Tunnels in Gaza; introducing Sole Tunnels

John Spencer, who I’ve mentioned many times on this blog as an expert on urban warfare, has spent a fair bit of the last three months in Israel/Gaza.

Here he is writing at the Modern War Institute blog about the mind-boggling size, extent and complexity of the many, many tunnel systems that Hamas has built below the surface of Gaza.

There are larger underground systems in the world (e.g. China and North Korea) but none so densely packed as here.

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/gazas-underground-hamass-entire-politico-military-strategy-rests-on-its-tunnels/

His final paragraph:

Hamas’s strategy, then, is founded on tunnels and time. This war, more so than any other, is about the underground and not the surface. It is time based rather than terrain or enemy based. Hamas is in the tunnels. Its leaders and weapons are in the tunnels. The Israeli hostages are in the tunnels. And Hamas’s strategy is founded on its conviction that, for Israel, the critical resource of time will run out in the tunnels.

A large part of a day is spent on subterranean warfare in the six-day curriculum of the Urban Operations Planner Course, and I had wanted to do some design work on this particular problem as the battalion-level scale of the QUICK game could not reflect it well.

I did work out a game that was at least superficially about planning a subterranean operation called SUBTLE (SUBTerranean Learning Exercise) but it’s perhaps too metaphorical.

So, over the holidays I worked on two new games on subterranean warfare:

One is called SOLE TUNNELS and is an adaptation of a dungeon crawl where an infantry company moves through a small tunnel complex of random tiles set up before play, encountering enemy fireteams, Mines, IEDs, and searchable Rooms. Solitaire and plays fast, less than an hour. Four scenarios written so far.

I also designed a simpler adaptation of the QUICK to work for tunnel warfare beneath the generic unnamed hexagonal grid city shown on the old map (file still available on the QUICK Page)
Called TUNNEL TROOPERS, it has the platoons of a light infantry battalion moving through a tunnel complex drawn up by the enemy before play; they trace out the tunnels and its features on the map.
A wee bit inspired by the old Avalon Hill game Starship Troopers obviously. I have to do a bit of work on this yet and write up some scenarios. For 2-4 players and time to play depends on complexity of tunnel complex and probability of player discombobulation, since it is an almost-double-blind exercise.

Anyway, here are the print-and-play files for SOLE TUNNELS: they may be replaced by modified versions later but the game is more or less in its final form.

SOLE TUNNELS rules 19 Jan 24  (OpenDoc file, .odt)

Sole Tunnels scenarios 19 Jan 24  (OpenDoc file, .odt)

Sole Tunnels PAC 19 Jan 24   (PDF file)

Sole Tunnels tiles stone 18 Jan 24 (PDF file, print onto card or sticky label then stick onto cardboard and cut out – includes unit display)

2Tunnels ctrs 5 jan 24  (PDF file, this is a counter sheet common to both games – print onto sticky label then stick to cardboard and cut out)

Would be interested to hear if you give this a try.

(Yes, this is the sort of thing that might be better served as a Tabletop Simulator module, but I am an old cardboard grognard and making one of those would be the last thing I would do after getting the paper model with all its scribblings right. But my computer is so old that Steam will no longer run on it, so I can’t use Tabletop Simulator for anything! I need to replace my machine soon.)