WARGAMING JOB ALERT 🔔
"Available opportunities span a range of mission-critical and technical functions, including modeling, simulation and wargaming."
www.spaceforce.mil/News/Article...
Sat down with the officer who collects this data recently. He has it broken out by platform. One thing he and I spoke about is “lethality” being some combo is loss exchange ratio and what percentage of enemy is destroyed by non-direct fire systems. Believe there should be a correlation
It is a very good movie, though in it's loose temporal-medical themed category The Andromeda Strain does blow it out of the water (The Andromeda Strain is just very, very good).
You simply need to join me in the future as envisioned by 1960's sci-fi authors with a script to sell!
Mentioned In Dispatches S16 E11 – The Politics of Play
We are joined by Dr Aggie Hirst of Kings College London to discuss her research that resulted in the book "Politics of Play" & her other explorations of professional wargaming
armchairdragoons.com...
Link to book
www.amazon.com/Polit...
So this is also the sort of thing that drives my desire to use wargames in PME- the role of contingency can have insane downstream effects and learning to think with that uncertainty (or its potential) is so critical. Sadly it’s just really hard to get in the reps needed to build the lessons.
There is a really interesting paper to be written here (probably after I finish my paper on dice) to map out contingency in rigid rules, randomness in the rules, and player decisions (and how to shape that), but that's another days work!
Exercises/training are less focused on contingency because they are supposed to do other things, where as wargames are abstracted down to focus heavily on decisions and contingency. Beyond the other educational value imparted this is probably a big argument in favor of wargaming for PME.
I'm not sure I have a tremendous thought here other than "wargames good" other than a question of "what frame of contingency do you want me to design for." I also think the fault here is really that PME doesn't integrate wargaming in such a way that people get a lot of experience.
The other issue being "I have a game that does immediate contingency well" but not high-level, and the larger the game to illustrate high-level contingency and complexity the more difficult is is to see across the whole game for players to learn from it.
E.g. players often only notice "how did your deployment turn 1 affect the game" if you ask them, instead focusing on decisive die rolls in various combats or such.
I think wargaming is a good way of showing immediate contingency to players (chance of a successful attack at 2:1 is 66%, roll the dice!) but because wargames are so often immersive, it's difficult to make players reflect on a Turn 1 decision and what that did to the game (it feels factored in).
Wargames are big balls of contingency which is both a tremendous learning experience and such a massive headache for analysis (which is being worked on slowly). If nothing else I'm always a little surprised how risk-averse some military people who play wargames are (some really insane instances).
Connections Online 2026 - Registration is Open
Registration is now open for Connections Online, the professional wargaming conference, co-sponsored by The Armchair Dragoons, will be held from 20-25 April 2026
This year's theme is Wargaming Soft Factors
tinyurl.com/cnxonl26
If you haven't seen this in China Brief yet, it covers Chinese thinking on the energy dimension of Hormuz and on the Strait of Malacca: jamestown.org/the-myth-of-...
I love y'all, but if I have to read another "I am inventing game-based learning and/or larping from first principles" essay that refuses to acknowledge the last 25 years of research, I'm going to have to give its author an academic time-out (and a reading list).
Longest escape and evasion was 11 hours to rescue in Desert Storm, though there were some who evaded longer and then were captured (www.rand.org/pubs/researc..., pg. 15)
That looks interesting (and I'd like to see how you explain and run it)! I'll see if I can make it, but if not I'll definitely see you at KWW.
I'll be at KWW, depending on what I'm doing I'll have the game at the wargaming expo on the second day of it. Though if you want I can come to Cardboard Emperors earlier (I have a running conflict with it right now, but I could move it for a week so some such).
I'd love to do Chinese + Taiwanese stuff but I'm too busy right now to even do the Russians, but I have set it up that it should be easyish to put in any force structure and produce the units/cards.
Right now each side has 81 capability cards (63 uniques, plus some duplicates), and I have notes on 20+ more possible ones (some off into more futuristic capabilities). Then I have some notes on stuff specific for the Russians (thermobarics, infiltration, turtle tanks, ATV's, ect.).
... unit training, different types of artillery munitions, force quality improvement, brigade level EW, attachments to brigade, etc. Divisional assets can be requested as well, though in different scenarios they may be more/less expensive/available as the division is overseeing multiple brigades.
While the big assets and numbers are at divisional level, there is a lot of stuff lower down that I represent and lots of the cards aren't material things. Teaching about drones is a big part so the drone coy. has it's cards, then CASEVAC and maintenance options, command post decoys/deception...
When I playtest it is has the right feel for what I'm looking for of two fighters who are both constantly circling each other by employing their respective capabilities to get the best out of what they have and what the situation is.
There are so many little cubes for it, but I think it works well where capabilities + artillery ammunition are often the major constraint on offensive operations. I do manage to sneak in more "boring" stuff like medical/maintenance, and the need to hide and jump the command post to keep fighting.
I find this level much easier as you can aggregate lower level effects more easily with less loss of representation (and also they become less swingy), so the combat is pretty simple (roll dice to hit with a cover save) and it's an really an interplay of player choices, capabilities, and supply.
There is also a big focus on ISR and the MILDEC/EMCON/deception element required (weather is really important too!). Each unit is a company so you are playing a minimum of a reinforced brigade plus non-combat arms up through brigade depending on the scenario.
I've been meaning to talk to you about this game at some point! It's a capabilities familiarisation wargame on modern brigade combat (similar to Littoral Commander in that respect but for brigades) and also to teach people that drones are not a panacea.
Picking away at cards and playtesting updates for Brigade Commander. This is really going on the backburner as I have much larger fish to fry right now, but hopefully it'll get there in the next few months.
