans and the Lithuanian “Grand Duke Vytenis” logistic support battalion (based in Marijampolė).

From his LinkedIn post:

Thinking about defense at ISM University of Management and Economics. Together with Economics and Politics students Emilija Račkauskaitė, Gustė Kiškytė, Viltė Radzytė, and Povilas Masiliūnas, we tested an urban combat scenario set in Marijampolė, Lithuania, using the QUICK Junior (Quick Urban Integrated Combat Kriegsspiel) game designed by Brian Train. We’re preparing to facilitate several sessions of the game at an event, and the playtest revealed some changes needed to the scenario.

We selected Marijampolė as it is among the largest urban centers in the Kaliningrad direction and is important, among other reasons, as a railway hub (where most of the fighting took place around the railway station this time). One of the key lessons here is the use of combined arms, while the game also accounts for the civilian population, thus requiring participants to consider a range of options at their disposal as well as their effects.

The system works well, plus it can be introduced relatively easily. We’ll see where this goes, and once we play more, I’ll definitely be sharing more thoughts on the Substack.

So I’m looking forward to one of Pijus’ informative Substack posts!

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