Students’ games

I should start with our students’ games that they worked on during the Spring semester, as it is the most important educational result of the whole year. This time, the class structure was a bit different, with students from several programmes (Economics and Politics, Economics and Data Analytics, and Finance) joining the class. So, what did the games cover?

One of the games focused on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in the 15^th-16^th centuries and the many competitors surrounding it. While the game puts GDL in the spotlight, trying to defend against four other players, they also don’t want to allow anyone else to advance too quickly in their campaigns, thus creating conditions for economic, political, and military rivalry amongst everyone. This game made by Ainius, Ieva, Luknė, and Viltė also incorporates event cards, and some of those events can be really crushing.

Another game, by Gabija, Lukas, and Rugilė focused on Lithuanian parliamentary elections, pitting two players against each other. There each player represents a political party that tries to earn points to increase their own prestige and to sabotage the rivals by uncovering the scandals associated with it. The game also accounts for the administrative divisions of Lithuania, bringing the game model and the context closer together.

There was one more game focused on Lithuania. Designed by Artur, Gediminas, Rimvydas, and Tomas, the hex-and-counter simulation focused on modern warfare and defense against a potential attack from Belarus and Kaliningrad. The game follows the key characteristics of the genre and includes event cards that can move the scales toward one side or another.

Finally, Aldas, Lukas, and Oskaras chose the Punic Wars as their topic, making a light but intense game where players take the roles of Rome and Carthage and navigate the competition on land and at sea. While the mechanics are simple, cards modify the way the narrative unfolds in an interesting way.

The course culminated in a demo day, where students demoed their games for guests from the faculty and the Lithuanian game industry. The opportunity to showcase the game not only to their peers is a great motivator as well as a source of new feedback for further improvement of prototypes.

Wargaming Lab activities

Of course, wargame prototype development was not the only activity we had this year. In September 2024 the university launched a Wargaming Lab project, so some of the activities came through it.

We started the year with adapting Brian Train’s QUICK Junior system to the Lithuanian context. Originally, the game focused on a fight between NATO platoons and Russian company-size groups (and platoons) in Latvia, while our scenario moved the game to the Lithuanian setting, specifically, the town of Marijampolė. After running it in our Wargaming Lab group, we then facilitated the game at Game On event in Vilnius and used it as an illustration at the Defense Staff.

One of the highlights of the year which came at the end of the semester was a joint wargaming summer school in Berlin organized with partners from Germany - The German Wargaminc Centre, CASSIS - Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies, Helmut-Schmidt- Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, and Zentrum Informationsarbeit Bundeswehr. The students and recent graduates from ISM had a chance to join their peers and explore design and application of wargames.

In addition to games focused on security or politics we used an opportunity to run a game in the finance context. ISM participates in an Erasmus+ project ASSET, where students from partner universities come together for an intense study week and solve four case studies during that time. One of those cases focuses on Sustainability, Taxation, and Strategic Decision Making through using matrix game methodology. While the first version of the teaching module was developed in Spring 2024, it was in September that the first cohort of students had a chance to take part in it, to great post-event evaluation of the approach we used.

One of the initial objectives of the Wargaming Lab was establishing relations with similar organizations. To this end, various events helped tremendously. This academic year, the Wargaming Lab activities were presented at Connections UK, Connections Online, Playing War at the University of Regensburg, and Colloque International Game Evolution. There was also an opportunity to further exchange ideas with the academic wargaming group during King’s Wargaming Week, to take part in WISE-AEGIS game at the NATO Civil-Military Cooperation Centre of Excellence in the Hague and explore prototypes for upcoming games at Circle DC convention and Homo Ludens mini-meet-up.

Another objective included raising awareness about the uses of the wargaming methodology. In this case, among other activities, we ran Next War: Poland with a media representative, which came out as a publication about wargaming with an AAR included. Helping to reach a larger audience, some of the articles on our activities were also published in a Japanese wargaming magazine Banzai published by Yasushi Nakaguro (also designer of Port Arthur and 300).

Finally, we continued incorporating wargaming into our research cycle, which started with an internal seminar on how wargaming can complement other, more traditional, research methods. Then, a project on business resilience in the context of polycrisis (funded through a grant by the Research Council of Lithuania) saw three matrix games facilitated on this topic. Now, the analysis is in progress. During the year, master students Laura and Jonas developed their own game on crisis management in companies and then played it with different businesses, collected the data and wrote a master thesis based on the results.

What we played

Among all the many activities we had, we also played a lot! You can’t really learn or do wargaming without playing, can you? So, the games we played during our classes and during the Wargaming Lab meetings this year were:

• The Shores of Tripoli (Kevin Bertram, Fort Circle Games)

• Invasion 1883 (Jorit Wintjes and Steffen Pielström, Conflict Simulation Group University of Würzburg)

• Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame)

• Pax Pamir (second edition, Cole Wehrle, Wehrlegig Games)

• The Gods Will Have Blood (Dan Bullock, Lock Horns Games)

• We Are Coming, Nineveh! (Harrison Brewer, Rex Brynen, Juliette Le Ménahèze and Brian Train, NUTS! Publishing)

• The British Way (Stephen Rangazas, GMT Games)

• Churchill (Mark Herman, GMT Games)

• Kazhdyy Gorod (Tom Mouat, available at MapSymbs)

• John Company (second edition, Cole Wehrle, Wehrlegig Games)

• Littoral Commander: The Baltic (Sebastian Bae, Dietz Foundation)

• Powering Up (Ian Curtiss, Lux Capital)

• Fire & Stone: Siege of Vienna 1683 (Robert DeLeskie, Capstone Games)

• Henchmen and The Plan (Stone Paper Scissors)

• Turning Tides (Elizabeth Joslyn, GUWS)

Introducing mechanics

One thing that lighter games can help with is introduction of specific mechanics. For students who have limited exposure to board games in general or wargames in particular, getting a first hand experience with common mechanics and their function as thematic metaphors helps when designing their own game prototypes. And, as the semester length does not allow exploring a large number of games, the ones that are played will likely have a very significant influence. For example, in earlier years, inspiration from Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame) and The British Way (Stephen Rangazas, GMT Games) was very clearly seen in some of the students’ prototypes. Of course, these are not small games as such, but just to illustrate why exposure to common mechanics is important. I will highlight two light game examples here.

The first one, Watergate (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games), works great for introducing card-driven mechanics. Here, one player takes the role of Nixon’s administration, while the other plays as The Washington Post journalists trying to reveal the illicit activities against political opponents. Both players have their own set of cards, and have to choose between the event and points for actions, when playing them. The game is rules-light, there are not many complexities involved, and within a duration of a seminar more than one session can be played. As the key mechanics are card-driven decisions and tile placement on a bulletin board, connecting (or disrupting) the evidence connections. An advantage is that the topic is generally well known, so it is not difficult to grasp what is happening, and how mechanics reflect the theme. And them, after Watergate it is less challenging to take a step toward more complex CDGs.

Another game (which is new for me, so I haven’t had a chance to try it in class yet) is Port Arthur (Yasushi Nakaguro, Nuts! Publishing). Here, the players take the roles of the Japanese and Russian navies to fight the war of 1905. This game can be very helpful in highlighting the role of luck and risk management in games. The rounds have variable duration, as players roll dice to see who gets to act first or if that’s the end. Then, naval battles and movement of squadrons also involve making decisions on rolls to be might, actively asking the player to choose between higher risk - higher reward and lower risk - lower reward.

Reading a game as a model and giving it a narrative

Our course at ISM focuses specifically on looking at games as models. This semester, students come from the political economy, economics, and finance programmes, and by the time we have the wargaming class, they have already had several classes that discuss models and modelling in social sciences. Whether on game theory, on econometric and causal inference models, or still other approaches, the core understanding of the role and importance of models has been built before. Starting from this background, we now explore how games can serve as an additional tool in modelling social reality.

Certainly, wargames differ from other social science models (or why else would we need them as a modelling method). Instead of fully assuming what decisions would be made, they require participants to make the decisions. Instead of just calculating relationships based on regression models, they suggest relationships between factors, but leave space for uncertainties and players’ exploration. I talked about this a bit more at a Georgetown University Wargaming Society (GUWS) webinar last year.

Coming back to the topic, in order to learn to read wargames as models, lower complexity and smaller scale games might help well. I would like to stress three examples here, though certainly way more could be discussed. Yet, it is no less important, that players are also immersed, so even smaller games need to form a narrative around the model.

Last Fall, I received an invitation from the youth branch of the Lithuanian Riflemen's Union, to present wargaming to teenagers. Naturally, it should also include some interactive activity and last about 60-90 minutes in total. That is, including the presentation part. Given these time constraints, the game should be both representative and simple. Also, as the number of participants is in the dozens, running the session with physical games would be difficult, so somehow, I should run a game on the screen with players making decisions jointly. Here, Take That Hill! (Phil Sabin, version used released by Fight Club International) worked well. It has scenarios of varying complexity, and starting with the most basic one it gives players 3-5 choices of action per unit, which I could easily fit in a Slido poll. So, the game was shown on PowerPoint slides, and participants used their phones to vote in a poll on what should be done each turn with each unit.

Take That Hill! is a tactical game, where a platoon needs to take a hill, with enemy located at the top. Action choices are quite straightforward - move, stay, shoot to suppress the enemy, rally. It is fairly straightforward and helpful to introduce specific concepts of wargames (e.g., hexes) and test some tactical understanding. It is easy to internalize after taking a turn or two. Moreover, the game also comes with a visual representation of the model behind the game, and so it serves as a good point of discussion on how a wargame is a model, and what are its advantages. Generally, the reaction I get after demoing the game and showing the vizualization of the model, is that it looks much more complex and difficult to read than the game itself. This is one of the uses of wargames (including light ones) - making it easier to internalize the model. Even if the rules may not be that easy to grasp initially.

Another good example is a print and play game Turning Tides (Betsy Joslyn, GUWS) that I use quite often in workshops or in my game theory classes (again, to illustrate variation in modelling approaches). It is a three player game about addressing climate change that contrasts common interest in reducing greenhouse gasses and individual interests of world’s major economies (the US, the EU, and China). Here, through limited actions, the underlying model of pursuit of interests becomes clear - what exactly is modeled and what the interactions are. When playing this game by the end of my master’s course in game theory, students can connect the game theoretic concepts we learned to what is happening in the game. Yet, the game format also reveals additional processes that are not (easily) captured in game theory models.

Yet, a game should also tell a good story for greater immersion (listen to a related and very interesting discussion by Ian Curtiss and David Banks). Here, I would like to refer to The Gods Will Have Blood (Dan Bullock, Lock Horns Games), a solitaire game about a magistrate during the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. The model is relatively uncomplicated, but the way the game builds the narrative, is excellent. Each round, the player (or players - I asked my students to vote on the guilty/innocent decisions and make a joint decision in a rather pompous and ceremonial way involving red and white cubes and a red and white cup) gets a piece of background information about the person being judged. Whether they are found guilty or innocent, there will be some mechanical effects to resolve, but they will be presented first through the story.

Finally, if moving to game series, it is worth looking into the least complex entries. Here, The British Way, one of the entries in the COIN series can serve as a great example. Although definitely quite a bit more complex than the other games mentioned here, it is a set of four scenarios smaller than what you usually find in the COIN series. This is an advantage in both introducing the system and this approach modelling counterinsurgency. For this, I ask students to pre-read about the Cyprus and Malaya insurgencies, and then we spend both the lecture and the seminar time (around three hours in total) with the game. It helps to learn to approach models with strong asymmetry, while still keeping just two agents (the British and the insurgents). Then, more complex games in the series can be introduced. One additional resource that helps here is Volko Ruhnke’s GUWS presentation on designing COINs.

From small to micro

Turning Tides is also a microgame, another topic worth discussing here. Connections UK last year included a great workshop on them run by Evan D’Alessandro, Josh Kovan, and Thomas Danger. You can find the slides of the presentation here and listen to the audio here. The key takeaways for me here are that microgames:

• Have immediate utility

• Focus on 1-2 ideas

• Are accessible to different audiences

This makes them very well suited for a classroom. First, students don’t need to have (or acquire) highly specialised knowledge about the topic. Second, due to focusing only on a very low number of elements, the models and their mechanical representations are relatively simple to see through the model thinking perspective. Third, you can focus on how well mechanics works as metaphors for the topics they are supposed to represent. Again, as there is a smaller number of elements depicted and fewer mechanics used, which makes it easier to start with.

Microgames have a great advantage of often being easy to get hold of and copy, as numerous come in a print and play format. From GUWS microgames (including Turning Tides) to Indo-Pacific and Europe focused ones organized by Sebastian Bae. Finally, you can always run a short game jam with participants developing their own microgames. Working within the expected scope and complexity restrictions can help a lot with design skills.

To summarize, lighter games are useful. Whether in learning to read games as models, getting acquainted with new mechanics, or exploring design constraints, they might serve well. They can also be a stepping stone moving towards more complex games, which then may lead to meeting more advanced learning objectives.

Setting the stage

Most of the GameOn event looks and showcases hobby video games, it also found space for conferences, board games and their history in Lithuania, engagement with history and learning about NATO, and thanks to a kind invitation from Artojas – wargaming. When we first started discussing, how it could look like in the event, I had no clear idea on what game to show, but I had some criteria in mind. First, the game should in one way or another have a link with Lithuania, to bring it closer to home. Second, it would preferably be not a commercial game, but a game designed for educational purposes. Third, I wanted to involve my students to help facilitate the game and also gain experience in this respect.

This September we launched Wargaming Lab, a new internal initiative at ISM University of Management and Economics. Here, we aim to build the wargaming capacity among the students and faculty, so that we could engage learning, research, and analysis utilizing the method. Thus, joining GameOn seemed like a great opportunity to start demonstrating what we do and raising the awareness of wargaming in general.

Luckily, September also saw Connections UK, where I had a chance to try Quick Urban Integrated Combat Kriegsspiel (or QUICK) designed by Brian Train. The scenario covered Daugavpils, a town near the border with Lithuania, and it gave me this idea of using the system for a Lithuania-based scenario, that could then be used to demonstrate how wargaming works for the local audience. Brian kindly agreed to share the game materials and provided additional advice along the way.

The QUICK

The game looks at modern urban combat and was originally designed to be used in a course held by the US 40th Infantry Division, and later adapted for the use by a Canadian batallion commander (QUICK Junior). We used this latter version of the game, as it fit the context better.

The game focuses on several key decisions that players (and commanders) would have to make:

• How to assign, combine, and efficiently use different capabilities ranging from artillery to unmanned aerial vehicles, to supply, to… You get the idea. Capabilities are really at the core of keeping combat units in battle.

• How to retain command and control during the battle, as Maneuver Elements are affected by their link to the grouping HQ (i.e. being in-command).

• How to utilize Security Elements to hinder the opponent or to scout the territory.

• How to account for variation in urban terrain.

• How to plan the actions in advance.

One additional aspect that I found both informative and crucial is the inclusion of civilians. Leaving them aside in the context of urban fighting would distort the view that the players get.

Each side gets their HQs, Maneuver Elements, Security Elements, and capabilities, and then structures and deploys their force according to the scenario rules. Each side also gets action cubes of two colours that allows them to programme their six actions of the turn. This programming aspect may lead to quite a bit of pondering of how you expect that battle to change with the coming actions. You might as well end up without an opportunity to implement what you intended. You can also plan for it by devoting one action to restructuring the remaining ones, but do you really want to?

The decision space in the game is vast, while keeping rules overhead manageable. Yes, learning it takes a bit of time, but as the experience showed, playing through a lighter scenario can make the core of the game clear. Then if you start thinking about the different combinations of capabilities that could be provided to the different sides, inclusion of criminal elements, random events… The system provides a really good sandbox platform to explore and learn.

Defending Marijampolė

So, what did we do with Marijampolė, and why Marijampolė in the first place? As advised by the designer, a smaller urban settlement would work better, as well as a town with less variation in elevation. As Marijampolė is not too far from Kaliningrad and has a railway connection, it seemed like a good match. The presence of Grand Duke Vytenis logistic support battalion also fit well with the idea that the blue player would manage NATO eFP and Lithuanian forces.

After doing the initial work on the map and force structures, I’ve had an opportunity to work with my wonderful students Emilija Račkauskaitė, Gustė Kiškytė, Justina Godaitė, Povilas Masiliūnas, and Viltė Radzytė, to play through the scenario that let to some adjustments. In the end, we settled with two basic versions for demonstration purposes:

• Involving one battalion-size Russian group vs. one company-size NATO and one company-size Lithuanian groups

• Involving two battalion-size Russian groups vs. two company-size NATO and two company-size Lithuanian groups

Likewise, the two versions had different combinations of capabilities, but we generally tended to provide more artillery capacity to the Russian side and better supply to NATO/Lithuanian forces. For the objectives to take/defend, we selected the hospital, the prison, the railway station, and the industrial section close to the railway in the North of the town. For the southern part there were two key objectives – the military complex and the industrial section. We also set a different effect of the civilian population for the two sides, knowing the Russian way of war… The inclusion of civilians adds an additional dimension that is so needed in understanding and learning from war simulations, especially in the urban environment. Importantly, the effects are not coming as an exogenous factor, but directly results from the player’s actions. That’s a point recently wonderfully discussed by Andrew Olson in the The Convergence - An Army Mad Scientist Podcast.

With this preparation we got ready for demoing at GameOn. The turnout was not large, and that could be expected, as devoting several hours to a single activity at a (mainly video) gaming convention has a large opportunity cost. However, this allowed for a more involved teaching experience, with students and me getting hands-on into specific games, accompanying the players in their decision-making process.

As the different games unfolded, different approaches were explored by the players. From focusing on attrition and relying on artillery barrages to trying to outmaneuver and divide opponent troops. Yet, one thing that didn’t materialize in any of the five sessions played, was the use of smaller detachment units by the Russian side. Otherwise, the games mostly (but not always) moved from the attack in the north of the town (after crossing the Tarpučiai and Juknevičius street bridges), then along the railway track to the southern part of the town. In the end, the outcomes varied, no predetermined character emerged.

The game is more educational than analytical, and the decisions that the players must make are structured around the challenges that commanders would face. The nature of the game also gives a lot of space for exploration of how different capability compositions or contextual conditions could affect the battle and planning. I am looking forward to further exploring how and what the game can teach about urban operations planning, and the additional elements we haven’t been able to use until now. And, despite not having visited Marijampolė, I’m starting to feel that I know it quite well already.

Students’ games

The crowning achievement, of course, was the presentation day for our Economics and Politics programme students’ game prototypes in June. Students worked on their game ideas throughout most of the semester and quickly moved from having some experience with board gaming in general to building their own simulation and education focused games. There were four groups of students in total, each working on a very different topic: gerrymandering, neocolonialism in Niger, the siege of Orléans, and privatization in Lithuania in the 1990s. The topics were chosen by students themselves, so that they could use the new tool with the topic that they find interesting.

The game on gerrymandering was prepared by Ernestas, Justinas, and Povilas. It depicts fictional scenarios, where two players draw districts on a map, trying to get the preferred structure to win more districts than the opponent. The map is divided into smaller segments, which are either neutral or prefer one or the other player’s party. During their turn a player must either add boundaries to the map or take their party’s special actions, allowing them to shift some parts of the public to their side. It’s a low luck high tension game that teaches concepts related to elections and district boundaries.

The game by Anna and Héloïse focuses on the recent tensions in Niger through the lens of French neocolonialism. Here, two players compete over natural resources (not least – uranium) and territory control, while trying to maintain their international standing. The players spend money to take actions or acquire cards that change the situation to their advantage. The game creates interesting tensions and captures the key dilemmas in the country, notwithstanding involvement of Russia. The game deals with difficult topics, but does it in a respectful and well-considered manner.

The siege of Orléans, modelled by Jorigis, Justas, and Raigardas, took the hex and counter structure, but modified it to place emphasis on card play. Will the French or the English run out of resources? Will Jean of Arc shift the tides of battle? Using hex movement, trying to cut off supply, and timing held event cards provides an interesting model of the conflict that keeps players involved. Skirmishes between troops are simplified, and what’s very important loss of morale may be way more harmful than the loss of troops.

Privatization in Lithuania in the 90s was the focus of a game by Barbora, Gabrielė, and Justas. The game models the emergence of opportunities to privatize entities across the different districts of the country, and players try to establish their foothold, while focusing on specific industries. These opportunities are randomly distributed, so timing and preparing for a quick acquisition forms an important part of the game. In the meantime, racketeering also takes place, players need to borrow money to be able to privatize, and even then they are not sure if the firms they acquired and business empires they built will bring revenue… No, it definitely wasn’t that easy in back in the day.

The students did an excellent job, so it is really great that this year we also have representatives from the local board game industry and our faculty join the demos. Involving people working with games and faculty helps to get new feedback and appreciate students’ work from other perspectives. Finally, it’s just a great feeling being able to show your work to experts.

So… how did we get there?

The road to prototypes

The course, which culminated in the demo day, involved playing a lot of games, just like the last year. However, I also introduced some changes in the structure of the first half of the semester, bringing a modified approach to teaching. Agency Perspectives are working on a methodological workbook to help design and develop agency-driven games. I was lucky to get the opportunity to use its beta version, to help structure design discussions around actors and agency, different domains, dynamics and their links to mechanics, and other issues. It is a great tool, and I am already planning on how to modify the course to make a better use of the workbook and make the course even more engaging in the coming year. One game that worked well in illustrating the concepts of domains and dynamics was Versailles 1919, which covers the different aspects (including economy, military, society) of post-WW1 great power negotiations. The workbook on modeling agency is still a work in progress, but educators interested in it may reach out to the authors via info@agency-perspectives.com to get updated.

As for the games used in class this year, we kept quite a few from the previous iteration, but new ones were also introduced, such as the excellent The British Way, which helped to illustrate agency related concepts and also helped interpret wargames as models. Plus, this year, we also had more sessions outside of the scheduled classes to explore more games that might be more difficult to fit in the class environment, such as the second edition of John Company. For a full list of games played this Spring see the end of this post.

This semester’s experience also gave ideas on how to update the course, especially to better use the agency modeling material. Focusing on wargame design through an agency perspective helps reveal the specifics of wargame models and how they differ from other ways to describe, simplify, and explain social processes.

The good type of cons

April also brought opportunities to travel to wargaming events for the first time. One focused more on commercial games and the other on professionally applied games, but both gave some food for thought about applying wargames to education.

The first event was Circle DC organized by Kevin Bertram (Fort Circle Games). It is a relatively small convention, but it is also the one I wanted to go to the most, due to the community that meets there. It was an amazing event, and I am glad it was my first con (I haven’t been to more general board game events either). I’ll certainly come back again. While the key here was meeting the community, playing games also gave thoughts about their educational use. Plus, it was great to talk to designers and developers who are themselves excited about the use of their games in educational environment.

While many of the games could be discussed here, I would like to focus on one example, Overthrow, a Non-Breaking Space design for Agency Perspectives. The game focuses on 24 hours of crisis in a fictional country’s capital, where two players, the government and the opposition, try to resolve it in a way that is beneficial to them. The way the game models the conflict over a city is very evocative thematically with tight mechanic integration. It incorporates key elements of urban environments, variations in societal and individual policy preferences, use of force, different ways of protesting, indifference, and many other aspects of the modelled process. Frankly, I think the game will be an excellent educational tool for understanding unrest.

The session we had turned dark very quickly, which was also emotionally involving. The link between a macro level model and micro-level details (such as a citizen arrest of the head of security or an explosion that nearly kills the opposition’s candidate) brings a very clear and well-structured narrative to the game. Our session also resonated with the events of January 1991, when the Soviet troops stormed key objects in Vilnius.  The citizen resistance, focus on communication centres (e.g. the TV tower) also played out in the game, helping to connect the model and its narrative with recent history. Even long after the game, I still sometimes think about the story we played out.

The second event was King's NATO ACT Wargaming Week 2024 at King’s College London, where I had the opportunity to talk about what we do with wargaming at ISM (e.g., in addition to wargaming class, we are planning to use wargames as a way to involve stakeholders in a research project funded by the Research Council of Lithuania, replacing more orthodox workshops and focus groups). The conference provided opportunities to engage with both the professional and the academic communities, and the format connecting them worked well. Ideas on the academic approaches to wargaming and new experience in trying professionally focused games can also expand the current activities that we have and bring new angles to the wargaming classes. Trying KCL’s students’ and Allied games, as well as the one built specifically for NATO for this event, also gave some ideas on how to improve our own wargaming activities.

Other activities

There were also other game-related activities in Spring. First of all, I had a chance to present at two webinars thanks to George Bergstrom and Sebastian Bae. The first one for Indiana State Library focused on using games in teaching and how they can help learn.

The second one, for Georgetown University Wargaming Society, focused on wargaming as a tool of social science modelling and its relationship with other ways of building models of our social reality.

Secondly, I have been working on a matrix-style game for an Erasmus+ funded project ASSET on accounting for sustainability. The first project meeting went well and in September students from partner institutions will be able to take part in the game. As the took place in Fano, where the Malatesta family resided, it brought Pax Renaissance with its Wolf of Rimini card to mind. You can’t really escape games, can you?

Finally, I had an opportunity to talk about learning history from tabletop games at the third age university in Kaunas. The auditorium was full and everyone got really involved in the lecture. Board games and love of history can certainly help cross generational boundaries.

Now, after this intense time, it’s time for some more recreational wargaming (and several games have just very timely arrived), and come new year, we’ll get to educational games even more deeply – looking forward to it!

Games played in the wargame course this year:

• The Shores of Tripoli (Kevin Bertram, Fort Circle Games)

• Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame)

• Watergate (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games)

• Pax Pamir (second edition, Cole Wehrle, Wehrlegig Games)

• We Are Coming, Nineveh! (Harrison Brewer, Rex Brynen, Juliette Le Ménahèze and Brian Train, NUTS! Publishing)

• The British Way (Stephen Rangazas, GMT Games)

• Versailles 1919 (Geoff Engelstein and Mark Herman, GMT Games)

• One China (Tim Price, available at PaxSims)

• Triomphe à Marengo (Bowen Simmons, Histogame)

• Bear Raid (Ryan Courtney, BoardGameTables.com)

• micro-games about Indo-Pacific from a project led by Sebastian Bae (Cutting Cables by Rachel McVicker, Popeye in the Goo by Ian Brown, and Will to Fight by Sebastian Bae and Iku Tsujihiro)

• John Company (second edition, Cole Wehrle, Wehrlegig Games)

Halls of Hegra tells the story of some 250 Norwegian volunteers stalling the onslaught of German forces since nearly the very beginning of the Norwegian campaign. For over three weeks the defenders held the Hegra fortress, where they repelled Wehrmacht attacks against all odds until surrendering on 5^th May, 1940.

The game delivers a solo experience, where the player takes the role of the commander of the Hegra defence forces. If you think this means moving counters, assessing line of sight, counting die roll modifiers and such, well, you would be wrong. As the commander of the small fortress garrison, you will have to consider many other things. Supplies – what can you get to the defenders to improve their chances? Medicine – how can you organize the treatment of the wounded? How many will you send take the guns?

The decisions are plenty and they zoom out from the actual fighting. Instead of the detailed military engagement, you find a more abstracted worker placement. However, this also liberates the designer to tell a broader story. Instead of focusing only on fighting, the player has to carefully manage priorities. It is not only about stopping enemy attacks that are modelled as waves of soldiers moving on the fortress. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens:

And the waves, the waves were meeples moving,

Marching and marching in a tragic time

Below me, on the asphalt, under the trees.

Halls of Hegra is also very much about making sure that the defenders do not collapse due to injuries or the lack of supplies. What is the most important, though, is that this apparent euro-y approach does not diminish the theme of the game or make the mechanics disjointed from the theme. On the contrary, it helps the game to tell the full story of the battle in a gripping way.

Everyday I’m shoveling

I would argue that narrative is the strongest element of the game. The game ensures this by several means. First, it is through dividing the game into five distinct parts. The play begins with Mobilisation, the player recruiting the defenders and picking the volunteers. Then, when you think you still need more defenders, it’s the time for the first attack, followed by two stages of siege, and then the last stand. Each stage modifies the game process / mechanics in a way that reflects the narrative. As the enemy forces come, air raids begin, the artillery arrives. It becomes more and more difficult to get supplies. Your injured volunteers suddenly need to wait in line for treatment because there are insufficient hospital beds.

The second element that makes the game immersive is the scope of actions that you can focus on. First, you have a range of options from sending your defenders to defend the walls, firing artillery, carrying out supply runs, doing maintenance, or working in the infirmary. However, the smaller decisions, are also very thematic even if they seem mundane. Maybe it was because I received the game and played it in winter, but shoveling the snow resonated a lot. Or maybe it was because the mundaneness of the action name contrasted so much with its effect in the game. Giving space to these tasks that seem small in a grand scheme of things ensures that Halls of Hegra is a complete story, and every defender gets a spotlight. All these ‘everyday’ tasks must be done to ensure that defence is at all possible. As in history, so in the game.

All these design decisions make Halls of Hegra very much a narrative drive game. Yes, you get to place the workers, but what you get from it is first and foremost a story rather than an optimized engine. For a solo game this is key in involving a player and keeping them in-game. Not for some math but for history.

Is it all lost anyway?

Looming over the board a player can first get the impression that the defence might go well. The enemy is still not there, there are plenty of courses of action (if something goes wrong there seems to be many different approaches to take and remedy it). Yet, over time new stages bring more of the German soldiers. It becomes more difficult to carry out the actions – patrols limit access to supply, guns jam. The feeling that a surrender is quite likely increases.

Putting the player in the position that historically ended in surrender due to overwhelming odds puts a designer in a difficult position. The valiant defenders of the Hegra fortress knew that they were the last ones to continue resistance in southern Norway. Provisions were also running out. In this context the defence seems to have had no other paths. Holding the Germans for so long was already a feat in itself. However, from the game design perspective this is a challenge.  First, the game must give hope to the player to win. Second, it may need to redefine what victory means in a situation such as the one in Halls of Hegra. Third, the symbolic victory of the Norwegian defenders is certain even with surrender, and symbols can be very powerful.

The design here includes a possible outcome of a German retreat, which historically was unlikely. At the same time, it is sufficiently vague to not imply what this would mean in the longer term. The question remains open of if this would be just a short respite (and likely, a second stand would take place outside the scope of the game). At the same time, I wish the design looked more into the symbolic space of the battle and its outcome. However, this is also something a player can fill-in themselves.

Lessons to learn

As usual, I would also like to share some thoughts on the educational use of the game, as playing anything, a thought is always somewhere in the background – what could the game teach? Obviously, as a solo game Halls of Hegra may be difficult to bring to the classroom and get everyone involved. Yet, it could prove helpful.

In a class where students develop their own game prototypes, Halls of Hegra could well serve two primary functions. First, it illustrates so well how a narrative can be built. If students are developing a game that is also primarily focused on a story, it would be a great example – a prelude, a culmination, and an epilogue, all included. Even if it’s a solo experience, the way it builds tension and makes the player care about their defenders is an excellent reference point.

Second, serves as a good lesson on how the game can deal with topics, where one side (even if it is non-player controlled in the game) had a disproportionate advantage. And still, a player in that disadvantageous position remains involved in the game. This may well lead students to a discussion on the concept of victory in historical games and it can be interpreted. What does it mean to win, if all you do is fight against the odds? How much optimism can be allowed if it would be a very unlikely counterfactual? This could spark further discussions on historical topics with highly uneven situations. For example, how could victory be defined for the Baltic resistance against the Soviets movements after World War 2? What would be possible achievements in the physical and the symbolic spaces? Halls of Hegra would be a great reference point to build a discussion on.

Classroom as COINroom

COIN series has several strengths, when considering them for classroom use:

• Clear relationship structure between the players (COIN vs. insurgents), making it easy to define them as a model and sketch it using broad strokes. This is very useful in helping students to see games as models, sharing similarities with those they had seen in previous social science classes.

• Symmetric information, making sure that explanations can be made to all players without affecting the game flow and ensuring that everybody is on the same page. While the difference between perfect and imperfect information is useful to explore, for a start games without hidden information are more helpful. It also means that students from different teams can help each other as well.

• Asymmetric players, demonstrating how games can model very different agents and interpret their victory conditions.

Last year I used Cuba Libre to demonstrate this during the class, and it worked. However, there were specific challenges too. The four players with (mostly) unique actions meant a more challenging explanation and game flow. Due to this, discussing it as a model was also not as straightforward due to a higher level of complexity, and understanding the asymmetries and interactions, limited the number of turns we could play during the classroom time.

This is why I was very excited about The British Way. The game comes as a multi-pack of four scenarios (though each is an individual game on its own, I use the word scenario to make the text clearer) for two players, where one player takes the role of the British Empire and the other, one of four insurgent factions. For the use in education, this immediately showed potential benefits:

• Two asymmetric factions per scenario means that less time is needed to explain the game. When playing with a friend without wargaming experience, rule explanation and playthrough for one scenario took about an hour and a half. Thus, even two sessions are feasible during one class (we have two 1.5 hour meetings back to back).

• Explaining the game as a model is easier than for most of the other COIN, as interactions between two factions must be modelled (of course, accounting for external factors as well). This is very good for introducing the concept of games as models similar to those that students have already encountered in earlier courses.

• Having different options to choose from in a multi-pack, means that groups of students can play different scenarios and then discuss their similarities and differences in mechanics and theme.

These were my impressions about the game structure and how it could be used for education. But what about the game itself and what other lessons can it help with?

A story in four acts

The British Way is a story of the End of the Empire, as the title says. While the previews titles in the series all told a story as a single piece, be it something as brief as the Finnish Civil War or the turbulent recent past of Vietnam, The British Way offers a different experience. It takes the final decades of the British Empire and tells four episodes of this larger drama in detail. The episodes are Palestine, Malaya, Cyprus, and Kenya, all well chosen to give different stories leading to the larger idea behind the game that it was not so much a winning over hearts and minds of local populations as reliance of force to maintain control.

Each scenario depicts a different type of struggle, even if similarities are necessary there, the key being Political Will. As an insurgent, reduce it enough and you win, the Empire will not be willing to remain. As the British, keep it high enough, and the domestic audience will want to keep control of the land and the people. By moving the look from the broadest picture (or rather leaving it to the campaign) and zooming-in to the specific parts of the End of Empire, designer Stephen Rangazas also makes the story more personal. Following the events coming through the cards and reading up on them in the rulebooks. Having had little knowledge of most of the stories told in the game, it proved to be very enlightening both through the models of the scenarios and through this accompanying information.

What the four acts of The British Way story achieves is demonstrating how by restructuring the game and cutting some of the complexities, a COIN series game can tell broader stories. In this case, covering different decades and different continents. Even then the games tend to take a macro-lens. This may well be illustrated by the designer’s choice to give agency to Irgun in the Palestine scenario. The largest faction opposing the British, Haganah, functions as an external factor of the game system instead of being controlled by the player. While both players have interactions with it (another good task for students when describing the model), the story told is mainly about the Irgun, its tactics, and the British response. Haganah is there, it is important, but the story of the game is sharper.

The risk here, of course, is with making sure that all four games in the multi-pack use a similar framework, but each remains specific enough to tell an exact episode of the broader story. The game succeeds in this. Fittingly, one side played is always the British Empire, but its opponent differs. Now, it is Irgun and Lehi in Palestine. Now, it is the Malayan Communist Party in Malaya. Now, it is the EOKA (National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) in Cyprus. Now, it is the Mau Mau in Kenya. Each of these organisations aimed toward a similar goal, expressed by the Political Will in the game, but each faced different constraints and different contexts, leading to variation in tactics. Consequently, each situation involved different responses from the British state. Thus, even playing that side each scenario provides a unique experience.

Mechanics of insurgencies

Mechanically, the game uses the core of the COIN system with added variations to make it work for two players. Each turn a new card is drawn, players act depending on their position of the initiative track. This position may allow them to play a limited operation, an event, or carry out an operation plus a special activity. Although the cards do not include the faction sequence, the dilemma for players is still strong. The games are shorter, and timing of operations can make or break the Political Will during Propaganda cards. The flow is simpler, but decisions can be just as excruciating. At the same time, as a player you feel a bit more in control of your destiny than in some of the more complex games in the series, where waiting for your turn can mean a significantly changed situation once you get to make a move again.

The other concepts are also there – underground and active cells, towns and other spaces with varying terrain, support, and control. However, the game is far from ‘same old’. First, each scenario uses only those standard COIN elements that are needed. Irgun couldn’t be expected to take control, while the Mau Mau could. This helps to crystalize the core mechanics that are needed to model a particular situation and tell that particular story. Each scenario also brings its own specifics to reflect the different responses to the insurgency, whether through establishing New Villages in Malaya or the use of Curfews in Cyprus.

I think this variation in the adoption and dropping of what’s usual and mixing in what’s new and specific, helps The British Way build a strong narrative. It makes your decisions more thematic and often uncomfortable. Four scenarios and the campaign give enough room to explore it. Meanwhile, the elements carried through all the scenarios, such as the Political Will, provide a backbone and a unifying line to the overall game and the campaign. After all, despite different means and different contexts, it was a lot about the willingness to keep the parts of the empire.

The British Way brings a lot of new to the COIN series. The multi-pack structure allows extending the scope of stories that the games can tell. By providing a more focused experience they also enable a clearer agency to the factions modelled. I do not mean that the other COIN games do not have it, but here it comes through especially strongly. Everything that is done in a game affect both factions of the scenario.

Stephen Rangazas is currently working another COIN multi-pack, The Guerilla Generation, about the Latin American insurgencies during the Cold War. I am definitely looking forward to what it will bring to the series and the stories that it will tell.

Other lessons for the class

At the start of this piece, I listed why COIN series in general and The British Way in particular are mechanically good for classroom use. The approach I am planning to use in the Spring semester course is to have four groups of students play two of the scenarios (trying to select the most differing ones). They will then be asked to map the agents of the model and their interactions, how the different actions lead to achieving one goal or another.

However, modelling is not the only lesson to be learnt and discussed. Here, in Vilnius, our experience with the British (not yet empire) is quite limited, except for future Henry IV joining a crusade against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thus, the narrative of the game is very likely to be new and (nearly) unheard. This can help to broaden the discussion from how the game models the processes to why there were differences in insurgent and counterinsurgent tactics. How Political Will is affected in each case and what its meaning is. My hope that these two lines of discussion – modelling and the history behind the game – will help demonstrate how game mechanics can link with actual history and games can become more than just a fun activity. I hope very much, that the uncomfortableness of actions and events will also naturally emerge in the discussion. If not, I’ll help to bring it to the spotlight. It is one of the key parts of the story of the game and one of the key lessons it provides.

The British Way will likely not be the first game we’ll play in class this coming Spring, but it will be one of the first ones. No hidden information, clear focus, reduced complexity, and playtime (compared to other COINs) means that when we come to discuss games as models, it will be an example fit for the classroom environment. And I hope that the lessons learnt will be broader than it. The game provides enough material for this.

A (relatively) recent game War of the Triple Alliance designed by Pedro Iñaki Martínez and released by NAC Wargames attempts to model the war with all its twists of fortune.  A friend and I played it several times over the last weeks, and I would like to put my impressions here both about the game and its potential educational use.

Flow of the game

The game is a light wargame, using point-to-point movement. One player takes the role of Paraguay, while the other that of the Allies – Argentina and Brazil. The game also includes Uruguay, which is covered by both players to an extent. At the start of the game, Paraguayan players gets to control Uruguay (due to the historical situation), but later on with Montevideo captured by the Allies, the country is taken over and, with some lucky (or good) card selection, Uruguay may provide units to fight against Paraguay. In terms of the political setup, the game covers the situation well, and these shifts are felt by the players.

The outcome of the game is evaluated through victory points. They can be obtained through cards (you get one card at the end of each turn, plus you may get additional cards by conquering enemy territory), conquering enemy spaces, capturing enemy generals, or Paraguayan capitals. The game ends when the cards run out for one of the players, or some automatic victory conditions are triggered.

The games, at least in our case, tended to follow a similar structure. First, the Paraguay player has the initiative, with a drive against ally territories. Yet, with Allies getting more reinforcements they quite quickly put the Paraguayan player on the defense. The key question is if it will be enough or not.

Power of geography

For me, the biggest strength of the game lies in how it depicts geography. As noted, it uses a point-to-point movement approach and does it very skillfully. First, due to how the historical boundaries of the countries are depicted, there are dilemmas for the players on the directions for advancing. Paraguay is about to have direct clashes with the Allies in the South and the North, with Argentinian territory in the West also a potential (even if long-term) threat. Dilemmas regarding the preferred directions are strategic for both players. They can be affected by the available cards, but even with strengthening one of the axes of attack / defense, the choice will not be easy.

Second, in addition to standard ground movement by infantry (two points) or cavalry (three points), troops can move along the main rivers and the coastline, as long as it goes through friendly-controlled territories. This enables players to quickly move large constellations of troops across the map, while also giving the opponent a turn to redirect their troops. You cannot use both river transportation and standard movement in the same turn. In addition to this strategic redeployment, players have opportunities to make ‘cuts’ in the river territories controlled by the opponent, impeding quick reinforcement. This addition to the standard point-to-point movement also strengthens the theme in the game, as river movement played an important role in the war.

Third, over the course of the game, not only the Northern and Southern, but also the Western direction may become a challenge for Paraguay. It is less crucial in the short-term, as the El Chaco region is more difficult to move in with a historically accurate optional rule. All units move only one point per turn and thus Allies take more time to reach the key Paraguayan spaces from the West. In the meantime, if the Allied player breaks through in the South or is given space to maneuver in the North, East may also open, stretching out the Paraguayan army, requiring it to keep defenses across the vast territories. Nonetheless, even in this case, carefully considered movement can slow down the advance of the Allies.

Fourth, the balance in battles also depends on the location. In this case, not on the type of terrain itself, but on the relation between a space and rivers. On the main rivers, the defender has an advantage of shooting first. On the minor rivers, both players roll the battle dice simultaneously. If there are no rivers, the attacker has the advantage. Thus, again, the rivers dictate the flow of the game. Battles are dicey affairs, but for a light wargame, this makes sense. After all, the player has control over the approach used to attack and the quality of troops attacking or defending. These advantages provided by rivers are also shaky. On the one hand, a good first roll may significantly weaken the opponent. On the other hand, a bad roll may obliterate that advantage. It is always a risk. In my view, the key role that positioning in terms of the rivers plays is the retreat – how much you’ll have to take before you can retreat.

These geography-created situations are where the game shines the most. Even with relatively straightforward rules, the considerations and dilemmas faced by the players are plentiful. They also help to highlight the impact that the lands and waters had on the Paraguayan War.

Impacts of the war

Even though the game is not a classical card-driven game, cards play an important role. First, they provide a player with victory points. Second, they have other positive effects, such as getting new units or the enemy getting a cholera outbreak for one of their unit stacks. These effects can be quite powerful. For example, in one game the Paraguayan player defeated my Brazilian forces in Mato Grosso in the North and then moved their troops South to help defend along the Parana River. However, through card play I got some new allied units in Mato Grosso, which created by opponent additional headache, as that side lacked defenses.

The card play simulates most of the non-battle impacts, such as through cholera outbreaks. However, I would have liked to see a bit more of the explorations on the effects that the war had on Paraguay. True, throughout the game, their reinforcement units get weaker and weaker, indicating the weakening situation in the country. Yet, some of the card effects get lost in the game, especially when one player manages to get several enemy spaces with card rewards. The player must then choose which effect will apply, losing other opportunities and other effects of the war. From the game mechanics perspective, it is a very positively interesting decision, as the player can scoop up the points and gets closer to the end of the game but loses some of the special effects that could help them. Thematically, it may be a bit lacking. Yet, it also helps to keep the game light, so I can understand the trade-off.

Overall, the game is very tight. At least in my experience, there were no large differences between the two sides, both players having their own headaches to solve. At least, until I managed to lose a couple of leaders, and that shifted the scales the opposite way… The generals are of key importance, as you cannot attack without them. If you are on the defense (as is Paraguay for a good two-thirds of the game), then you can still manage. But with one or two of the three Allied leaders captured, the player can’t really push properly anymore. So, it is very important to not overstretch. Afterall, the war ended with the Paraguayan general and president Francisco Solano López Carrillo getting shot in 1870. For a light wargame, War of the Triple Alliance does it well. The dilemmas it poses are interesting and thematic, the pacing of the game works well, and it can run in full in just two or two and a half hours.

Teaching with War of the Triple Alliance

I have not used the game in the educational environment at least for now, but here are some ideas on how it could be used in that context.

Teaching about the war. The game can work well as a general introduction to the situation during the Paraguayan War. Of course, it is not a one-to-one retelling of the history, but the overall game flow with its shifting initiative, and the key decisions to be made by the players help understand the history better. Yet, additional discussion with students about the impacts of the war, especially on Paraguay would be beneficial, to give them a broader perspective. This point can also be used to discuss the decisions that a designer must make about the scope and complexity of the game, particularly if the game is intended to be light and focused on military activities.

Geography of in-game models. This is definitely among the key lessons that can be taught using the game. First, of course, it is about the role that geographic features play in military campaigns. However, even more importantly, it can help students to understand modelling geography and how relatively uncomplicated movement rules can significantly affect other parts of the model. This is what I would focus on as the main lesson if I were to use the game in classes.

Suitability for the classroom environment. The game plays relatively quickly and the rules are quite straightforward, so both explanation and a playthrough can fit within the scope of the class (I have two 1.5 hour classes one after the other, totaling 3 hours) and leave some time for discussion. If need be, I would advice stopping the game earlier, once both sides had initiative for several turns (first it will be the Paraguayan side, then the Allies). The lightness of the game means that it can work as an introduction to students to point-to-point counter-based wargames before moving to more complex ones.

Type of classes. I see the use of the game both in wargame design classes and in military or South America history classes. In the first case, the lessons would be mainly about the geography in games and structuring the narrative (i.e. how the initiative shift is modelled). In the second case, the focus could lie on the military campaign processes, exploring the dilemmas faced by both sides of the war.

The game portrays the final stages of the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017), when the Iraqi security forces (ISF) close in on the Old Town of Mosul, where Daesh intends to take their last stand. We Are Coming, Nineveh takes the form of a block game with its inclusion of the fog of war and the classic gradual rotation of blocks once units get hit. This rotation also lowers the effectiveness of the unit, requiring increasingly higher rolls to hit the enemy. Yet, a lot modifications are put on the classical framework to make the game tell a story of urban warfare and the story of the Battle of Mosul.

We Are Coming, Nineveh being a block game means that there is no shortage of dice rolling. This may put off some players as being too luck-based (especially if you consider random event cards that are drawn when a 1 or a 6 is rolled during the combat phase). My view of luck in games is that if it is justified thematically and/or players have some control over the probabilities, simulationist games should have this element. For a game depicting urban warfare it must be at the core of the mechanics. You can’t plan for everything and battle friction coming through cards (such as losing forward observer capability) helps to reveal the uncertainties of urban warfare and challenges to planning. The player also has control over luck by moving units or for the ISF having an operational pause (losing time but using it to regroup and recover). This brings one of the key simulationist elements of the game that simply emerges from the mechanics – the need to rotate your forces. Whether you are moving ISF units into the Old City or defending Daesh positions, you face attrition and need to constantly move out units that lost efficiency (due to stacking rules) and move in units that are still somewhat more capable to fight.

The dynamics of the game are quite clearly set. The ISF player has to push to the Old City of Mosul and take it from Daesh control. Therefore, one player will be consistently on the offensive while the other will have to retreat towards the Old City. This is dictated by the historical situation so it couldn’t be different in the game. However, how the push/ retreat works out it is not that straightforward ad varies from game to game. One reason for it is the inclusion of major roads in the game space. Blocking them is important for Daesh, as controlling roads gives ISF fast movement to nearly everywhere. Thus, selecting strategic defence positions as well as quick counterstrikes must be considered to slow down the government forces.

The flow of the game is also affected by one of its most brilliant additions – a trilemma of time, casualties, and collateral damage. While the player dynamics remain largely similar, these three aspects provide the needed variation. The longer it takes, the more casualties ISF suffers, and the more collateral damager there is, the more Daesh achieves, even if the ‘lose’ in the expected sense of the word. At the start of the game each players select their priority. Daesh – the target to maximize, ISF – the target to minimize. Inclusion of collateral damage is especially important. Civilian population took a terrible toll during the battle, and leaving it outside the scope of the game (which, alas done in many cases) would have been improper.

I’ve seen comments that collateral damage is especially difficult to control for, as a lot of it can come from event cards. While this is true, it is not completely out of the ISF player’s hand due to the capabilities they can choose at the start of the game. Will they rely on artillery and air support (which in an urban environment is quite likely to cause civilian casualties)? Or will they enforce stricter rules of engagement among their troops and reduce the likelihood of harming civilians? Similarly, Daesh player can opt to use human shields and similar strategies to achieve the opposite. The capability selection is a great addition to the game, as it helps select a specific strategy for the game that the opponent may not be expecting. Snipers, observers, unmanned aerial vehicles, different types of IEDs… They all help to highlight the different faces of a modern urban battle. Finally, the addition of rumours really enhances the fog of war already generated . They also fit well thematically and might slow down the approach of ISF, only to find that there were not actual enemy at specific locations.

Coming back to the trilemma, it relates to one other important aspect of We Are Coming, Nineveh – its narrative. The game provides two ways of determining the final outcome. One is to calculate victory points based on time that passed in the game, casualties suffered by the ISF, and damage inflicted on civilians. The higher the numbers, the better it is for Daesh. This frames victory in a standard wargame view – a specific number victory points have been scored, so one of the sides achieves a (major) victory. The other way to look at the final outcome is through the narrative that is based on time, ISF casualties, and collateral damage.

Visually, the game is attractive, while not losing out on the informativeness of the board, the blocks or the cards. The map is clear to read and immersive with specific places highlighted and coordinates indicated. Even if only for flavour reasons, it makes the map compelling. Capability cards clearly indicate when they can be used and how, who makes decision on the distribution of the effects, etc. So, the visuals score high in my book.

As the tone and content of this review shows, I really enjoy the game, but it may not be for everyone. So, who will (not) like the game? If you are fine with the overall mechanics of block games, then the game would be a good addition to the collection, including even if you already have numerous block games. We Are Coming, Nineveh is sufficiently unique to become an integral part of such collection. If you are interested in modern urban combat then the game can also help understand it better. On the other hand, if you are weary of luck-based elements or the overall structure of the game, where one side is consistently on the attack while the other on the defense and is pushed toward a particular map space, it may not be for you. Yet, both of these elements fit well thematically.

Teaching with We Are Coming, Nineveh

We Are Coming, Nineveh is a game I have already used in classes and I certainly plan on doing so. It is not at all surprising that the game originates from the course given by prof. Brynen at McGill University, where it started as a project by then students Harrison Brewer and Juliette Le Ménahèze. So, in what ways can it be helpful in the educational environment?

Teaching about urban warfare. The game portrays a modern urban battle and playing it helps to immerse participants into its workings. On the one hand, it helps identify the key challenges related to fighting in cities (attrition, collateral damage, uncertainties, friction, different spaces, etc.). On the other hand, it also asks important questions about the goals of an urban operation. This may serve as a good point for a discussion between students on how to interpret the aims based on the given trilemma (time vs. casualties vs. collateral damage) and how these elements interact. Focusing on the narrative outcomes instead of victory points can further ignite the discussion by asking the meaning behind the final situation. After all, you don’t get victory points in an actual fight, but rather a particular situation. This may lead to a broader discussion on interpreting the flow and outcomes of urban operations, as well as what is acceptable in terms of the horns of the trilemma.

Modelling. From the perspective of courses on wargaming as a method, my key teaching objectives when using We Are Coming, Nineveh would focus on:

• Incorporating randomness and uncertainty in simulation-focused games, how they are modelled, why, etc. Here, the post-game discussion can focus on player agency and control of luck-elements, as well as fog of war and the role that rumours can play in games.

• Asking players to make difficult decisions. The trilemma structure of We Are Coming, Nineveh, is a good way of demonstrating how each choice can have both benefits and drawbacks. Post-game discussion can explore how players are made to choose and what reasoning they go through (based on students’ own experiences of playing the game).

• Building a certain flow of the game (i.e. ISF always pushes Daeash to the Old City) while leaving enough room for variation to not tell the same story over and over and leaving room for exploring different strategies.

• Using event cards to add details to the game not only through their mechanical effect but also through text narrative, explaining these mechanical effect. The discussion could focus on the importance of story-telling through adding minor snippets of text on what is happening thematically.

• Defining the meaning of victory. Daesh cannot win the fight in a traditional sense of the word – they cannot retake Mosul and reestablish their rule. Instead, the game (whether through narrative or through victory points) interprets victory through the perspective the horns of the trilemma it’s built upon.

Ethics. Wargaming a kinetic conflict, especially such a recent one leads questions on ethics and the design notes for We Are Coming, Nineveh address it directly. Therefore, the post-game discussion should include questions about the ethics of wargaming more generally as well as specifically about the role that inclusion of collateral damage adds to the game. Finally, the players should discuss how their role and the options they had in-game reflected their decisions (for example, to use or not to use ISF artillery support in the Old City due to higher risk of collateral damage).

Suitability for the classroom environment. The game can be played relatively quickly (two hours is possible), but a full game with rules explanation would likely last longer than a standard class/seminar (here, in Lithuania usually three full hours), especially, if participants are new to block games. In addition to the rules, explaining some thematic design decisions could also be useful (or giving design notes to read before the lecture), if the game is used in a civilian environment. Therefore, sufficient time should be given whether by agreeing with students to continue after the official class time or organizing the game session in a club or other non-class environment. Once the rules are clarified and a couple of turns done, the game should progress quite quickly, though due to many points that could lead to discussion, the post-game part may also last quite a bit. Thus, there are some challenges that need addressing by the instructor when preparing. On the other hand, We Are Coming, Nineveh shows how a single game can be used to teach numerous things from wargaming as a method, to urban warfare concepts, to ethics. And here lies its greatest educational value.

I would advise to use the starting scenario cards and prepare in advance on related discussion points (e.g. the role of rumours in urban warfare, the use of air and artillery support in an urban environment). Another advise for classroom use would be to focus on the narrative result rather than victory points. This would help reduce the potential negative reaction to the game by the losing side, as narratives are more open to interpretation rather than a quantitative value given by calculating victory points.

Type of classes. I have used We Are Coming, Nineveh in a class on wargaming as a method and it works for that purpose due to the broad range of learning topics it brings. The game would also be highly relevant for classes on urban warfare, military history, and even history of the 21^st century as a case study.

In total, four different games have been developed this semester, covering quite different topics. At the same time, each of these games has a certain element of conflict to ensure interaction between the players (i.e. the games are “multiplayer solos” or pure cooperation). Below is a brief description of each of them as they were presented.

Paula and Silvija developed a game about the Cold War nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union. Here, players try to deploy nuclear weapons particularly in strategic locations (e.g., Cuba, Western Europe), while expanding the infrastructure needed to make it possible. Nuclear armaments can also affect both the popularity and the economy of a country's leadership, which does not necessarily give an advantage over the opponent... Players can also try to play the event cards, but the dilemmas they present may again be harmful.

Eva and Valdas decided to simulate the First Balkan War (1912-1913). Here, the players represent the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan League. However, since the Balkan League consisted of Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro and Serbia, this player can only control one of them each turn. In this way, the Ottoman Empire, which is far less powerful in terms of the army size, can try to successfully defend itself and try retain at least half of the strongholds it needs for victory. The game is full of battles and sieges, all of which can be adjusted by a decisive spending of morality or discipline pints, or a thematically relevant event such as gaining the support of one of the great powers.

The third game, developed by Benas and Vytenis, takes us back to the 17th century Northern Wars. Here, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, and Sweden jostle for territory as players try to manage military and political resources. After all, can a ruler who is actively disliked expect anything good from his armies? There are not that many troops, so their strategic movement is important, as is the manoeuvring between different alliances and parallel card-simulated events (such as the rise of impostor tsars).

Finally, Anahita and Emilija developed a game simulating not specific historical events, but rather the theory of the resource curse, which states that when dictators find natural resources, the prospects of democratisation of the country are greatly diminished... The game itself is based on Catan, but adds a distinction between private (more relevant to dictators) and public (more relevant to democratic leaders) goods, and presents two paths to victory, thus creating a new approach via well-known mechanics.

Thank you to the students for their engagement throughout the course and for the work they put into this unusual assignment, which requires thematic knowledge, social process modelling skills, creativity, and an understanding of game mechanics. The results show that the integration of all these aspects has been successful.

We also used the following games as part of the learning process:

• The Shores of Tripoli (Kevin Bertram, Fort Circle Games)

• Maria (Richard Sivél, Histogame)

• Watergate (Matthias Cramer, Capstone Games)

• Turning Tides (Betsy Joslyn, accessed at https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2022/12/04/turning-tides/)

• Root (Cole Wehrle, Leder Games)

• Pax Pamir (second edition, Cole Wehrle, Wehrlegig Games)

• Cuba Libre (Volko Ruhnke and Jeff Grossmann, GMT Games)

• We Are Coming, Nineveh! (Harrison Brewer, Rex Brynen, Juliette Le Ménahèze and Brian Train, NUTS! Publishing)

• Rivalries of the Roman Republic (Jeremiah, McCall, in development)

• Bear Rising (NATO ACT, available at: https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2019/10/18/bear-rising-matrix-game)

And soon it will be time to start thinking about how to set things up for next year :)

This War Without an Enemy is quickly becoming my favourite Columbia-style game and there are several reasons for it. First, the topic. It maybe because it relates to the time when Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan and covers a prelude to the Glorious Revolution. The latter I always found very interesting for its implications for political institution development (this paper by Barry R. Weingast is a good exploration and gives a significant share of attention to the Glorious Revolution). Second, the game has a clear narrative structure, while leaving enough freedom for the players to create alternative trajectories of the English Civil War. Third, mechanical additions to the core system are thematically sensible and make the game click. It is not additional elements for the sake of additional elements, but design decisions needed to translate the story into the game.

Change in political institutions has always been an interest of mine. Understanding how the power shifts and how the institutions help concentrate or limit it can reveal a lot about the institutions of governance. The English Civil War certainly provides an interesting case with change from monarchy to the Commonwealth and struggle between the King and the Parliament, the trial of Charles I, and the subsequent return of monarchy (and, well, Cromwell’s position as the Lord Protector). Certainly, the game is focused more on the military side of the process and ends by 1646, when the King was handed over to the Parliament. Yet, even though the game focuses specifically on this first part of the English Civil War, it provides a good context to the political controversy. It is also among the first key attempts of European societies trying to find solutions to replacing royal power with representative rule. The late legal theorist Harold J. Berman included the English Revolution among the six key revolutions in the Western legal tradition, so even exploring a military aspect of the process can be enlightening.

In order to make this topic work, the game must have a clear narrative structure, and This War Without an Enemy certainly has one. It begins with a Royalist advantage that then slowly shifts in favour of the Parliament (those Scots!). Part of it is achieved through reinforcements and the army movements on the map. The other part, and a very significant one at that, comes from the card play. The plots that can help take cities (especially, that bloody Hull!), fortify London (never, when I’m playing the Parliament, though), and others. Cards coming in and coming out in specific years also help show how the war and its tactics changed over the several modelled years. Finally, such elements as the New Model Army with its better controlled cavalry and the Yorkshire treaty provide those little contextual twists to the game that make it about the English Civil War.

The focus on the military activities also allows the game to connect well with the Columbia block game system. However, the additions here are very important. Infantry must either fire or engage, cavalry may lose their heads (figuratively) and start pursuing the routing enemy, thus effectively abandoning the battlefield, etc. Artillery must be dragged along if you want to take fortresses and losing it may put you in a very difficult position. The coming of the New Model Army shifts the battle odds. The Royalists remain locked-in in their old ways of war, while the Parliament’s army noticeably improves.

Thus, while the topic itself is very interesting, but were it not for the successful integration of the mechanics on a well-known core, it would have worked less well. This more sophisticated battle system, further enhanced by tactical cards, is one of the key strengths of the game. As in any system relying on dice, luck plays a factor, but the newly available choices and the available tactic cards make the decisions more strategic and era-appropriate. This helps to mitigate the luck factor and gives more control to the player.

Geography also poses interesting puzzles. There are three types of border crossings, making rivers and mountains key elements for organizing defence (rivers) and escaping (the mountains). Placing your armies to block the paths or make it difficult for the enemy to amass the troops for an attack can play a significant role in determining the success of a strategy. Securing areas with key borders can greatly contribute to success of the campaign. At the same time, regional troops may be required to return to their region (and need Leaders to cross into a different region), which can significantly redraw the balance of power.

Another geographic aspect is the entry of the Irish and the Scots. While the Royalists may initially feel quite secure in the North and get control there, there is always a looming threat that the Scots will invade, giving a dilemma if they want to risk it or not. Hull is so difficult to breach after all… Of course, seas may be used, but depending on the control of key ports, this may be quite risky.

The game provides sufficient dilemmas for the players and sometimes entices them to risk (nearly) all in a gamble that could bring you closer to scoring victory points. The victory point structure reflects the focus of the game – gaining key cities and capturing / losing the King. The map helps to make it clearer and works against gamey solutions to securing those points that you need.

Visually, the game is striking from the map details to the block stickers. The darkish green and map of the blue brings that gloomy feeling of a world of ‘no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger…’ to quote Thomas Hobbes. It certainly helps with the immersion. The additional battlefield map is very helpful during the battle in visualising the whole combat procedure which is more involved than in some other block games.

Where, I think the game could have benefited from some modifications is the rulebook. I’ve heard impressions that it is difficult to ‘make sense’ of the game only from the rules, I wouldn’t go as far. After all we did just that – read the rules and got to playing. However, initially we needed to refer to the rulebook quite often and it was not always clear where to find that one specific rule you know you read, but miss the section… In this case, an index at the end of the rulebook would have been helpful. Yet, that’s just a minor gripe that becomes less and less felt over a several plays. After internalizing the rules, you can play through the full game in 3-4 hours, so it does not stretch out and can be managed in an afternoon.

The game delivers what it promises. It explains the how of the English Civil War. How the armies moved (and why they made specific choices), how the power balanced changed, how the Irish and the Scots got involved, how the battles played out (especially due to the more detailed procedure of combat)… A lot of (military) hows. Coming back to Berman’s legal revolutions, the game does not explicitly model the political, institutional, and religious whys of the military campaigns, but it does not need to. A clear focus on warfare helps to add an additional dimension to the known institutional change that took place. Focusing on both at the same time would have either overcomplicated the game or would not have left enough depth to tell the military story of the events.

As a final note, after playing the game I got Robert Harris last year’s novel “The Act of Oblivion”, about the hunt of the regicides. Reading the book and playing the game in parallel can tell a very interesting story and make this period in English history come alive.

So, what makes Almoravid the game for spending time with? Afterall, it covers only two years of events (and those are not the most famous final years of the Reconquista), it has fidliness in some sub-systems, there is some general structure of the narrative arc... You could find reasons for initial scepticism, and answer to the raised question is not very straightforward. It is a combination of different elements, such as a clear narrative, the role of that individual characters play, a clear connection between mechanics and context, and the importance of logistics and careful planning that makes you want to come back and engage with the game time after time.

I’d like to start with what for me is the key strength of the Levy & Campaign series – the story told by each game and the role that individual characters play in it. In the case of Almoravid, the flow of the narrative is dictated by the actual events of 1085-1086 and the political and military structures in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa of that particular time. This makes it likely that over repeated plays you will start noticing a certain dynamic running over multiple plays, but this overarching structure comes natural and is dictated by clear military and political factors relevant for the game’s context.

This clear structure of the game helps immerse a player in the narrative and is facilitated by the limited time covered by the game and the large-scale events that took place at the time. The first year sees King Alfonso attempting to capture Toledo with Taifas in disarray and on the back foot. The second year of the game sees (at least often) the arrival of the Almoravids from North Africa, greatly strengthening the Muslim forces. In this way you know what your key options are, just as Alfonso or Taifas’ leaders did. Whether you pursue them is another matter, but the framework provided by Volko gives incentives that put boundaries on the sandbox, which greatly helps the storytelling.

Another key element in Almoravid’s story telling is the role that individual Lords play. Each player has a cast of characters they can bring to the theatre. The most important personality here is Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, more famously known as El Cid. His historical disagreements with the Leónese Crown are reflected in the game, by giving him space to switch sides during the game, some of the time fighting for the Christians and some for the Muslims. Otherwise, the key characteristics of the Lords are all focused on the military aspects of situation (Service, Lordship, and Command) that reflect the relationship with the Seignor and the Vassals, the mustering capacity, and the actions to undertake. Yet, during the game, especially the longer scenarios, these Lords still become personal to you. Not only because losing a Lord is costly, but also because each play you write an epopeya, an epic poem, a cantar for each of them. In your game, the would be El Cantar de mio Cid can easily become El Cantar de mio Álvar. True, the game does not model their non-military / non-political lives, but it is easy to imagine what social impacts the death of a Lord or his return without pay would have in his land. I once lost count Pedro Ansúrez way south, deep in the Taifas’ territories far from his Seat. It did get emotional (admittedly, not least because my Summer plans were ruined by then).

One of the key reasons for uneasiness before delving deeper into Almoravid was the uncertainty about the sufficiency in differences from the first game in the series. I’ll list some general mechanical changes below, but the more important question is, if Almoravid transports you to a noticeable different context than Nevsky. The answer is a very strong and clear yes.

First, the geography is different. I don’t mean it just in the sense of having a different map on the table. The change in scenery affects interacts with the different game systems. For example, logistics of supplying your troops is a key element in the Levy & Campaign games and both Nevsky and Almoravid both reflect their context well. Here, in the Iberian Peninsula you won’t see any sleds, but crossing mountain passes will be a factor to consider. What’s worse, mules eat (i.e. they count towards your army size when calculating how much provender was used by a Lord and his troops) and can put you in a tight spot. Another example is the role of Gardens, when Foraging that can help you in a siege. Indeed, some of the infrastructure in Andalusia used to provide water and food is very impressive.

The process of Reconquista was linked not only to military campaigns, but also political developments and fragmentation. The game accounts for the bickering among the characters ‘on the same’ side through its politics sub-system. For Christians it is mainly about El Cid switching allegiance, but for Muslims the Taifas are much more politically divided. Thematically, there could likely be more conflicts within each side to take into account, but it would not simply work in a two player game. The included sub-system of mechanics for Taifa Politics works well, is easy to connect to the historical reality, and achieves it job in providing incentives for both players. This step of the series deeper into Medieval politics is not only fitting but a very welcome one, as variations in political structures could play a very important role in determining how free the players are to act. I am very curious in what the next game in the series, Inferno: Guelphs and Ghibellines Vie for Tuscany, 1259-1261, will provide on this point, considering the Medieval forms of government of the Italian city-states.

The entry of the Almoravid armies also adds a lot to the theme. It contextualises the collection of the Taifa Coin raising the dilemma for the player, if they should wait for the allies to come, or if the resources or actions would be better spent elsewhere. For Christians, the looming threat from the south is a kind of a sword of Damocles. It is a historic context that you may well disregard in your first play, only to find yourself in a tough spot in 1086. On the other hand, your opponent may mismanage the logistics for the Almoravid Lords, leaving Christians open routes to campaign across the Peninsula.

There are also more general changes in the mechanics. Allowing to bypass the strongholds was a nice change giving more freedom for the players. While there are arguments why this wouldn’t work in Nevsky thematically, in Almoravid this option helps with the game flow. Some other changes, such as on maximum storming capacity will also see their way into the upcoming Levy & Campaign games. Almoravid here helps mature the whole system.

I have also mentioned logistics as being one of the strengths of Almoravid (as well as the whole Levy & Campaign series). It shifts the focus from battles to ensuring that armies are able to move and fight. Medieval warfare was more complex than the public imagination often holds, and while battles, such as Tannenberg, Agincourt, or Hastings, captivate, raiding, avoiding battles, and other processes were no less if not more important. In Almoravid, managing the Almoravid Lords Yusuf and Sir is a challenge in itself, with large armies and fewer means to transport the needed provender. Battles, of course, are still there (at least for me, the games tended to lead to a larger one), but how they are depicted does not take the whole focus of campaigning. In that sense, the series reminds me of Cathal J. Nolan’s argument in The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost.

The quality of production is high with beautiful art by Ivan Caceres Cruz and a functional map by Chechu Nieto Sanchez. The playbook provides a very deep overview of the context of the game, which clearly shows how much of actual research was put into Almoravid’s design and development. This was also the case for Nevsky, so in addition to looking forward to the new games in the series, I’m looking forward to their playbooks nearly as much solely for their educational value. Finally, kudos to GMT Games for fixing the colour issue for some of the units by adding additional ones in the correct colour.

Certainly, Almoravid is not a game for everyone. It does have a specific topic and the shift of focus on logistics will not be everyone’s cup of tea. If you want a longer timeframe  or more of a sandbox feeling in the game, then likely you would find it too fiddly. That’s a concern I’ve heard quite a bit, but for me it is an inherent element in making you think about supplying your troops and ensuring that even in a nightmare scenario, you would still have means to provide for them.

The rules also are quite complex and take time to internalize (and you should be ready to miss something, when playing). I must admit, it still takes me time to remember and implement sallying. You may be intrigued by the system from the very start, but in order to game it, you must give it the time and care it needs. Of course, after you learn one game in the series, the others will come easier, though they are different enough to still require time to get all the changes. If you are a rules-perfectionist, you might be annoyed by your opponent or you missing some minor detail during the turn even if you know the rules well. I would argue that one miss or another doesn’t disturb the overall flow of the game, but it is worth keeping in mind that it can very well happen.

Finally, one of the criticisms I’ve heard was about the applicability of the 40 day vassalage across the different contexts. However, in my view, the game (and the series) responds to this well. Lords and Vassals have different level of tolerance for the initial service time, and you can then move on to modifying it through pay. This helps to account for there being no standing armies at the time while also limiting the complexity of the game.

As you likely noticed, I really enjoyed playing Almoravid as I did Nevsky. The differences between the games in the same system also make me want to look for more, and with Inferno release already being close, 2023 will also very likely be full of levying and campaigning. And now to paraphrase El Cantar de mio Cid, el review es leído, datnos del vino.

My key knowledge about early US foreign policy comes from undergraduate international relations classes on the Monroe Doctrine from 1823. The one, which states that the Western Hemisphere is the US sphere of interest and that the Europeans should mind their own business, while the US would consider not getting involved in European affairs. That’s where the Genesis of the political relationship of the post-Revolutionary War US and Europe stood for me. Year 1823 and hemispheric isolationism.

At the same time, there was a passing knowledge that there might have been an exception to this in the Barbary Wars. Yet, those seemed like a nebulous affair, sounding somewhat exotic. Pirates in the Mediterranean harming the US interests? This seemed too strange to focus in the class and something too specific to explore on my own, even if there are sea shanties about those events (and who doesn't enjoy them?). 

The events of the First Barbary War is the focus of The Shores of Tripoli, a boardgame designed by Kevin Bertram and released by Fort Circle Games. It is also the game I played the most times in 2022, partly thanks to an official tournament organised on the Rally the Troops online platform, which hosts a superb online version of the game. That's also why I selected it for the first post in English. 

The Shores of Tripoli is a light and quick (30-40 mins) two-player card-driven wargame, where one player plays the US (as well as a couple of Swedish frigates) and the other takes control of Tripolitania. The game is fittingly asymmetric. The US expedition uses its large frigates to try and stop the corsairs from harassing merchant ships l, while Tripolitania tries to exploit the holes in the defence lines, and launch successful raids, while evading the American sea police. In the meantime, the buildup of land forces and the arrival of the Marine Corps opens another theatre of contest on land.

One of the core strengths of The Shores of Tripoli is its story building capacity. The game excels at narrative construction. It has its main protagonists (described above), the twists of history through cards, the(un)luck of the dice rolls for uncertainty, and the logical conclusion to the drama by the end of the game. Together, these elements successfully involve players who haven’t been familiar with the story or even with wargames at all (a bit more about that toward the end of the review). 

Much of the play in The Shores of Tripoli comes from the events that colour the unfolding story. Although there are certain standard actions that a player can take (raid, move frigates, etc.), the key twists in the narrative and changes to the status quo come from the events. You just can’t run a good campaign based solely on standard actions. The opportunities opened by events are just too important to pass. Preparing a good hand of cards to set a trap and launch a devastating raid from all across the North African shore can be very fulfilling. Just as the card event-driven Marines’ attack on Tripoli can be devastating if you find yourself on the wrong side of the battle.

The standard actions of both sides provide the general framework of the war, i.e. what could be done to achieve the goals (for the US to curb the piracy and for Tripolitania to make the American costs of war too high to maintain or simply to continue successful raiding). This would provide a narrative in itself, but jt would be a bit of a skeleton. Cards allow for those additional minor or major interventions, such as the rise and fall of the Swedish involvement. This makes the game lively, as the cards themselves are more narrative based than in some other card driven games. 

Luck is another source of the liveliness in The Shores of Tripoli. It plays an important role in the game that helps immerse players. Even if the fight in the Mediterranean is not a player’s cup of tea, rolling 20+ dice and scoring one hit involves emotionally. Taking higher and higher risks with more endearing raids or attacks can become a gambling-like addiction, especially if you pull one off. Of course, the luck element may be off-putting to many, but looking at the niche that The Shores of Tripoli takes, it helps the game to attract players new to the genre. I used the game in classroom and those dice rolls got everyone extremely involved and generated an interesting discussion afterwards. 

So what’s the final end, the score of a game of The Shores of Tripoli? There is no score and it fits the structure of the game perfectly. There are branching narratives that end in a narrative victory of one side or another. I find this a significant advantage for an introductory wargame, where a new player does not have to find the meaning and interpretation behind the victory points (not that there’s anything wrong with this concept). The player just gets the narrative outcome story and knows exactly what happened. For the designer it must have been a challenge. We know how the First Barbary War ended (at the very least from reading the Historical Supplement to the game). Yet, a game can’t always railroad you to that one particular outcome or it's not much of a game. How, then, do you come up with a narrative of counterfactual what-ifs? As per designer notes, clarifying the costs and goals of both sides helped and as a result all these alternative ends seem to flow naturally from play. Even when it’s a tight ‘who’ll achieve the goal first’ race, you don’t feel robbed in terms of narrative once it gets resolved. Just think about American Congressmen discussing the red lines in terms of merchants robbed. 

This very bearable lightness of playing makes the game a good first introduction to more simulation-focused games in the classroom. (Here, I should put a disclaimer that I got a game copy from Kevin Bertram for that particular purpose - using The Shores of Tripoli for education. This review was in no way affected by it.) I have tried it with people who had limited knowledge of modern boardgames (and no hands-on experience with wargames), and it worked well. Explaining the rules took some fifteen minutes, followed by semi-active facilitation. Mistakes were made, but if you keep the narrative flowing, it pays off in the end, and you may get some no historical boardgaming converts. By the end of it, the participants usually go to discuss what happened, what they learned, and what the different elements of the game told (and how (un)lucky everyone was with their rolls). I’ll certainly use it at the start of the simulation gaming course in the coming Spring semester. 

What helps the introduction is the beauty of the components. The map is very clear and easy to read, the cards’ art is reflective of the period, and the wooden pieces are really frigates and boats. Aesthetically, it is pleasing.

The structure of the game, however, leads to certain limitations. One is the issue of the meta-knowledge of the game content, which is not surprising for a game where card events are so important. To play well you need to know the cards and what events to expect, so that you can set the trap for your opponent appropriately. In your first games, you don’t have that crystal ball insight yet, but with time you become quite a good forecaster. Thus, when introducing new players to the game, I’m happier to just facilitate instead of taking one of the sides. At the same experience level, though, the fight becomes very tight. 

Another limitation is related to the narrow scope of the game. It focuses on a very particular event and the players have limited scope of actions. The events are quite clearly outlined, so there are a few ‘if-then’ moves, especially at the beginning of the game. Yet, the opening salvos of the First Barbary War cannot be too different from one game to another, the initial setup of the situation was as it was and the game aims to reflect it.

Will I use The Shores of Tripoli to explore the intricate relationships between the different processes in The First Barbary War? Likely not, the previous plays have already told quite a bit about it, and in that sense, the game does not offer a deeper-dive. But that is not the purpose of this game. I will still play it for a quick historic experience, full of uncertainty and excitement. I will also use it to introduce people to wargaming and to show how games can tell and help examine stories, reflect asymmetric positions, and just improve understanding of history. At that, The Shores of Tripoli is very effective, and I am very much interested in what The Halls of Montezuma designed by Kevin Bertram in cooperation with Gilberto Lopez will have to offer. 

Try The Shores of Tripoli at Rally the Troops: https://rally-the-troops.com/shores-of-tripoli

P.S. If historical gaming industry is of interest to you, Kevin Bertram has started a Substack that is worth checking out:

Negotium Ludorum

The economics of board game designing and publishing.