Command is the management of attention

April 13, 2026 1 Comment

A few weeks ago Jerry Allen Hall (COL USA, ret’d) and I co-wrote a piece on the nature of command and control in warfare and how it is reflected (well or poorly) in civvy street wargames.

Today Brant Guillory posted it on Armchair Dragoons.

The most constrained resource in command was not manpower or firepower.

It was attention.

Commanders cannot observe everything, interpret everything, and act everywhere at once. They must continually decide where to look, where to intervene, and—perhaps most importantly—what to ignore.

Understanding this limitation reveals something fundamental about command.

At its core, command is the management of attention.

Jerry wrote the intelligent stuff like the above, and I provided concrete examples from various wargames: War of the Ring (SPI), NATO Division Commander, Paddy Griffith’s Generalship Game, Red November, 91 DSSB Staff Game.

Here it is in full: https://armchairdragoons.com/command-attention/

To illustrate Jerry’s point, I also devised a very quick card game for 2 players called Battle of the Bandwidths to show the effects and dilemmas between attention/perception and decision/execution. Basically, you assemble poker hands against time but you also have to give some thought to what and how you are doing, and what you are foregoing in doing it. Sounds trivial and maybe it is, but I thought there was something more to it. Either way, games are over in about 10 minutes and it might serve as a sort of cerebral warmup exercise.

You will need two decks of cards, some scrap paper or d6 for recording the state of your cognitive bandwidth, and a timer.

Bandwidths 13 Apr 26Download

Give it a try!

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Free online game: Infosphere

April 8, 2026 Leave a comment

I don’t play many games online, but I encountered this small quick one designed by Alastair Kocho Williams of Clarkson University.

Infosphere is a free, quick, solitaire browser-based game about contaminating and manipulating and defending the infosphere. Red and Blue have modest budgets and a choice of tactics to pursue when trying to boost belief or resilience among selected social groups and media networks. Game has three scenarios: public health (easy), democratic election (medium), military alliance cohesion (hard).

I tried it a couple of times, it is interesting!

https://play.coldalchemygames.com/

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Free game: The Chair Is Empty

January 7, 2026 Leave a comment

[Cover image: La Legende des Siecles by Rene Magritte, 1950.]

The Chair is Empty

A card-based game about political tensions and power vacuums, for 3 or more players.

This is a much cleaned-up and streamlined version of Caudillo, a power politics game placed in a thinly disguised post-Chavez Venezuela which I first designed in 2013 (before Chavez was post-Chavez).

It is basically similar in its semi-cooperative and semi-competitive nature, and it plays up the constant tension between these urges. As players vie to create the largest and most durable personal power base (scored periodically throughout the game), the card deck delivers more and more crises that players must deal with collectively (and collect small rewards immediately) or become overloaded. Coups d’etat provide another quick way to score, and the office of El Presidente has its own perks too.

The free PnP version consists of 108 cards, 88 counters, and the usual rules and play aids. Several scenarios are supplied, including a 2-player variant.

The game rules say it is for 3-5 players which seems to be where it scales best, but certainly more than 5 can play simply by adding sets of player markers.

I started work on this during lockdown in 2020; David Turczi was involved in early development and I am very grateful for his help. I kept at it over the post-COVID years and it’s in a state I feel okay to release for free print and play, especially with the uncertain situation in Venezuela now (though this is in no way an attempt at a simulation of the actual situation there; the stupid Spanish language puns will tell you that).

I plan on self-publishing a physical version of this later, since in the course of locating resources for O Canada I found a good card printer in Canada (The Playing Card Factory of Mississauga ON: https://theplayingcardfactory.com/ ). But I would like it to have better art than the janky free clip art I am using now, and no damn generative AI will be involved. So it might take a while.

Meanwhile, here are the files:

Chair rules 10 Dec 25  rules

Chair PAC 5 Nov 25  player aid card

Chair variants 5 Nov 25  scenarios, including a 2-player method where El Presidente is a dummy and a “Gringo” piggybacking variant that is perhaps applicable right now.

Chair group cards 2 Aug 24 Group and Agent cards

Chair crisis cards 2 Aug 24 Crisis and other cards

Chair card lists 30 July 24 Card lists for perusing

Chair ctrs 13 Nov 22  double set of counters

[PS: Thanks to friend of the blog Roger Leroux for the title, replacing the functional but less ambiguous “Strongman-2”]

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Free game: Gravel

December 20, 2025 Leave a comment

Yeah, a bit like this.

A new abstract game I wanted to put out before the end of the year:

Gravel, a game about missing the (Schwer)punkt.

Gravel and GC 2 Feb 26

Years ago I had an idea for a Go variant where the single stone played each turn could be broken up into smaller bits with lesser power (stones make gravel, see) and played on other points of the Goban so captures would be probabilistic: you would make a capture by generating a random result equal to or less than your cumulative strength differential.

This is not quite that of course but in their turn a player may place and remove a total of friendly and enemy pieces (respectively) that is equal to or less than “X”, an integer agreed upon at the start of the game. A player loses through attrition (losing more than half of their starting pieces).

The idea of “control” over a space relying only on occupation of its flanks and rear (which permits capture in it, no matter how strong it is) is inspired by games like Ki (Corey Clark, 2010) and Control (Takuro Kawasaki, 2024) though those games forbid placement in an enemy controlled space.

Placements and removals in the game must be balanced, especially early on, and there is a crucial difference in placement between pieces that are already on the grid versus those that are coming from the pieces not yet placed. The choice of whether to place or remove first can be important; a player might want to first build up to attack a swath of territory or they might want to clear some points of enemy then follow it up with occupations.

Playing in the squares of an 8×8 checkerboard and setting “X” to 4 or 5 will give players a peppy 15 minute game if they don’t think too hard. The Tabletop Simulator module linked here is set up for that:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3627753715

Perhaps you will give it a try!

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New TTS modules: Dislocated and High-Rise

November 4, 2025 Leave a comment

I mentioned a while back that my old computer died, and I got a newer (but still fairly old) iMac.

This one seems to be working quite well, and among other things runs Steam (the old machine was so antiquated it could not be updated any more to keep using it).

So I’ve been trying to get back into making Tabletop Simulator versions of some of my games, after a four year hiatus (and I didn’t know what I was doing then either).

Over the weekend I made such for two of my simpler semi-abstract games, Dislocated and High-Rise.

If you use TTS, come and have a look. And a download if you like.

Dislocated

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3598693972

High-Rise

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3598684444

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New game: 91 DSSB Staff Game

July 3, 2025 1 Comment

91 DSSB shoulder patch. Very rough translation: “He who wants something is here in vain.”

Name of game: 91 DSSB Staff Game

Topic: A cooperative game for 3 players who represent different staff sections in the fictional US Army 91st DSSB (Divisional Sustainment Support Battalion). They work together to prepare and send off daily supply convoys to divisional Brigade Combat Teams on the “front line”. Essentially a time management and planning game, with simple processes – features include an endless time track (a mechanic stolen from Bruno Faidutti’s very weird Red November) and roles and choices that put demands on the players as the situation continues to change and crises arise.

Game length: 1-2 hours (Game has no fixed end point but players can agree to stop after a certain number of “days” to assess how the brigades are faring compared to the beginning of the game.)

Players: 3, or teams of 3 (solo possible but pointless unless teaching yourself to teach others)

Comments

  • Most civilian wargames have detailed procedures for movement and combat, with the logistics processes handwaved away. For a long time I have wanted to design a game that approached the inverse of this.
  • The game has simple components – two pages of tracks and charts, some small player mats, 60 markers and a set of coloured cubes to represent supplies (a set of supply markers is provided if you don’t have cubes).
  • Not meant to be a simulation so much as a vehicle for delivering some insights to staff and combat arms officers on the unending challenges of life in the Quartermaster Corps. I was in the Infantry myself, so as far as I was concerned the Log Fairies came during the night and left offerings of food, water and ammunition under designated trees, out of gratitude for our protecting them from the enemy.
  • The three players in the game represent different staff sections in the Battalion: S-2 in charge of intelligence and information, S-3 for operations, and the Support Operations section. Ultimately all are responsible for logistics arrangements and delivering Class I, III, IV, V supplies via convoy to respective Brigade Support Areas.
  • As a cooperative game it is not intensely competitive or antagonistic but the players have to balance the capacities and efficiency of their own sections with working together to prevent the front line units from starving or running out of things during combat (which will in turn make their own jobs that much harder). There’s lots to do but never enough time or wherewithal to get it all done.

If you find this interesting and try it out, please let me know!

Copies have been sent to curious individuals in the American, Australian, British, Canadian, and Italian military/ wargaming communities. The game was featured in the Australian “Army Battle Lab Professional Gaming List 2025”. And I’ll likely be demonstrating it (or at least bringing a copy along) at this year’s Connections-UK in September.

Game files:

91 DSSB player roles 20 sep 23

DSSB log markers 30 sep 22

91 DSSB Staff Game tables 20 sep 23

91 DSSB staff game rules 20 Sep 23

DSSB counters 15 sep 22

DSSB staff game cards 16 sep 22

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New free game: High-Rise

September 30, 2024 6 Comments

catburglar1

I promise to use AI-generated art only when it’s at least a bit silly.

At the Connections-UK conference at Brunel University this year, I attended a session on “Microgames: designing games with small footprints”. After talking a bit about this style of game for a bit and presenting some examples, the presenters gave us each a sheet of paper and told us to get on with making one. I paired off with Sam Wicks and in about an hour we had the basics of High-Rise*, a two-player game about a Runner (thief, assassin or some other photogenic character with a mission on the top floor) versus a Gatekeeper (who is in charge of the passive and active security measures of the building the Runner is passing through). I playtested it with Akito yesterday and am putting it up on the Free Games page now.

Components: one-page map, 1 meeple for the Runner, 13 x 6-sided dice, 1 x 10-sided die to record Special Actions remaining (or use 2 more six-sided dice or some scrap paper).

Playing time: about 10-15 minutes.

High-Rise 29 Sep 24

* A more ambitious game about the inhabitants of a luxury tower block descending into feral behaviour and tribal warfare will have to wait … “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”

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New solo game: Dislocated

May 22, 2024 2 Comments

Refugee Clipart Images | Free Download | PNG Transparent - Clip Art Library

A few weeks ago I put together Dislocated, a simple and fast abstract game for one player about some of the problems posed for military, government and non-government organizations when they are tasked with assisting large numbers of people on the move. The people shown in this abstracted model are moving away from some kind of threat – a battle or invasion, a disaster, a violent mass movement, some kind of monster protected by copyright legislation, etc.. The United States Department of Defense calls these people Dislocated Civilians or DCs; the Department of State calls them Internally Displaced Persons, and other organizations variously call them refugees, evacuees or other descriptive terms.

The game is played in turns. In each turn cards representing groups of DCs will be drawn from a deck of ordinary playing cards and placed at the top of a notional grid of spaces arranged in rows and columns, while other card groups move downwards towards the bottom of the grid. The Player will move their unit counters representing organizations and services to place them with groups of cards, and then roll dice to obtain a score that will allow all, some or none of the cards in the groups to be removed from the game (signifying that their primary needs have been addressed, so that in the short term at least they may be considered safe or healthy or settled).

But the needs and demands to be satisfied are larger than the resources and services available, so some cards will exit off the bottom of the Field; these cards are “lost”. The game is over when all the cards have made their way through the Field, and the Player’s level of success depends on the total values of cards that were lost.

From the Designer’s Notes:

This game is of course a hideous abstraction and generalization of the activities of organizations that work in Humanitarian Action and Disaster Relief, and the elements of the military that work in Civil Affairs and Civilian-Military Cooperation (CIMIC). The designer’s hope is that it may give some insight to a player who does not have experience in these fields and gain appreciation for their efforts to help and protect people.

The game attempts to present the player with the following points or dilemmas:

  • Dislocated Civilians are groups of vulnerable people who arrive in the area with a variety of needs.

  • These needs normally vastly outweigh the services available but must be matched with those services as efficiently as possible.

  • Through a combination of frictional events, swamped resources, and chaotic movement of people, some DCs will not be helped – “lost”, in game terms. You can’t catch ‘em all, but you need to try.

Components needed: the rules file, one deck of ordinary playing cards, 12 six-sided dice (player can make unit counters or use the face cards in the deck).

Rules file: Disloc rules 30 April 2024
Playing time less than 30 minutes.

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Tunnels in Gaza; introducing Sole Tunnels

January 19, 2024 5 Comments

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John Spencer, who I’ve mentioned many times on this blog as an expert on urban warfare, has spent a fair bit of the last three months in Israel/Gaza.

Here he is writing at the Modern War Institute blog about the mind-boggling size, extent and complexity of the many, many tunnel systems that Hamas has built below the surface of Gaza.

There are larger underground systems in the world (e.g. China and North Korea) but none so densely packed as here.

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/gazas-underground-hamass-entire-politico-military-strategy-rests-on-its-tunnels/

His final paragraph:

Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.

A large part of a day is spent on subterranean warfare in the six-day curriculum of the Urban Operations Planner Course, and I had wanted to do some design work on this particular problem as the battalion-level scale of the QUICK game could not reflect it well.

I did work out a game that was at least superficially about planning a subterranean operation called SUBTLE (SUBTerranean Learning Exercise) but it’s perhaps too metaphorical.

So, over the holidays I worked on two new games on subterranean warfare:

One is called SOLE TUNNELS and is an adaptation of a dungeon crawl where an infantry company moves through a small tunnel complex of random tiles set up before play, encountering enemy fireteams, Mines, IEDs, and searchable Rooms. Solitaire and plays fast, less than an hour. Four scenarios written so far.

I also designed a simpler adaptation of the QUICK to work for tunnel warfare beneath the generic unnamed hexagonal grid city shown on the old map (file still available on the QUICK Page)
Called TUNNEL TROOPERS, it has the platoons of a light infantry battalion moving through a tunnel complex drawn up by the enemy before play; they trace out the tunnels and its features on the map.
A wee bit inspired by the old Avalon Hill game Starship Troopers obviously. I have to do a bit of work on this yet and write up some scenarios. For 2-4 players and time to play depends on complexity of tunnel complex and probability of player discombobulation, since it is an almost-double-blind exercise.

Anyway, here are the print-and-play files for SOLE TUNNELS: they may be replaced by modified versions later but the game is more or less in its final form.

SOLE TUNNELS rules 19 Jan 24  (OpenDoc file, .odt)

Sole Tunnels scenarios 19 Jan 24  (OpenDoc file, .odt)

Sole Tunnels PAC 19 Jan 24   (PDF file)

Sole Tunnels tiles stone 18 Jan 24 (PDF file, print onto card or sticky label then stick onto cardboard and cut out – includes unit display)

2Tunnels ctrs 5 jan 24  (PDF file, this is a counter sheet common to both games – print onto sticky label then stick to cardboard and cut out)

Would be interested to hear if you give this a try.

(Yes, this is the sort of thing that might be better served as a Tabletop Simulator module, but I am an old cardboard grognard and making one of those would be the last thing I would do after getting the paper model with all its scribblings right. But my computer is so old that Steam will no longer run on it, so I can’t use Tabletop Simulator for anything! I need to replace my machine soon.)

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Update: QUICK V2 changes and new map!

November 8, 2023 Leave a comment

Manila areas 16 oct 23 70pc

New map, of downtown Manila.

After some more testing of ideas and work I had done since the May 2023 serial of the Urban Operations Planner Course, I’ve posted some new files for the QUICK game. Major changes include:

  • Created a single intermediate version with many optional additions: hidden movement, criminal and insurgent elements, supply routes, varied initiative, fast and slow Enablers, popular support, random events, infrastructure, and wet gaps (crossing, bridges, demolition etc.).
  • Created 6 x 7 Execution Matrix: player selects 6 cubes and places them singly on 6 rows for 6 steps of a plan each round; each row has 7 choices and players step through round executing actions in row order. Simplified choices of actions, using only 2 colours of cubes.
  • Created irregular area movement map of downtown Manila with 88 spaces, depicting the same area used by students in their COA and IPB practical exercises. Rewrote scenarios for new map. Added random space table and table of probable locations for actual infrastructure. It was a lot of work but worth it I think.
  • Many adjustments to effects of Civilians, Enablers, Infrastructure and combat system.

Help yourself to the new stuff!  The QUICK Page

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