Four images depicting board game prototypes. Two show hex boards, one a map with roads, and one a spiral tracking war stage.
First student prototypes of the year! From civilian resilience to evacuation to Klaipėda Revolt of 1923. A great start, looking forward to see how they develop in the coming months.
An open early printed book with visibly damaged and uneven pages. The text is printed in black ink in a historic serif typeface, with decorative initials. Several leaves are torn, misaligned, or loosely inserted, and handwritten notes appear in the margins. The binding is broken, with pages separating from the spine, revealing the book’s worn interior structure.
A heavily worn 16th-century book with a damaged brown leather binding. The cover is partially detached, exposing wooden boards and sewing structure along the spine. The edges of the pages are uneven and warped, suggesting long-term use and age. The overall condition shows significant deterioration, with torn leather, loose threads, and visible structural fragility.
A book that survived fire – by losing its first page.
The Brest Bible (1563) is one of the most remarkable witnesses of the Reformation in Lithuania. Printed in Brest (Brasta), it was the first full Bible translation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a vernacular language – Polish.🧵
We did have one flying over our apartment last year...
They both increase immersion and allow to experience aspects of tactical warfare missing in other commercial games. Looking forward to exploring it further, and then building new maps, bringing locations from Estonia south to Lithuania. @jmkorhonen.fi have you had a chance to give it a go?
Wargame map depicting land, town and river with counters set up. There's a rulebook placed on top of the map. The title says Battlegroup Clash: Baltics.
First learning session of Battlegroup Clash: Baltics by James Buckley and Sapper Studio. I really like this new trend in professional games turning to commercial ones. Sync matrices, hexless maps, EW - they're all here in BCB.
Screenshot of Pax Pamir in Rally the Troops. A game board with blocks and cylinders on it, cards and alog of player actions.
Screenshot of Pax Pamir in Rally the Troops. A game board with blocks and cylinders on it, cards and alog of player actions.
A great start into a busy weekend and upcoming week at the Command and Staff College. Playing Pax Pamir with Damla, Natalia and Pijus today. @pijusk.bsky.social won via instability, which I didn't see coming in that moment. Such a great game and always fun to play and chat with #wargaming buddies!
Instability is a great way to start the weekend! Fun game!
I fully agree on whom to blame, especially as Natalia is not here :D
A grayscale photo of a book smuggler from the 19th century. A grey-bearded man with a long walking stick and a bag on his back.
I haven't given it a proper go yet myself and can't share full impressions, but if you want to learn about this little known side of colonialism, it could be a place start. And here's a cool picture of an actual book smuggler Vincas Juška.
Today marks Lithuania's Restoration of the State Day today and @fluxogames.bsky.social released a game on one of the key culturally painful moments' in the country's history - ban on Lithuanian publications in Latin alphabet by the tsarist government. What did we do? Started smuggling books, ofc.
Not yet - I usually use QGIS and Inkscape for various hex-based maps, but haven't really thought about BGC yet. I'll let you know, once I have ideas.
Box of a boardgame Battlegroup Clash: Baltics
Mine is here as well! Time to go through the rules and then teach the students. And then make some local maps.
Of course - sent!
Done!
Happy to send you the slides, if you'd like!
We first went through an example of transforming a simple model into a game (as in GUWS presentation), and then I mostly discussed how game theoretic structures can help inform building the core of a wargame model, and then how player behaviour can inform game theory models and payoff structures.
It continued building (and borrowed from) an earlier exploration of the links between social science modelling approaches and wargaming I did for @guws.bsky.social. Just with more focus on what game theory can give to wargames, and how wargames can in turn inform game theory and its interpretation.
A powerpoint slide with a title Wargaming and Game Theory, date, university affiliation, ISM university logo and author's name.
Wargame design can benefit a lot from learning from other social science modelling approaches, especially from game theory. Today, I had a pleasure to talk about wargaming and game theory at wargaming course at Alti Studi Difesa.
Actions, results, and spillovers could then move trackers to the different directions. Scenario injects also affected them, creating a dynamic environment and building the need for reaction. The experience also provided some methodological (including related to linguistics) ideas to try next.
- asking to identify not only expected obstacles and enablers, but also spillovers to other areas (they could also cover budget and societal cohesion issues).
The core approach relied on a matrix format, but included several constraints for a clearer framework:
- clear tensions where the actions must be focused (demographics and labour, economic transformation, institutions and governance, security, and social welfare), and
A poster of a game board, showing five circles each divided into five parts (based on a topic) and seven sliders with titles in Lithuanian. Magnets are placed on different positions on circles and tracks. The board also says Lithuania 2025-2050 and shows a distribution of cumulative probability of two- six-sided dice rolls.
ISM University's wargaming in 2025 ended with four sessions on Lithuania's development over 25 coming years. Each involved 12 players from business, legal, academia, culture, other sectors. They played as national and municipal government, business, labour, culture and education, and hostile forces.
And it's official Sarbievijus Year in LT this year!
Yes, arriving tomorrow afternoon!
See you, brother!
Thank you for sharing!
Screenshot from a webpage. The background shows a block board game with a hexagon board. The title says:: Connections UK, After Action Report, Connections UK 2025, Professional Conference
And here's a personal After Action Report for Connections UK at Armchair Dragoons. It was a great event, and my only regret is that my flight was early afternoon on the last day. Available here: armchairdragoons.com/cnxuk25-aar/
Last semester we had a Churchill day in the class, and here's the write up of why it works in the educational context.
A photo showing an old cellar with a red brick wall in the background. It is a museum. There are fifteen wooden stakes shown as exhibits. They were used for construction but remind of stakes used to destroy vampires.
We visited the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, and now I think we had a vampire infestation in Vilnius sometime before late 17th century...
Please please please everyone (pls reskeet) who is involved with a uni/college academic program (broadly speaking) conected to games Could you write a quick comment + links if any apply to what you and your institution are doing in that sphere? I need to show what's out there. 1/
#AncientBluesky 🗃️