Vertical Urban Wargame - Summary Report

Vertical Urban Wargame was my game for Wargame Development's VCOW 2023 virtual conference held 3-5 Feb 2023. This post provides a summary and overview of the game, and I may do a second post to go into more detail on its genesis and design - and both will then be condensed down for my Onside for the Nugget (WD's journal). The game was set as a notional 1985 engagement in Berlin between Blue and Red, with a Company Group Blue force, and a slightly smaller Red Force.

Aim

The aims of the game were:

• to explore if/how a "vertical" (i.e. point-of-view table level) viewpoint changes the experience of a wargame - particularly an urban one;
• to see whether consumer grade systems (phones, bandwidth, video conferencing software) are up to the task;
• to have some fun on a Friday evening!

Game Set Up

I chose to use Dropzone Commander as the rules, with stats modified for 1980s. I chose these as they are pretty simple and had been used by Dstl in some of their own work. The players weren't given the rules, just a rough sense of engagement distances on the model for the various weapons. I rolled all dice and didn't bother to measure movement (although I had guidelines) and typically moved units in tactical bounds.

The terrain was built from two sets of Dropzone buidings (Cityscape and Ruinscape) which at c.£30 each are a wonderfully cheap way of building city urban terrain. The buildings are all fold-flat, and the pack also includes the 1ft street tiles. Each pack is designed to provide 6' x 4' of playable space with reasonably open urban terrain, I found that two packs wasn't quite enough to do a dense 6' x 4' table! Models were 10mm Timecast, with 10mm Pendragon civilians.

Tech Set Up

I looked at various options for the cameras and stream but decided in the end that the best bet was mobile phones for the cameras, with each feeding its own video conferencing room in Jitsi (a free open-source Zoom clone). The nice thing with Jitsi is you just name a room (e.g. VerticalWargame1Pl) and give players the URL to that room, and then they can go straight into it with their browser - no download, no sign-up, just straight in. One issue was initially I'd hoped to have the phones vertical so as to make them easy to use and get the cameras really close to the ground, but all the conferencing software I tried kept trying to re-invert the image - so it was always upside down. So the phones had to be on their side, which kept a lowish camera but meant they didn't fit down the streets so I had to keep moving the buildings out of the way! Something to improve on.

Camera set-up, with a simple balsa holder to keep vertical

We used Zoom to start the session with video on whilst I gave the briefing. Once that was over we switched video off and used it effectively as the Coy radio net, and the players (two teams of two) called up the Jitsi feed from their AFV. The Coy Comd had no video (as he wouldn't in real life in 1985) and had to rely on audio reports. 

This screen capture from a test game shows the two JITSI feeds running on one screen, plus an overview via Zoom.

Scenario

The game had 2 1/2 phases:

• Phase 1: Each team had a single Scimitar recce tank to try and find a route through the city to the 3 objectives, and then report this route back to the main force. The real aim of this was to get players used to the tech and mechanics;
• Phase 2.1: Each team now controlled a Platoon Group, each of 1 Pl and 1 Chieftain (one player controlling each but sharing a single camera in each team). The aim was to secure and hold 2 of the 3 objectives.
• Phase 2.2: At some point during Phase 2.1 I allowed the Coy Comd to start tasking a choice of UAVs, and the option of calling forward a reserve Pl Gp.

The company moves off in line astern!

How it Played

The Coy Comd immediately took charge and had the two Scimitars work out where they were in relation to each other (I put them in on different axis 90 degrees apart!) and to team up before pushing forward in a mutually supporting way (something that the solo playtesters hadn't bothered with, but far more sound tactically). 

Scimitar starts its patrol.

Note: All the images in this section are in-game screen grabs from Jitsi by Ian Robinson.

A hunt of the streets finally found the objectives - which relied on getting close enough to actually read the signs! A Red recce BRDM and BMP were soon dispatched, but then the T72 appeared! Time to fire the smoke and scoot back home.

Friends or foes? One of the few long avenues in the city.

For Phase 2 the Coy Comd decided to send both Pl in on the same axis. At the first junction they them split, one going L down the earlier route, and the other going R across the main square (with a fine 28mm statue in the centre) so as to effectively pincer the closest two objectives. Just to add some more fun there were civilian groups scattered around acting under a simple paper AI, and although painted in bright colours, at a distance, through a smartphone, they were often misidentified at Red soldiers, and narrowly avoided being gunned down. Between Phases 1 and 2 I'd also blocked off a couple of routes with improvised barricades made of ISO containers.

2Pl Chieftain engaging T72s in the murk

Red and Blue arrived at the objectives at about the same time. A tank duel between two T72 and a Chieftain by the main square was eventually won by the Chieftain (despite a T72 getting first shot as it wasn't spotted through the camera). By the Mayor's Office 1Pl dismounted and occupied a neighbouring building as Red rushed the Office. 1 Pl Carl Gustav took out one BMP, and it's Chieftain the second (I think). I then gave the Coy Comd the choice of a mini-UAV overflight of the whole city or a micro-UAV flight along 8ft (8 tiles) of street at building height. This was the first view he had of the city and situation and significantly lifted his situational awareness. 2 Pl realised that it could get in the back of another neighbouring building to the Mayor's Office, and narrowly avoided hitting 1Pl as both fired on the same BMP from opposite directions. 2Pl stormed the Mayor's office and took, it, 1Pl then rush across the street and to their surprise found themselves in the back of the Police Station just as Red moved in from the front. A quick firefight and the Red section was dispatched and it was game over.

2Pl spies the BMP, engages with CG - just missing 1Pl in the building beyond!

For a fuller sense of the terrain, engagement sites and final deployment there's a short fly-through video on YouTube.

Conclusion

I'll do a fuller set of conclusions and lessons learnt in the second post, but everyone reported having a really fun game and a far more visceral experience than if we'd played the same game over an open table. There was a real sense of trepidation each time a unit poked its front around a corner to see what was there, and spotting targets and identifying friend from foe from civilian was also a real (and realistic) challenge. Several players have now remarked how much the whole experience resembles a tank-based dungeon crawl, with high engagement and emotion. 

So given the initial question "if/how a "vertical" (i.e. point-of-view table level) viewpoint changes the experience of a wargame - particularly an urban one;" the ad-hoc, single experiment answer would seem to be that a) it does and b) for the better by making the whole experience more visceral and more "realistic". I might have to switch into PhD mode to more critically examine that and perhaps start running some versions of the game under proper experimental conditions!