Dresden in the Barn

 

Off to Francis' for the weekend for the more or less annual "wargame in a barn". This year's subject was the Battle of Dresden (1813), with about 8000 (!) 20mm figures and 20+ players. Francis hates two table battles, so we played on a horseshoe arrangement, with Dresden itself being in the missing middle.

Looking from Allied lines to our Right Flank at STARTEX

I was Marmont on the French right flank. In reality I only turned up on Day 2, but Francis had me turning up from about Turn 3, but for much of Saturday the left flank was so think with my Corps, St Cyr and Victor that we had little room to manoeuvre whilst the enemy (can't call them Allies!) swept in. By mid pm we were beginning to sort things out and starting to go on the offensive. Sunday morning saw St Cyr being pulled off us to go help in the battle for the Grosser Garten (image above, beautiful) which actually gave us even more space so we went all out. Helped that we had about a 4:1 advantage in cavalry. The battle on our flank ended up with three elements, right to left:

• On the extreme right we pushed across the stream and a combined arms attack gradually pushed him back behind Drescherdorf so we were right on his table edge and gradually started to roll up the enemies flank.
• In the centre there were a series of cavalry exchanges, involving both the Grenadiers a Cheval and Cossasks at various stages, all of which gave my infantry on their left free reign to manoeuvre
• On the left I pushed my infantry aggressively forward. There were two gun batteries against me, as well as the infantry, so I adopted a do or die approach. On the left gun I was intercepted by infantry sallying forth from Lodba, but by the time I'd beaten them back the gun had to withdraw as its Brigade got a Retire result. For the other gun I valiantly advanced my infantry in line (to save at least one +1) and the gun luckily decided that the cavalry on my flank was a juicier target. By the time I was in charge range he had just one firing opportunity for each of the gun and protecting skirmishers - and both missed! I crashed into the gun and carried it, and then carried on through at least another battalion. Several other battalions, and even my Hussars did similar excellent service in melees around Lodba. 

By game end we had taken Drescherdorf and we had two Bn in Lodba to his one, and we had about 75% of the table spur - so we were happy with our weekends work. Just awating the overall result, but hoping for a Marginal French victory.

The Allies Advance

As ever with Francis' games the terrain, the detailing and the figures (mostly A&M, but we spotted at least one Airfix battalion!) were superb, the company and location great, and the rules a joy to play.

Two views of the fight for Lodba

Austrian guns in the evening light

Austrians stand ready

The woods on the left flank

Two more views of the lovely custom made Grosser Garten model

Our lancers go into the attack!

Supported by our valiant guns

The Allies swarm over Grosser Garten

Austrians on the advance

A final view of the Grosser Garten model!

Christmas in Hell AAR

 

Another PhD game. I came across the Battle for Ortona in several urban warfare sources. It was an "epic" Canadian battle of WW2 in Italy (1943) but little known in the UK. I hunted for a game about it and came across this one from High Flying Dice Games, in Canada of course. Paul Rohrbaugh (HFD MD) and I looked at various options at short notice for me to pick it up during my trip to Canada in April, but in the end it was easier just to get him to ship it over.

It's a solitaire game with an AI/blinds mechanic similar to Hue/Ramadi, but which I think works much better - it felt far less of a slog. I loved that it uses areas not hexes for movement and combat - but unfortunately is then let down by a dreadful map (lots of that green above was about a 60 degree slope and not fought over!). The real star though is the way that is manages rubble. I had a whole load of questions about the rules (which as other reviewers have noted are not as clear as they could be) but Paul was very patient in answering them all - although I'm still left with a few niggles about the combat and reinforcement systems. Again reflecting other reviews I think there's a great little game there that's struggling to get out.

I decided a few weeks ago to run Christmas in Hell as my first COW game in July, so I'm busy working  up a 1.1 version to take there with a better map and some streamlined rules - we'll see how it plays.

My full academic review for the game is at http://taunoyen.com/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=wargaming:phd:aar:aarchristmasinhell.pdf.

Just search on YouTube for Battle of Ortona and you'll find lots of videos about the battle, including a UK MOD training/documentary film and original war reporter footage from CBC reporters at the battle.

ConnectionsUK 2022

 

Spent a great day in Bristol yesterday attending ConnectionsUK 2022. This year, I expect due to COVID planning constraints, it was run as a one-day event alongside the DSET Defence Training and Simulation Conference, rather than the 2 day event at Kings back in 2019 (the last physical one). Also it was purely a games fair, there was no plenary game, lectures or workshops - but great fun all the same. Attendance was complete military, professional and academic wargames as far as I could make out.

There were around 20 games set up to play at various times. The bigger games were more talk throughs than play throughs, but some games were short enough that you could play to completion. There was no structure and you were just free to dip in and out of games as you chose.

So here are the games I played, and the ones I just looked at/talked to designers about.

Games Played

RCAT - Falklands

I've been wanting to play RCAT for a while - hoped we might get it as GFX on a project but failed. It seems to be the Armies "go to" operational level manual wargame. Bn level manoeuvre units, Bde-Div force. Although its using a detailed map the map is divided into zones, reflecting ~ a days movement. The combat system uses attack/defence type factors which are then summed, plus modifiers, and then ratios compared to the a force risk table (simplified copy in Successful Professional Wargames by Graham Longley-Brown - who happened to be running the game) with a CRT then giving for each ratio a spread of results based on a D10 roll. The CRT is sufficiently hidden that it doesn't become too much a game of min/maxing the counter ratios, and it was interesting that very few of the games on show used a ratio style CRT (good news as far as the hobby me is concerned). The game only used D10 and D100 on the basis it's a lot easier to present risks/outcomes as simple percentage chance to military people (agree again), even if they may not find the D10s as familiar as D6s.

We only played the initial air attack on San Carlos Water (only lost the Fearless), and then the attack on Goose Green (lost the whole para bn!), but enough to get a sense of the game. I must admit it was a lot better than I feared and I can see why its been so widely used. The system has been well validated in the Army, and the Falklands scenario has even been played by the commanders of the real battle.

I'd hope I can get my "operational" level rules to a similar level of playability and validity as the PhD evolves.

The Long Village

This was an "influence" game by Stone Paper Scissors, set in an English village not a million miles from Ambridge, which is a flashpoint between left and right wing extremists in some Uncivil War type Britain. Players play the different factions, each with their own aims, and with the UN trying to keep the piece. Each round an "issue" card is drawn and players work out whether to back or counter the issue, whilst also trying to meet their own goals. So its mostly discussion between the players with some basic voting and other actions. As factions become stronger their allowed actions increase, rising up through demos to sabotage, terrorism and insurrection. Nice system, very generic and you can see how you could use the engine for a whole host of different (and more serious) games. Some lovely 6mm UN models too!

Decisions and Disruptions

A very nice "Lego" game by Dr Ben Shreeve set around the issues of protecting a company from cyber attack. Each turn you have a budget to spend on kit, training and software, and then each turn you get told what happened and how much money it cost the company. The game plays over 4 rounds - I think we suffered about £120k of loss, about average I think. The game is very simple, but enough to get the basic idea across. The responses are fixed, so play the game twice with the same  choices and you get the same outcome. Version 2 is under development with far more options and far more interlinkages and random, so should be more "realistic" but probably not quite as accessible. The use of Lego just to show the network layout, and then the stuff you deploy, is insprired.

Shooting Daedelus 

Shooting Daedelus was an MA project from Kings by Ares Compagnoni and Evan d'Alessandro. It was a very different take on a CQB game as it represented BOTH the vertical and horizontal layout in one grid of cards. It was a bit like being in Inception at first but you soon got the hang of it. There were some nice touches in the combat model (damage meant losing cards, so restricting options, and then save rolls based on cards left once under 6). Really nice game. Interesting to compare it to Tango Down which has a slightly more developed combat system, but no vertical dimension. I wouldn't want to over complicate Shooting Daedelus (and I know Evan had to throw loads of ideas away), but a couple of steals from Tango Down (eg range and DM for shooting through doors etc) might round the game out nicely. Interesting both games seem to come down to a grenade slug-fest. Once you're up close you realise that grenades are the best way to go, but if you don't kill the other person they just throw some back, and so on. Something tells me real-world CQB isn't like that. I'm guessing grenade lethality in both games needs to be wound right up - but then it comes down to who's quickest on the draw. Will hopefully get another game in soon on our Discord group.

Games Seen

USMC Operational Wargaming System

A HUGE map of the Ukraine with about a 15km grid and Bn manoeuvre units. This is the USMC's new general purpose manual wargame and was used by them to examine the Russian invasion before it happened - see https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-wargame-before-the-war-russia-attacks-ukraine/.

The counters are VERY dense with information:

Units are rated D4-D10 (as in Ambush Alley games etc) and again its a Dice+modifiers game rather than ratio CRTs. Looks way complex though with "a day" to train a player, "days" to train umpires.

Would be fun to actually play it some time, but I think that RCAT is closer to what I'm after.

Air Strike

Maj Tom Moaut (aka all sorts of things) ran Air Strike. One team decided on aircraft and load outs, whilst another decided on air defence systems. The air players then had a quick visual recce to decide which target to go for, the defender could then move mobile systems and arrange the detail of their defense layout. Then the airplanes came in, tried to suppress air defence, beat off  the CAPs and finally release some ordnance and get it on target. Looked fun.

Strike! - Kestrel's Hover

A company force with Section/Squad manoeuvre units of a British assault on a remote airfield somewhere in Africa. Looked pretty conventional, no sign of a ratio CRT again and extensive use of decoy blinds (about 3 decoys per real blind!). Surprised that snipers weren't model as "not at that level" since my reading is that snipers have an effect out of all proportion to their numbers, and even if abstracted ought to be included at this scale in some way.

Space Control

A game based about space situation awareness and offensive action presented by Jim Wallman of Stone Paper Scissors. Two teams, red and blue, with charts representing the layers of ground HQs, ground segment, LEO, MEO/HEO and GEO. You spend your budget to launch stuff and to buy offensive/defensive/ISR kit, and then see what you can do to the other side and what they can do with you. Pity I just missed the start of a session as in principle (if not topic) was not dissimilar to a game I've been working on.

Integrity

A game developed by Outreach Group, 77 Bde as a training aid for anti-corruption and stability operations. You assign staff to G1-G9 desks and then draw incident cards to be dealt with. "Time" and "Resources" are your resources, and you can choose cautious and risky approaches to deal with them, and have to balance resource use with availability and progressing your various stabilisation projects. Again something that could easily be re-skinned.

Don't Fear The Reaper Drone

A really thoughtful game by Edward McEvoy from Kings. One player is Carrie Mathison a CIA analyst and the other a remote Drone pilot. The CIA player has targets to meet and kill and hang the consequences. The pilot has a family and morals. Who's going to crack first! An almost black game touch is that when a strike ends up hitting civilians the pilot has to draw a card from a thispersondoesnotexist.com deck to see who they just killed. Very thought provoking and in considering how to represent and play the civilian population and moral choices in urban conflict some useful food for thought.

Conclusion

A great day with a wonderful breadth of games considering that they were all serious military games. Great to meet up with my supervisor, one of my fellow PhD students and various professional  wargaming friends and colleagues. Hopefully by 2023 Bath Spa will hav as many games running at Connections 2023 as Kings students did this year!

Postccript: Official photos and report up at https://www.professionalwargaming.co.uk/2022.html