The Innovation in Wargames Conference, the Bunker, March 2008 by John Curry
The conference was originally called a Calf, as in a small COW (Conference of Wargamers), but the in-joke rather fell flat with the wider wargaming community.
The weekend was smaller than COW, so allowed practically everyone to meet everyone. There were many interesting discussions about gaming techniques, military history and other wargaming gossip. From my perspective, the food was excellent, nearly all from local farms. The weekend was very friendly and those from outside Wargame Developments who attended were impressed by 'nice bunch of gentlemen you were'.
Friday Night Plenary Sessions
Those who arrived early and were feeling energetic set off to look at the nearby so called 'communications bunker'. This was a derelict building, surrounded by a wire fence with underground structures adjacent to it. The entrance had been filled in to prevent the curious entering. It was apparently one of the secure communications nodes, which was a precursor to the Internet. In fact some of the facilities have been utilised for the Internet. They worked by forwarding messages by any available route to prevent even large-scale strikes knocking out the communications network.
We then looked at the trench network dug by the site owner for airsoft battles. It was interesting to note that we go within 10 metres of the trench network before we realised what it was (and we were looking for it).
Bunker tour by John Curry
At the start of the conference, I gave a short bunker tour to explain in outline how the bunker would have worked. We benefited by one of the delegates having crewed such a bunker and with current emergency planning experience. The bunker system still has secrets. Michael Curry noted that the AWDREY computer on level one had finally been disconnected. This was a dedicated computer system that remotely monitored air pressure and radiation from Air Observer Corps posts all round the country. When the Cold War was called off, the bunker system was decommissioned, but perhaps some bright spark realised that the automatic systems could be left connected, so if ever needed, one could simply reboot the machine and one could get a large amount of information from the automated systems.
The main BBC bunker used to have only Radio 4 and BBC1, but now they have Radio 1-4 and multiple TV channels.
Target for Tonight by John Curry
The second plenary session was a Russian planning game about the nuclear destruction of the UK. Playing either the scientific or military committee they had to plan the nuclear bombardment of the UK. They had to decide their target priorities and plot targets for their 40 weapons. They then discussed their plans against actual Russian ones.
Anyone who know about nuclear weapons will point out the Russians had thousands for warheads. However, the number available for use against the UK was somewhat limited.
First, any sensible commander would keep a 1/3rd of the weapons as a reserve, e.g. if the Chinese PLA got too ambitious after a nuclear war. Between 10-50% of each nuclear weapon system were unavailable as they were being maintained. I.e. often in bits on the floor of the silo. Approximately 10% would fail to launch, 10% more would fail in low orbit and 10% would fail to denote at the target end.
The target end would be subject to debris, EMP and hurricane force winds from previous strikes.
Some nuclear weapon systems would have almost certainly had a 100% failure rate due to undiscovered design flaws.
Like many modern weapons, nuclear weapons were under tested. E.g. note that the French did not announce the exact times or numbers of warheads they tested (as some were going to fail). If nuclear powers are not confident that warheads set off at their test sites were going to work, think about their confidence levels of ICBM's that were designed to fly into outer space before blowing up. Consider how many times the European rocket Adriane has failed.
The number of potential targets is absolutely huge, so the Russians prioritised. The first target was UK and USAF nuclear forces and nuclear weapon manufacturing facilities. The second was the ports. They expected Britain to receive help from around the world (due to the Commonwealth, our international funds and the huge merchant fleets that would suddenly find themselves redundant). They thought blowing up the major ports would slow up this aid. The third was the airfields to prevent support arriving by air and to stop us carrying on the war after the strike. The 4th and final target was the military infra structure e.g. Portsmouth, Aldershot etc…
They had no spare weapons to hit explicitly civilian targets such as cities. However, they may have made an exception and hit central London to hit the military command and control facilities.
The Envelope by John Curry
The game was simple. Envelopes were distributed and each player was told as the new prime minister they had to write the final orders for the Polaris submarine commanders. These were the orders to opened in event of the UK being destroyed by surprise attack.
After due consideration, the envelopes were shuffled and distributed. The players heard a siren and then were informed the UK government was destroyed. They were told they were as the captains of the submarine, they were to open their envelope and decide if they would obey the posthumous orders of the prime minister.
Some final orders were humerous, some were serious, but as Tom said, 'it made you think'.
We only know of one prime ministers final instruction's. These were to sail to Australia and pass control of the submarine to the Australian government.
Friday After Dinner Games "Footfall" Game a role-playing after dinner game by Tim Price
pitted a group of unlikely heroes against the unknown. The escapades of the game have been duly reported in the Nugget. I remember them getting very excited about 1.00 am when I left them to it.
The Devils Alternative was a modern emergency planning game run by someone
The aim of such a game would be to teach new politicians at the most senior level in the UK about the harsh realities of terrorism. Lesson (1) Civilian decision making techniques do not work well in a crisis. Lesson (2) That sometimes, there is going to be no good outcome and the politician must simply choose the least worst option.
Saturday Morning Sessions
Plenary Lecture by Phil Sabin
Senior Lecture War Studies, Kings College London.
This was an excellent talk about using wargaming to analyse ancient battles. I will do a further write up when I get a copy of his book. (See my www.johncurryevents.co.uk for this most intriguing book details)
The Final Battle by Cliver Essler
was World War II 1: 6000 scale naval wargame. The game represented the last ditch effort of both sides to determine the outcome of a war in a climatic sea battle.
The rules were too complex for my taste, but I found it interesting to look at the detailed mechanics of gunnery (and I thought Captains just estimated the range…). What was particularly interesting was taking part in a naval battle with little idea of the capabilities of the other side. Normally, I know all the key facts about the enemy from the ship name, but in this battle we know almost nothing. I have started work on some simple ship building rules to allow players to construct their ships, then put them into a naval battle to test them out.
The 1956 British Army Tactical Wargame By Martin Rapier
These rules were developed in the 1950s for use as a training and operations research tool to investigate effective tactics for fighting a war in Germany using conventional and nuclear forces. The basic mechanisms were developed based on experience of the fighting in WW2 and Korea, and although they bear a passing similarity to modern operational wargames such as Megablitz in terms of scale of representation etc, the aspects of operational warfare the authors chose to model in detail are somewhat different to those found in a conventional wargame. The emphasis was very much on planning and task timings, and much less on things like different troop or equipment types
This session presented a small historical engagement from the Second World War modelled using these rules to demonstrate how the mechanisms work, and to provide food for thought for modern game designers.
The game was smash hit and I hope Martin Rapier will be prevailed upon to run the game again COW.
Saturday Afternoon Sessions
Plenary Lecture Eben Emael by Tom Mouat
was a short lecture on the German Attack on the Belgian Fortress of Eben Emael (with photographs from his visits). It was very interesting and it showed the failings of the fortress concepts. For the cost of building the fort, the Belgiums could have had say 36 field gun batteries to cover the bridges under the forts (and say a million shells). In terms of cost effectiveness, the artillery would have been far superior.
My own thought that was an extensive, WW1 type wire entanglement over a minefield could have stopped the German air attack dead.
Raid! A WWII Raid somewhere in the Atlantic. A Staff Planning Game by Tom Mouat
This was an interesting and challenging game trying to make a sensible plan for a crossing the Atlantic and hitting British oil fields. As we were Germans, politics was seen as an essential part of the planning process, making sure everyone had a role in the mission. We put together a plan, but the chance of success was not that great.
New NBC (NATO Brigade Commander) A scenario by Tim Gow
I missed the latest version of this hex based game.
External by Wayne Thomas
was about South African armoured forces in Angola, 1:300 scale.
Assault: Attacking a fortification using airsoft weapons John Curry, Bob Cordory et al
This was a far ranging game about practical warfare. Using section tactics, we tried out various attacks. The best one was against a full-scale trench system built for the military shows at the bunker. The attacker's finally solved the problem, but grenading down the trench.
Saturday After Dinner Games
Panzergruppe, Operational Wargaming Rules By Martin Rapier
These were a simple set of operational wargames rules which he had been working on for some years, which work for both Second World War and Modern scenarios. The latest incarnation makes use of a grid to regulate movement and combat, the very, very latest version uses hexes.
This session presented the rules using a somewhat smaller Eastern Front scenario. The level of representation is somewhat higher than many operational games, the bases representing regiments/brigades or even (in the case of the Russians) weak divisions.
As a Russian commander we used the Cannae tactic of Hannibal; fall back in the centre and outflank them to hit them in the rear.
Our plan was wildly successful, we fell back in the centre in realistic looking manner and when the Germans were engaged against our centre, we launched our mobile units to outflank them. Being Russians, we simply gave our outflanking units compass bearings and instructions to stop when they hit the only road. The single road was the German supply line.
When the German supplies were cut, the game system (to me) failed in that it allowed the German supplies route to be traced around the back of our divisions over the route our divisions has just come. I would have though our logistic tails would have noted the German truck and horse convoys crossing our lines and they would have been destroyed.
In the game, our mobile units were heavily attritted, but our infantry had time to build a new defensive line, in more depth, on our original position by the end of the game.
There were some black sessions running late into the night, such as Active Service Unit, Nuclear War - the card game (How could any event at the bunker not be complete without the opportunity to blow up the world) and the notorious board game, 'the War on Terror'. I looked in on the War on Terror just in time to hear the classic quote of one player vehemently accusing another player 'you have got it in for me'. I thought that was the point of the game…
Sunday Morning
Operational Sealion by John Curry, Martin Rapier and Bob Cordery
This was planning and executing the 1940 invasion of Britain. Using original research by John Curry and the original 1940 OS maps, both sides planned and then fought it out on the map. The game involved air, naval and land elements.
I do not want to write up the game yet, as we will run it again at COW.
However, the Germans role-played the historical confusion with great gusto, including failing to appoint an invasion commander. Man of the match was Wayne Thomas who had prepared his anti-invasion plans in detail. He smugly gave code-words and pointed out as his forces had planned for this situation they could react almost instantly.
The game was an excellent play test and Bob, Martin and I will run the new improved version at COW.
