Presentation: Sweeping the Grimy Corners of History

Presentation given to a class at the University of Turin, 17 September 2025, on the design and portrayal of games on irregular warfare.

Script:    Turin Ruzza class sep 25 -29 aug

Slides:  Turin Ruzza slides sep 25 – 23 aug

China’s War in play

Howzabadis… a copy of China’s War being played!

Photo taken from Piotr Bambrough’s X account, at the Polish wargame convention Wargameron 25.

By his account they are having a lot of fun with it, calling it a “return to classic COINs” which is a phrase I suppose we can use, since the system has been in use for 15 years.

The colours of the pieces in the photo are not quite true… the Warlords are not as yellow as shown, nor are the Japanese as greenish; they are dark yellow and khaki, and quite distinct in natural light. I would have preferred a more reddish orange for the Warlords but this is what we got.

2025 Fall Tour: Connections-UK, Turin, Connections-CH!

 

In two weeks I am off to Europe for a short (two-week) professional wargaming round, after some work on my hand gestures. 

 

Connections-UK 2025, 8-11 September

I will be demonstrating some urban games:

• QUICK Junior (same game as played on the Urban Operations Planner Course, only taken down two echelons so it’s a Canadian battlegroup in Latvia The QUICK Page; Pijus Kruminas made an adaptation to defend his beloved Lithuania A QUICK Defence of Marijampole)
• Scaleable Urban Simulation System, in two modules: brigade level in Latvia (American troops this time, but fighting the same Russian Separate Motor Rifle Brigade) and division level in northern Taiwan (maneuver units are battalions).
• 91 DSSB (three-player co-operative game about running staff sections in a mythical Army sustainment battalion, organizing supply convoys to the BCTs up front) Free Games!

I’ve done something simple but different with the maps for the first two that could be interesting. At length I will make the SUSS available free once I am pleased with it.

Turin, 15-18 September

After a couple of days seeing stepfamily and friends in London I’m off to Turin to work on two games about post-Risorgimento brigandage. What’s interesting is that both of these are not wargames as such, but games about enforcing a difficult peace.

• One is a short simple card game that will have some historical background added by an Italian historian and will be sold in the gift shop of the National Museum of the Risorgimento in Turin. It might also be used in school history classes, perhaps on a slow day.
• Another is an adaptation of my modern counterinsurgency system District Commander for the time period, it’s much the same stuff going on so not hard to adapt.

Also, giving a lecture to a class at the University of Turin about counterinsurgency games and how they model history, or something.
And checking over two games I did a while back on Resistance warfare in the area of Turin Free games: Mastering Resistance and Operation CANUCK (solo games on resistance warfare) that will be sold in a box with a third game by an Italian designer through the local museum devoted to the history of the Resistance (these are all over northern Italy, not so many south of Rome though).

Lausanne, 19-22 September

Then to Lausanne for Connections Suisse: a very short conference on urban warfare to demonstrate the above urban games again, and also talking about card games EXURB and Dislocated.

Wargames Suisse Connections 2025

Going to be really busy, but very excited to see old and new friends!

We Are Almost There, Gaza!

I have amended the Gaza City variant for We Are Coming Nineveh!: Variant: We Are Coming, Gaza!

13.0 POSTSCRIPT: AUGUST 2025
By the end of December 2023 it was apparent that the stand-up fight within Gaza City that seemed possible, even probable, in early and mid October was not going to happen… By January 2024 the IDF had shifted its main effort to the south and therefore, the variant I had created was now moot. But I left it available as another example of the kind of speculative interactive exercise that wargames can offer us, even if they do not have long-term application. They certainly don’t have much predictive ability!

Now in August 2025, after nearly two years of one-sided warfare and destruction, the IDF has launched a new operation to formally occupy and “clear” Gaza City, where about 740,000 people are still living. Hamas has been more or less completely shattered as a military organization. It will likely offer only token and sporadic resistance as a force of about 5 divisions carries out a plan that will see Israel completely occupying all of Gaza while its conditions for ending the war are satisfied (return of all hostages, complete disarmament of Hamas, Israeli security control of the entire region, and government by a new, alternative civilian administration).

Is there any point to making a variant to this variant to model the Gaza City operation that is finally taking shape? If you really wanted to do it, as a guess here are the changes that ought to be made:

3.0 Starting the game. Hamas does not receive any Veterans. They should have no additional units or assets beyond Ashbal, Stay-Behinds and Media Centre. They should have no capabilities cards at start and should have only 15-20 points to buy capabilities. Strongly suggest using the optional Opening IDF Bombardment rule. Maybe do it twice.

4.11 Supply. Hamas units are not in supply.

4.2 End of Game. The game ends only when all Hamas units have been removed from Close terrain hexes. Ignore all references to UN intervention or ceasefires or collateral damage.

8.0 Victory. Only one victory metric is used: IDF Casualties.

Optional rules: Use all except 9.6 Force Regeneration (or implement only for Ashbal units) and 9.8 (Additional Ceasefire Pressure)

Brief Border Wars 2: Kickstarter is launched!

The end is in sight!

Compass Games has just announced the launch of the Kickstarter for Brief Border Wars Volume 2.

If you haven’t pre-ordered at the lower price, this is your last chance to get it at a lower price of $59.

Estimated delivery date is November 2025.

Update: 10 days to go and they are already over 2 1/2 times the modest amount they wanted to raise. Also, Brief Border Wars Volume I was offered as an “add-on” but it’s now indicated as sold out!

Details, artwork, rash promises, system rules all available at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/compassgames/brief-border-wars-ii

[ 19 August – Edited to add: Compass posted a written interview with me about the game! Some parts might be familiar since the questions were too, but go ahead and check it out if you have a moment, under Updates. ]

[25 August – in the end 114 people boarded the BBW Express at the last moment and they raised triple what they wanted, so all good. It’s not coming any sooner but 114 more people will be happy when it does!]

Idiosyncrasy in Motion: return to GUWS

On December 9 I’ll be giving a presentation via the Georgetown University Wargaming Society lecture series, giving some of my thoughts on my game designs.

Link for tickets (it’s free but it’s up to 90 minutes of your life you will never, ever get back): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/idiosyncracy-in-motion-tickets-1554214590679

A few years ago I gave a talk via GUWS about self-publishing: PostGUWS

No-show Pentagon

Seen on Facebook but likely to be true I think, given the trend of current events.

Seems a bit like a plan to lose weight by taking a melon baller to your brain and scooping out the argumentative bits.

I guess this would include participation in events like the MORS symposia and Connections conferences; they would seem to qualify as research events.

“The Pentagon has suspended any participation in think-tank and research events until further notice, according to an email sent out to staff last Thursday. The announcement comes a week after the the Department of Defense made the decision to pull all participation from the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado, which had been attended by senior defense and military officials, including several Defense Secretaries, for years, with the DoD citing “the evil of globalism” for their withdrawal from the event, while further suggesting that the forum didn’t align with the views of the Trump Administration.

 

Several officials, including Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan; Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Emil Michael; Director of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), Doug Beck, and a number of other top military officials had arrived at the event and been scheduled to speak, with the ban coming less than the 24 hours before it was set to begin in Aspen.

 

In addition to the suspension, the Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office is also reviewing the participation of the DoD in other events and conferences, such as the Sea Air Space led by the Navy League, and the Halifax International Security Forum, which takes places annually in Nova Scotia, Canada and has almost always been at attended by the U.S. Secretary of Defense. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs, General Counsel and Policy Offices will review all requests for participation at events and will ask for officials’ remarks and talking points in advance, according the email sent out on Thursday. ‘In order to ensure the Department of Defense is not lending its name and credibility to organizations, forums, and events that run counter to the values of this administration, the Department’s Office of Public Affairs will be conducting a thorough vetting of every event where Defense officials are invited to participate,’ said Chief Pentagon Spokesperson Sean Parnell.”

 

OSINTdefender

Corroborated and amplified, here in the Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/pentagon-hegseth-think-tanks/683692/

THE PENTAGON AGAINST THE THINK TANKS

Pete Hegseth finds a new enemy.

JULY 29, 2025

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has scanned the horizon for threats, and sure enough, he has found a new group of dangerous adversaries: think tanks, the organizations in the United States and allied nations that do policy research and advocate for various ideas. They must be stopped, according to a Defense Department announcement, because they promote “the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country, and hatred for the president of the United States.”

This particular bit of McCarthyist harrumphing was the rationalization the Pentagon gave more than a week ago for pulling out of the Aspen Security Forum, a long-running annual conference routinely attended by business leaders, military officers, academics, policy analysts, foreign officials, and top government leaders from both parties, including many past secretaries of defense. For good measure, the Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell invoked the current holy words of the Hegseth Pentagon: The Aspen forum, he said, did not align with the department’s efforts to “increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalize the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage.”

The Aspen gathering is not exactly a secret nest of Communists. This year’s roster of speakers included former CIA Director Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper—a Trump appointee—and a representative from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s office, among many others. John Phelan, the current secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, were set to attend as well.

Nor is Hegseth content just to stop America’s intellectual enemies cold at the Rockies: The Pentagon last week suspended Defense Department participation in all such activities, functionally a blanket ban on any interaction with think tanks or other civilian institutions that hold conferences, convene panels, and invite speakers. The New York Times reported that the order to pull out of Aspen came from Hegseth personally. And as Politico first reported, the lager ban appears to extend “to gatherings hosted by nonprofit military associations, such as Sea Air Space, which is led by the Navy League, the military service’s largest veteran organization, and Modern Day Marine, a similar trade show for the Marine Corps.” The Pentagon also “specifically banned attendance at the Halifax International Security Forum, which takes place in Nova Scotia each winter and where the Pentagon chief is usually a top guest.”

Take that, Canada.

Right now, no one seems certain of how this new policy works. Hegseth appears to have suspended all such participation subject to additional review by the Pentagon’s public-affairs office and general counsel, so perhaps some defense officials could one day end up attending conferences after their requests have been vetted. Good luck with that, and best wishes to the first Pentagon employee who pops up out of their cubicle to request a pass to attend such meetings. At some point soon, this prohibition will almost certainly be lifted, but why did Hegseth’s Pentagon impose it in the first place?

I am a former Defense Department employee who, over the course of my career, attended (and spoke at) dozens of conferences at various think tanks and other organizations, and I will make an educated guess based on experience: The main reasons are resentment, insecurity, and fear.

The most ordinary reason, resentment, predates Hegseth. Government service is not exactly luxurious, and many trips are special perks that generate internal gripes about who gets to go, where they get to stay, and so on. (These trips are not exactly luxurious either, but in my government-service days, I learned that some people in the federal service chafe when other employees get free plane tickets to visit nice places.) It’s possible that someone who has never been invited to one of these things convinced Hegseth—who seems reluctant to attend such events himself—that these meetings are just boondoggles and that no one should go.

Bureaucratic pettiness, however, isn’t enough of an explanation. One hazard for people like Hegseth and his lieutenants at a place like Aspen or the International Institute of Strategic Studies or the Halifax conference is that these are organizations full of exceptionally smart people, and even experienced and knowledgeable participants have to be sharp and prepared when they’re onstage and in group discussions. The chance of being outclassed, embarrassed, or just in over one’s head can be very high for unqualified people who have senior government jobs.

Hegseth himself took a pass on the Munich Security Conference (usually a good venue for a new secretary of defense), and instead decided to show videos of himself working out with the troops. We can all admire Hegseth’s midlife devotion to staying fit and modeling a vigorous exercise regimen for the troops (who must exercise anyway, because they are military people and are ordered to do it), but America and its allies would probably benefit more from a secretary with an extra pound here and there who could actually stand at a podium in Munich or London and explain the administration’s strategic vision and military plans. The overall prohibition on conferences provides Hegseth and his deputies (many of whom have no serious experience with defense issues) with an excuse for ducking out and avoiding making fools of themselves.

But perhaps the most obvious and Trumpian reason for the Pentagon’s brainpower lockdown is fear. Officials in this administration know that the greatest risk to their careers has nothing to do with job performance; if incompetence were a cause for dismissal, Hegseth would have been gone months ago. The far greater danger comes from the chance of saying something in public that gets the speaker sideways with Trump and turns his baleful stare across the river to the Pentagon. “The Trump administration doesn’t like dissent, I think that’s pretty clear,” a Republican political strategist and previous Aspen attendee told The Hill last week. “And they don’t like dissenting views at conferences.”

The problem for Trump officials is that “dissent” can mean almost anything, because the strategic direction of the United States depends on the president’s moods, his grievances, and his interactions with others, including foreign leaders. Everything can change in the space of a post on Truth Social. To step forward in a public venue and say anything of substance is a risk; the White House is an authoritarian bubble, and much like the Kremlin in the old Soviet Union, the man in charge can decide that what is policy today could be heresy tomorrow.

In the end, banning attendance at meetings where defense officials can exchange ideas with other intelligent people is—like so much else in this administration—a policy generated by pettiness and self-protection, a way to batten down the Pentagon’s hatches so that no one speaks out or screws up. If this directive stays in place for even a few years, however, it will damage relationships among the military, defense officials, business leaders, academics, and ordinary Americans.

Public conferences are part of the American civil-military relationship. Sometimes, these are events such as Aspen, where senior officials present policies or engage their critics under a national spotlight; other gatherings at various nongovernmental organizations help citizens understand what, exactly, their government is doing. At academically oriented meetings, members of the defense community gather ideas, debate, discuss, and sometimes establish contacts for future research and exchanges. Retired Army Colonel Jeffrey McCausland, who served on the National Security Council staff and as the dean of the Army War College, told me that the Pentagon’s shortsightedness could prevent important civil-military exchanges about national defense, and he wonders how far such prohibitions will go: Might the new directive mean that the “guy who teaches history at West Point or a war college,” for example, “can’t go to a history conference and be a better history professor?”

Maybe someone is mad that they didn’t get to go to Colorado or Canada; perhaps someone else is worried that accepting an invitation could be career suicide. Somehow, the Pentagon has managed to engage productively in such events for decades, under administrations of both parties. But Hegseth, after a string of embarrassments—McCausland points to the lingering “radioactivity” of Signalgate—has apparently chosen a safety-first approach. Unfortunately, the secretary still has to appear in public, and the chances of yet more stumbles from him and his team are high. But at least he’ll be able to reassure the American public that the upright employees of the Pentagon won’t be wined and dined by politically suspect eggheads.

Besides, when people get together and start thinking, anything can happen. Better safe than sorry.

Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter.

And another piece in the Atlantic about where this is possibly headed long-term.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/archive/2025/08/military-education-reforms/683760/

https://talk.consimworld.com/WebX?233@@.1dd2b64d/10178!enclosure=.1de8e220 to dodge the paywall.

Spotted at CSW Expo

I didn’t think anyone besides me had ever bothered to put this one together and play it.

[Photo and Facebook post that brought it to my attention by Karl Kreder.]

Variant: We Are Coming, Gaza!

New game: 91 DSSB Staff Game

91 DSSB shoulder patch. Very rough translation: “He who wants something is here in vain.”

Name of game: 91 DSSB Staff Game

Topic: A cooperative game for 3 players who represent different staff sections in the fictional US Army 91st DSSB (Divisional Sustainment Support Battalion). They work together to prepare and send off daily supply convoys to divisional Brigade Combat Teams on the “front line”. Essentially a time management and planning game, with simple processes – features include an endless time track (a mechanic stolen from Bruno Faidutti’s very weird Red November) and roles and choices that put demands on the players as the situation continues to change and crises arise.

Game length: 1-2 hours (Game has no fixed end point but players can agree to stop after a certain number of “days” to assess how the brigades are faring compared to the beginning of the game.)

Players: 3, or teams of 3 (solo possible but pointless unless teaching yourself to teach others)

Comments

• Most civilian wargames have detailed procedures for movement and combat, with the logistics processes handwaved away. For a long time I have wanted to design a game that approached the inverse of this.
• The game has simple components – two pages of tracks and charts, some small player mats, 60 markers and a set of coloured cubes to represent supplies (a set of supply markers is provided if you don’t have cubes).
• Not meant to be a simulation so much as a vehicle for delivering some insights to staff and combat arms officers on the unending challenges of life in the Quartermaster Corps. I was in the Infantry myself, so as far as I was concerned the Log Fairies came during the night and left offerings of food, water and ammunition under designated trees, out of gratitude for our protecting them from the enemy.
• The three players in the game represent different staff sections in the Battalion: S-2 in charge of intelligence and information, S-3 for operations, and the Support Operations section. Ultimately all are responsible for logistics arrangements and delivering Class I, III, IV, V supplies via convoy to respective Brigade Support Areas.
• As a cooperative game it is not intensely competitive or antagonistic but the players have to balance the capacities and efficiency of their own sections with working together to prevent the front line units from starving or running out of things during combat (which will in turn make their own jobs that much harder). There’s lots to do but never enough time or wherewithal to get it all done.

If you find this interesting and try it out, please let me know!

Copies have been sent to curious individuals in the American, Australian, British, Canadian, and Italian military/ wargaming communities. The game was featured in the Australian “Army Battle Lab Professional Gaming List 2025”. And I’ll likely be demonstrating it (or at least bringing a copy along) at this year’s Connections-UK in September.

Game files:

91 DSSB player roles 20 sep 23

DSSB log markers 30 sep 22

91 DSSB Staff Game tables 20 sep 23

91 DSSB staff game rules 20 Sep 23

DSSB counters 15 sep 22

DSSB staff game cards 16 sep 22

News from Down Under

https://cove.army.gov.au/article/army-battle-labs-professional-gaming-list-2025

“The Cove” is the Australian Army’s professional military education (PME) platform. It sometimes has interesting entries on the uses of analog wargaming for training and education. Today, MAJ Andrew Sommerville has posted the “Army Battle Labs Professional Gaming List for 2025”, a list of lists of commercially available analog games that develop critical thinking, mental flexibility, or understanding behind decision making.

Here are the lists of games for several different purposes – the same games show up on more than one list. More details about each game are given in the list, including an indication of complexity, its particular value, and appropriate ranks who should study it.

One item he mentions is my game 91 DSSB Staff Game, which is not commercially available mostly because I haven’t bothered putting up the PnP files for it, or creating a Boardgamegeek entry for it.

I’ll get around to it and meanwhile, if anyone wants a copy for professional use, you may get one from him (if you are Australian) or from me.

PS: if anyone has Zurmat, here is a link to a variant I made for it that creates a third player – the non-combatants who want to survive and frustrate both of the other antagonists. Zurmat 3p variant 22 Feb 23

THE ARMY BATTLE LAB PROFESSIONAL GAMING LIST 2025

Table 1: Games for Team Building/Team Management Skills

Aftershock 
91 DSSB Staff Game
Root 
This War of Mine 

Table 2: Games for Negotiation and Influence Analysis/Skills

Churchill 
Diplomacy 
Flashpoint: South China Sea 
Root (with Riverfolk Expansion) 
Zurmat 

Table 3 – Games for Understanding our Political/Historical Environment

Flashpoint: South China Sea 
Twilight Struggle 

Table 4 – Games for Understanding Modern Conflict – Combat Decisions in Battle

Take That Hill 
Australian Platoon Commander 
Donetsk 
Littoral Commander Indo Pacific (and the expansion Littoral Commander Australia) 
Team Yankee 
We are Coming Nineveh 
Urban Operations 
Zurmat 

Table 5 – Games for Understanding Modern Conflict – Military Decisions on Campaign

The Operational Wargame Series (OWS) Assassin’s Mace 

Table 6 – Games for Understanding Decision-Making in History – Combat Decisions in Battle

Battle for Moscow 
Memoir 44 
1944: Race to the Rhine (and 1941: Race to Moscow) 
Enduring Freedom: US Operations in Afghanistan 
Fallujah, 2004: City Fighting in Iraq 
Into a Bear Trap: The Battle for Grozny January 1995 
Napoleon 1806 
Sands of War 
Strike of the Eagle 

Table 7 – Games for Understanding Decision-Making in History – Military Decisions on Campaign

1944: Race to the Rhine (and 1941: Race to Moscow) 
Enduring Freedom: US Operations in Afghanistan
Strike of the Eagle 

Table 8 – Games for Understanding Decision-Making in History – National Decisions in War

Twilight Struggle

“Major Andrew Somerville has served as an Infantry Officer in the Australian Army for more than four decades. He has extensive experience in the fields of operations, planning and intelligence, at both the tactical and joint operational level. Andrew is currently the Staff Officer Grade Two – Wargaming and Simulation in the Army Battle Lab. He is also the designer of the educational wargame titled Australian Platoon Commander, currently used by the Royal Military College – Duntroon.”