In preparation for a combined game of Next War: Poland, Next War: Korea, and Next War: Taiwan (coming up in April), I was asked to drop in to the Marine War College in Quantico, VA to show some of the students how to play the game as a teach the teachers exercise.

So, on a cold Monday night in Feb I parachuted in….well, not really. In game terms, I used Air Transport to move from the Airbase in St. Louis to the Airbase in Washington, D.C.  Since there were no enemy Zones of Control (EZOCs), I was able to use half of my movement allowance to arrive at my assembly area in Quantico. [Translation: I hopped a flight from STL to DCA and drove to my hotel.]

The next morning, I showed up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 0730 because I’m high speed/low drag. [Translation: I barely slept  with the whole first-night-in-the-hotel thing.] The students began trickling in at 0800. Although they were mostly Marines, there was also one Navy, one Air Force, one Army, and a couple of “militarily aligned but not allied” officers present. All were from various facets of the service from fighter and helicopter pilots to armor. The War College primarily exists to help these officers transition from a very tactically focused mindset to a more operational and strategic level of engagement with the battlefield.

We were playing on a fantastic, enlarged version of the map with hexes big enough to fit four counters with a little room to spare. Of course, the game was only partially punched. So, with my usual wit, I mentioned that it’s just like M16 training: before you can use it, you have to take it apart! So, I directed the colonels to start punching counters, and we began setting up the game.

After a small bit of discussion, we chose the Tactical Surprise scenario to get things started. The students were supposed to have the read the rules beforehand. Then, having had copies of the Advanced Game Sequence of Play made (I made the Air Force do that assuming he’d be more technically inclined), we just started right in. Why, because we’re Gung Ho, of course!

Long story short, it was just like every other time I’ve ever taught a game to people…

Exception: Although this is not, necessarily, the game I would use to teach people how to play a wargame, I’ll tell you that these guys aren’t here at the War College by accident.  (what’s a wargame or wargame story without exceptions?)

Lots of questions about how stuff worked which were, for the most part, easily answered. There were two exceptions (heh): Nukes and Bridge Blowing. I had to go to the rules on these two because I’ve rarely seen them used in this particular game. The Russian players, however, decided it would be a fantastic idea to nuke the US carriers they had just Point Detected in the North Sea. After all, it’s a clean strike in an unpopulated area (hello, open sea). Well, they launched two nukes, destroyed two carriers, and “ended” the game with a Global Thermonuclear War die roll of 1! Rather than pack up and head for the airport, we just reset and carried on! The second rules lookup involved how, exactly, bridge destruction worked. The Russians (always pushing the envelope those guys) used an airmobile assault to get close to Warsaw and decided they wanted to seal off the area by blowing a bunch of bridges. [Rules note, it’s in 8.3.4, and, yes, HQs CAN do it, too.]

A few hours passed, and they were figuring out how to use their movement allowance, read the TEC, spend MPs and move units. There was combat. Then, there was lunch. Speaking of which, one of the telling comments from a participant was “what do you mean we’re going to have supply problems?” Some of that was because we didn’t really cover supply, and some of it was from not understanding how the Clearing rules worked. This latter issue came back to haunt the Russians in a big way (or would have if we’d gotten to turn 2) because they failed to clear Bialystok on GT1, and that meant that their forward advance units were, in a word, screwed. Bialystok [spoiler alert!] is the gateway to Warsaw. So, good lesson learned.

Here are some of the golden nugget takeaways from one day of play at the Marine War College:

1. They’re playing Next War: Poland at the Marine War College. How freaking cool is that?
2. See #1. 🙂
3. The After Action Review was a fascinating insight into the warfighters’ minds. Sorry I can’t discuss it here, because, then I’d have to shoot you. Just kidding. They’re just like wargamers all over the world. They dissected some of the moves and discussed and considered options in terms of the operational and strategic imperatives driven by both the game and the real world.
4. I heard, distinctly, in terms of the game: “You’re not far off.” That warms the cockles of my heart (whatever those are).
5. The Advanced Game, as much as I love it, is not the right presentation for a learning experience. We switched to the Standard Game about half way through, which was interesting since there were bunch of Strike markers on the map not to mention the HQs. At the end of the day, though, the students improvised, adapted, and overcame (see what I did there?).
6. Overall impressions were favorable. The students could see the operational issues and anticipate and react accordingly.
7. Did you see #1?

The best part was the wide ranging wrap up discussion which covered such ground as having the right kind of leader in place in an allied effort, a la Eisenhower, along with a brief deliberation of how Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton all seemed to end up in the right place after all. There was a fairly cogent analysis of how much of that was planning versus just plain dumb luck. Immediately following that “well it was political” argument, there was a review of what might have happened had Lincoln put Grant in command earlier rather than trying to delay his rise because he thought he was a potential political rival.

Naturally, of course, some of the discussion revolved quite a bit around Russian intentions and motivations vis a vis the Baltics as well as what might really happen if this new cold war got hot. Most importantly, we talked about how best to represent those motivations in a game format.
Nugget of wisdom here: it call comes down to appropriately defining the victory conditions

Overall, I’m happy to know that our warfighters are using every resource at their disposal to help them more fully understand the intricacies involved in their profession.

And, did I mention, they’re playing Next War: Poland at the Marine War College….

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