Task Chair General

Wargame: Red Dragon is a difficult and confusing game on first inspection. For me the game really came together once I started paying attention to real world doctrine. Wargame’s complexity and impenetrability comes partly from its mechanical adaptations of real-world weapon and command systems. The rest of its complexity comes from the employment of these systems effectively, the realm of doctrine. Once a player has a grasp of the unit types, their roles, and the means to command them the player then has to learn how to use their units to win. This means understanding their objectives, creating a force capable of the necessary maneuvers, and executing that plan. In other words, players need a doctrine to play effectively. Diagram of Deep Battle in Action It is a testament to Wargame’s simulation that many players stumble on similar doctrines  to those used by the real cold war powers they are digitally emulating. The most common of these is the Soviet “deep battle” concept...

Carl von Clausewitz in On War said: “Since all information and assumptions are open to doubt, and with chance at work everywhere, the commander continually finds that things are not as he expected.” The pressure to make decisions in a problem space where there is so much doubt is one of my favourite aspects of wargaming. In such a strategic environment where there are rarely “optimal” moves players are forced to draw on more than their pure analytic skills. Players need to have the courage to trust their intuition and their prior choices to best an opponent when randomness is involved in decision making. This article is about randomness affecting games, strategy games in particular. I am not trying to say that using randomness or not using it in a game's mechanics makes the game in question inherently better or worse. What I am trying to explore is the differences in random and predominantly non-random games and make a case against those who say randomness has no...