Flipping through the pages of Military Modeler magazine as a twelve-year-old kid, I and found scattered throughout ads for board wargames. Who would have thought that these games would help lead me down the path to becoming an Armored Cavalry officer and serve in the U.S. Army for twenty-five years? Then to a further career as a civilian working in the Department of Defense, then to design my own historical board wargames, and now finally to designing my own modern tactical wargame?

Before all that, I had some lawns to mow. A lot of lawns.

When I finally saved up enough, the first game I ordered from one of those ads was MechWar ’77, a 1975 Simulations Publications, Inc. release by Jim Dunningan. I soloed it countless times, picturing myself fighting the Soviets in the fields of Cold War Germany. I also played Dunnigan’s Firefight (1976) and Mark Herman’s innovative MechWar 2 (1979), all piquing my fascination with modern tactical warfare. I entered the United States Military Academy in 1981, though it would be many more years before I would design my own game.   

That would finally happen in 2017. I have been lucky enough to have several designs published under Multi-Man Publishing’s Grand Tactical Series, as well as my own original design, Front Toward Enemy, a tactical-level Vietnam game. I kept coming back to an idea I had for a modern tactical game, something that would capture the excitement of those games I played in the ‘70s, but that would do what no game I’ve ever played has really managed to accomplish – realistically recreate the challenges of command and control and planning on the battlefield. You know, do what commanders actually do in combat. The inspiration for this design – what has become Decisive Action – originated when I was an observer/controller at the US Army Combat Maneuver Training Center at Hohenfels, Germany in 1994. U.S. forces engaged in large-scale, practical training exercises, and I watched twenty different battalions each conduct ten-day force-on-force exercises; I mentored the intelligence sections, observed battalion staffs, and tracked battle after battle of Movement to Contact, Attack, and Defense missions (which, not coincidentally, are the main scenario types in Decisive Action).

One of the many realizations I had while observing battalion commanders and their staffs agonize over battlefield decisions was just how complicated what they did was — planning, battle tracking, reacting, and fighting the battle. It was a wonder to watch them work through the Military Decision-Making Process and Intelligence Preparations of the Battlefield and create a Decision Support Template to execute their plan. It takes incredible coordination, analysis, and decision-making to plan when and where a battalion will defend and build its engagement areas. There is tremendous planning needed to determine what assets to request and use, and to calculate the time and distance from finding the enemy to engaging him.

One of the other realizations I had was that most board wargames don’t involve any of these planning aspects of combat, at all.

Within Decisive Action, I’ve tried to capture the essence of this process with the use of a staff and command mechanic to allow the “purchase” and allocation of assets such as close air support, helicopter gunships, and reconnaissance drones. This staff process also figures into changing the orders of subordinate units and executing fire missions. When a battalion does this, it takes a full staff of highly trained professionals; I hope that I’ve boiled down the process to give players a taste of what goes on behind the scenes. In this way, Decisive Action represents both a training and hypothetical near-future conflict. Just as the game derives its inspiration from a U.S. Army training center, two of the game maps derive from present-day U.S. Army Combat Training Centers (CTC). A CTC is the place to learn from mistakes – rather than in combat[1]. The National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin is the best combined arms crucible short of live combat,[2] and the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) at Hohenfels, Germany, is the only

In this way, Decisive Action represents both a training and hypothetical near-future conflict. Just as the game derives its inspiration from a U.S. Army training center, two of the game maps derive from present-day U.S. Army Combat Training Centers (CTC). A CTC is the place to learn from mistakes – rather than in combat[1]. The National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin is the best combined arms crucible short of live combat,[2] and the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) at Hohenfels, Germany, is the only CTC outside the United States. You could theoretically play out a game of Decisive Action and then go and play out the exact same situation as a training exercise with real Abrams and Bradleys at a CTC. If you’re a member of the U.S. or NATO armed forces of the appropriate rank, MOS, etc.

The other two maps, one of the Suwalki Gap in Poland and one in Syria, represent the rubber hitting the road in actual conflict against a Russian foe. While the Cold War is over, and the Russian performance in the initial invasion of Ukraine was, erm, lackluster (going for the understatement award of the year here), the Russians, nonetheless, remain the European opponent to focus on. 

If you train at a CTC, you’ll find yourself up against a Russian OPFOR: the U.S. Army still employs Russian-based opponents to train U.S. forces since officials argue that such forces continue to represent the most robust peer or near-peer challenge to U.S. forces. Training for such large-scale combat operations best prepares U.S. forces for the widest array of potential enemies – from Russia to any number of less capable forces (who may also employ similar equipment).

The point is, you don’t practice like it’s going to be easy; you practice like it’s going to be hard (and then are happy if it turns out to be easy). As Colonel Maar, Deputy Commander of the 7^th Army Training Command running the JMRC at Hohenfels, Germany (one of the Decisive Action maps, for those paying attention), said during the 2022 Maneuver Warfighter Conference,“At the end of the day, we need to replicate, in our CTCs, Russia’s best day, not some of the things we’ve seen either during phase 1 or phase 2 of their attacks.”You never know when the opponent will give you more trouble than you expected. (By the way, I’d highly recommend for any serious student of modern tactical warfare watch some of the videos from that conference).

Russia is not going away, and while their military will undoubtedly change in the future, no one knows what it will look like. Decisive Action is not meant to model the current war in Ukraine but rather a potential future conflict, and so their pre-Ukraine military provides the best baseline for modeling.

Gaming in the near future can be a challenge. In 1972, when Jim Dunnigan developed the tactical wargame Red Star / White Star, it was hailed as groundbreaking. In a 1987 Fire & Movement magazine, Roger MacGowan wrote, “…in 1972, Dunnigan did it again, he crossed into another of those off-limits areas. The game was Red Star/White Star: Tactical Combat in Western Europe in the 1970’s. The controversial subject of potential future wars in Europe and the clear depiction of the Soviet Union as the real enemy opened another door.”

Tactical combat in the ‘80s continues to be a popular wargaming topic, but the hypothetical war in the 80’s is as far removed from us now as the ‘80s were from WWII. I am no Jim Dunnigan, but, just as he opened the door to “future” tactical wargaming, I hope Decisive Action can do the same for the current era.

When Decisive Action is published, I plan to grow the system much like how the Next War series has grown. I’m picturing supplements that provide a Russian BTR-based Battalion Task Group (in the current game they have BMPs), a US Army Stryker Battalion, or a NATO / UK Battle Group.  Supplements will allow for updates to order of battles and the introduction of new tactics and systems as militaries continue to evolve. Future games based on this ruleset could address other forces (Chinese People’s Liberation Army and U.S. Marine Corps?) and areas (jungle, beach landings, etc).

In future InsideGMT Articles, I’ll talk more about the gameplay and components. In the meantime, I highly recommend checking out Matt Kelly’s excellent playtesting videos. He has a video on the playtest components that gives a great visual as to what will be in the box; he also has a gameplay video of a learning scenario that highlights the Asset management mechanics and tactical thought that can go into planning. Check them out!

More soon.

Joe Chacon, designer

with Evan Yoak, developer

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[1] https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2018/July/Combat-Training-Center

[2] https://companyleader.themilitaryleader.com/lessons-from-atropia/