Operational Design in Wargaming -Part VIII Dealing with the God's Eye view

 Another long hiatus brought about by my "other hobby" (the same one that send me to Germany for a year.)  One of the many presentations on the future of armed conflict I received crystallized the fundamental problem that many of us grapple with in the hobby: How do we model what should be unseen?  

You can blame a visit to the WWI museum in Kansas City, for these ruminations.

Today's introduction of cheap, numerous reconnaissance drones has created a real world equivalent to our god's eye view of the game table.  In Ukraine, both sides' offensive efforts are confounded by an inability to mass combat power unobserved.  Persistent overhead surveillance means that broad sweeping  brigade attacks result in horrendous casualties for the attacker.  Villages like Vuhledar have become meat grinders for mechanized forces.  The result is now that most actions are conducted at the squad to platoon level. The scale of the losses is unprecedented in modern warfare:   The latest count of vehicle losses for the Red Army on the Oryx website includes 3300 Tanks and 4400 IFVs.  That is the equivalent to almost 250 complete Russian battalions or 20 Divisions!  

I had the opportunity to visit the US WWI museum in Kansas City last month, and I was struck by the similarities to how the Russian Invasion of Ukraine has now devolved into a similar war of attrition.   

Why do I bring this up for wargaming?  Because it demonstrates why we end up with massive losses on our table tops; why we struggle to execute feints or exploit a weakness with our reserves.  How can I deceive you with the depth of my Phalanx when you can see it for your self?  

In the past I focused primarily on the concept of friction, modeling how the realities of complex operations prevent us from realizing our goals on the tabletop.  I've tried to integrate reconnaissance into my modern rules to help create fog of war for the players.  Truly modeling the unseen still eludes me.  The only solution seems to be narrative play and the return of the Game Operations Director (Mr. G.O.D, thanks Engage & Destroy)

My wargames isolation this last several years has had me doing more collaborative play, and matrix games.  In collaborative play you have the players teaming up against a semi-randomly generated opponent.   In the matrix games I designed to test my Cold War armor rules I basically wrote an execution matrix for one side with conditional responses.  I could then wargame the attackers side with the defender reacting to my success or failures according to a decision tree.  It is still not perfect, but gave me more of the outcome I was looking for.  

The strange part, is that I think I am seeing the allure of how we used to run games 40 years ago.  With an impartial judge monitoring a double-blind game, or map movement and a need for trust.  I think this post has definitely slid off onto the rant side of things, but I wanted to throw it out there for others to consider.  

Next up, more painted minis.  Thanks for visiting.