“When you have attained the way of strategy there will be nothing that you cannot understand. You will see the way in everything.” – Miyamoto Musashi
By Patrick S. Baker
Small Beginnings
In November 2023, Ranker.com named the Total War game series: “The Greatest Strategy Game Franchises of All Time”, even better than the much-vaunted Civilization franchise. Hard to believe it all started as an idea for a “B-Title” Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game.
In 1997, Command & Control(C&C) dominated the RTS game market. A whole slew of cheap knockoffs had been released and were doing brisk sales, one “pile of crap” C&C-clone called Krush, Kill ‘N’ Destroy had done some 600,000 units in sales.
Enter Tim Ansell, founder, owner and Chief Executive Officer of The Creative Assembly game company. Creative Assembly (CA) had been grinding away, porting sports games for gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA) and selling about 100,000 units per game. Ansell heard about the success of Krush, Kill ‘N’ Destroy and decided Creative Assembly would to do its own “upmarket clone” of C&C.
Thanks to Great Escape Games I finally worked up the courage to take a crack at painting horses with their Romanian cavalry. Fortunately for me, I have a former equestrian a shout away to lend her expertise. A goal I had for my mounted Romanians was to have an eye-catching amount of variety with the different mounts.
Of course with my partner passing my painting desk every so often to quality control my progress I was able to work with her to incorporate some authentic colorings. Below are some of the different colorings I ended up with and the corresponding colors. All paints used below are from Vallejo.
As many who frequent this site know, wargaming is used by many modern militaries as a means to train and develop their leaders. There are semi-professional organizations, and there are military colleges and organizations that use wargames as an educational and development tool. One of the latest armies to dip its toes into wargaming as a professional development tool is the Canadian Army. Active since 2018, many of the wargames promoted are computer or PC based. In an effort to further the use of wargames as a tool for professional development, I recently suggested to my commander that I host a symposium based on this very idea. I have yet to deliver this symposium; this is set for April. That said, my method has been in development for a month or so no, and there are no trade secrets, so the aim of this short article is to whet the appetites of those who may be considering something similar. That said, I’m not going to be advocating computer or PC-based games; I will instead focus entirely on board wargames.
Board Wargames for Developing officers of today
My aim is to first show how wargames have been used by professional militaries throughout the ages, and especially since the Prussians developed Kriegsspielin the 1800’s. My aim in so doing is to demonstrate that the use of games is not a new concept and one that how shown its worth in history. As but one example, I intend to show how the commercially available board game, Advanced Squad Leader was used by US Marines prior to the liberation of Kuwait in 1991 to develop tactics to assault Iraqi positions. This is a specific example of a specific game used to develop a specific plan for a specific situation. I of course intend to go beyond that, even advocating that certain games with absolutely no bearing on military history are of great use. My one example? None other than Starship Troopers by Avalon Hill.
Bug Hunt in progress! Man vs Monster in the 22nd Century!
Even though the game is based entirely on a science fiction novel, the game has merit for use for professional development. All factions in the game have certain characteristics, and it is in the players’ best interests to know these factors and to develop conclusions based on these. What weapons do I have? How far can they reach? What about my enemies? How will I deal with them? What Starship Troopers does is force the player (or, in this case, the army officer) to look at the situation in hand and to throw away any pre-conceived notions, which is a real problem when dealing with real-life situations. One relevant example of this causing some hardship for army leadership happened in the early 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group, which had as its focus the defence (sic) of West Germany, deployed units to Bosnia as part of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). No longer were the units focused on setting up reverse-slope defenses with interlocking arcs of fire; its leaders had to contend with up to three warring factions, refugees, war crimes and more. In short, the situation was entirely new and unknown.
Soldier of 4 CMBG in an unfamiliar setting: Former Yugoslavia
Another aim of the symposium will be to illustrate three general aims of professional wargaming: education, experiential and experimental. I aim to show the many uses of gaming, from the lowest level up to strategic planning, but my focus will be on the tactical and operational. Not only will I show that games can be used to teach how to Take that Hill, but also to plan even logistical support to operations. The main lesson is that when playing wargames, the aim isn’t to beat the game itself, but rather to analyze a situation, make a decision and then watch the consequences of that decision, vis-a-vis an opponent who is doing the same thing but with competing objectives. A characteristic of this lesson is that it is safe-to-fail. If you make a wrong decision and your force ends up wiped out or you fail to properly support that platoon with commodities; it’s okay! Nobody died and as long as a proper after-action review (AAR) is completed so that lessons-learned are emphasized, then the wargame has been a success.
Oh, look. All my guys died. I win!
So, that’s it. I have another month and a bit to prepare for the symposium, and at the very end, I intend on presenting the participants with a problem to solve using a wargame. Based on a scenario from Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #1 (ASL SK 1), I will have them develop a plan for one side in the scenario. I will not try to teach them how to play the game, but I will use various characteristics from the game (terrain, firepower of units, objectives, etc) with just enough information for them to develop a plan. They will then brief back and then at the end, I will seek feedback from the participants on the symposium. As an added bonus, I will give away by raffle an in-shrink copy of ASL SK 1! With luck, I’ll be asked to teach the winner how to play the game! Keep watching this site to see how it goes!
David Garvin is an active-duty Canadian Army Officer who has formerly been an instructor at the Combat Training Centre in Gagetown, NB, Canada.
“We are fighting a war with no front lines, since the enemy hides among the people, in the jungles and mountains, and uses covertly border areas of neutral countries. One cannot measure [our] progress by lines on a map.”—General William C. Westmoreland
By Patrick S. Baker
1965 was the year that, as one source puts it, “Vietnam Becomes an American War”. The massive bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, started. The first American ground combat units arrived “in country”. The Battle of the Ia Drang, the first major set-piece battle of the war (so well detailed in We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway) was fought in November that year.
It was also in 1965 that the bifurcated nature of the Vietnam War became clear. Part of the war was a conventional ground war with regular American military and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units fighting conventional battles against the communists’ guerrillas, called the Viet Cong, (VC or Charlie) Main Force units and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units.
The other part was a counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign with America and her South Vietnamese allies trying to win the “hearts and minds” of the largely rural population with generous foreign aid, civic construction projects, and Special Forces (SF) deployed to train the local defense forces to battle the VC guerrillas.
A lot of interest is brewing about Warlord’s impending new arrival, the Achtung Panzergame. And rightly so.
I had the opportunity to lead members of our local gaming group through a (very) basic game this weekend. Reviews were positive from the players, post-game.
Rather than give a blow-by-blow of the battle, I’d like to look back at some of the rules, what we kept looking up, and how the game rules functioned as the players challenged my memory (like a rusty steel trap with a broken spring) and kept me looking up rules.
As I work on improving my Bolt Action Italian army I found myself needing a little extra firepower and maneuverability by utilizing the Armored Car slot. After looking through the options for the Italians I settled on an Autoblinda AB 41 and was lucky enough to stumble across one at a brick and mortar store I visit whenever possible. While looking into different paint schemes for my new speedy-pew-pew I was inspired by photos of Italian armor painted in a three tone paint scheme with a base of tan with blotches of green and brown known as Continentale.
The Continentale paint scheme was used on a few Italian vehicles predominantly in Italy as the Allies pushed the fighting from Africa to the Italian peninsula. Gaps between the brown and green where the undercoat showed through created a unique looking vehicle camouflage pattern that I decided to reproduce. After some trial and error I found a process that allowed me to reproduce the paint scheme I wanted in the least painful way possible.
Creating another game that expands into an underserved niche. If you feel the need to run some tank on tank combat in 28mm without all that pesky infantry bogging you down, Achtung Panzer! could be the game for you.
But we have a ton of WW2 games now!
I hear you. Warlord’s flagship is Bolt Action, WW2 level Skirmish platoon level combat on the tabletop. There’s also Flames of War in 15mm at the Company level. Not to mention the Too Fat Lardies range of WWII games, and countless others available via sites such at Wargame Vault.
Warlord even has their Tank Wars variant rules for Bolt action.
With the new year, many gamers across the land get excited for the annual Winter Offensive, hosted by the folks at Multiman Publishing (MMP). With over 150 attendees, this is one of the larger annual conventions, but it differs from many in that it does not focus on a wide variety of games. The two major games here are Advanced Squad Leader (ASL) and the Great Campaigns of the American Civil War (GCACW).
There were some other games being played, but those two were the main ones. Furthermore, the Winter Offensive is a charitable event, with the benefactor being the World War Two Foundation. Every year, MMP raises thousands for this important group, raising awareness of this important event in our shared history.
In 1980, the Danish Army decided to paint all their operational vehicles in a two-tone camouflage pattern. Prior to this, all the vehicles was just painted green.
The local Soldier’s Home in Fredericia, Denmark is located just outside the base (caserne) and is run by the YMCA. YMCA Soldiers’ Home – YMCA Soldiers’ Mission (kfums-soldatermission.dk) Their website says, “The YMCA Soldiers’ Home is a sanctuary for soldiers. In soldier slang, it is called “Kuffen” and serves as the soldiers’ second home. Here they relax, eat good food, watch TV together or play games.
At the YMCA Soldiers’ Home, we make an effort to create a homely setting. This means a good atmosphere, shared activities and space to be yourself”.
YMCA in Danish is KUFM, hence the nickname Kuffen. After Christmas they usually organize a gaming day which is translates to “Christmas Beatings”. There would be other games along with our Team Yankee game. I did the hour long drive from Aarhus in my mother in law’s three cylinder Suzuki Celerio to face a determined foe in Morten. It was a toss up as to whether he would use his usual list with some refining or a fun list of 30 tanks and an infantry platoon. We went with the fun list.
“When you have attained the way of strategy there will be nothing that you cannot understand. You will see the way in everything.” – Miyamoto Musashi
“We are fighting a war with no front lines, since the enemy hides among the people, in the jungles and mountains, and uses covertly border areas of neutral countries. One cannot measure [our] progress by lines on a map.”—General William C. Westmoreland
