Preview: Littoral Commander- A Modern Wargame

By Mitch Reed

One great aspect of my “day job” is that I get to see some really innovative wargame designs and meet some very gifted designers. One such designer is Sebastian Bae, who I have written about before with his work in teaching wargaming at Georgetown University.

Sebastian invited me to see the games his students were working on this past December and I featured them right here on NDNG. One game which Sebastian designed is now available for presale and I wanted to make sure our community had the chance to pick this game up. Originally, titled FMF (Fleet Marine Force), this game is now called Littoral Commander and has recently gone on sale from the Dietz Foundation. I have been a playtester of this game and it has a pedigree unlike other games on the market. The first unique thing about LC is that the game was designed for the US Marine Corps to help train their officers in how to manage a fight at the battalion level.

The version up for sale now focuses on a contemporary fight between a US Marine task force with robust US Naval support which fights against a Chinese invasion of the Philippine island of Luzon. The game really shows the player a few things which other games on the market really do not do as well.

First of all the game really shows how the various capabilities of the USMC including long-range fire, logistics, and ground maneuver. A player really gets the immersive feel of what it is like to be a US Marine or a Chinese People’s Liberation Army/Navy/Marine Corps commander. You have all the tools in the game that they would have in a fight today and then you need to make the same decisions as they would.

Where the game just truly excels is the integration of the “rest of the picture.” Space, cyber, electronic warfare, hypersonic missiles, military deception are just a few of the capabilities that play in the game.

While many of these capabilities are normally out of the span of control of the ground commander, they do however shape the battlespace they find themselves fighting in. These capabilities are introduced in the game with the use of cards that a player selects from a massive deck.

In my first live playtest I did not take any C2 cards, and I was pummeled by Sebastian. While the card deck is not the heart of the game, it certainly represents its arteries and veins.

Sebastian took a copy of this game to Historicon 2021 and had some folks from NDNG and Firelock games have some fun. While none of these people have any connection to the military, they saw how fun this game was to play and how its mechanics are easy to understand.

They also remarked on the fact that they have never seen a game that covers a fight in so much detail yet is not bogged down by too many rules and steps that you would expect. Maybe it was the fact this was game was initially designed for our favorite crayon eaters (you know I love you guys) that it had to be somewhat simple.

Few games developed for the DoD have ever reached the gaming market, despite many, like the Operational Wargame Series, that would translate well into the commercial market. However, now the hobby gamer can purchase a game that was not intended for casual gaming yet is a load of fun to play. I know this game will be a huge hit and generate a lot of buzz in our community.

From the Designer:

Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific (LC) is a 2 to 6-player ‘grand tactical’ wargame which explores the future of warfare. The wargame is designed to be accessible to all levels of players, whether civilian or military and with no experience with games necessary to play (though it is helpful!). Utilizing a dynamic card-oriented game system, LC offers fast-paced, accessible, and flexible gameplay with plenty of player interaction during turns. LC is not about number-crunching or odds-totaling. The LC series provides a rich and interactive “intellectual sandbox” for inquisitive minds to explore and engage with the daunting challenges of current and future combat operations.

For this campaign, the Dietz Foundation is creating LC, a wargame currently used for professional military education. The game emphasizes the complex nature of future modern warfare involving air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace forces and is already in use for professional military education with military units across the world.

The designer is Sebastian J. Bae who is a research analyst and game designer, focusing on wargaming, the future of warfare, emerging technologies, and strategy and doctrine. He teaches wargame design courses at Georgetown University and the U.S. Naval Academy.

You can order a pre-order copy here: