Category Archives: Iraq Wars

Iraq Wars, megagames

Undeniable Victory – offside report [Megagame]

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Today I played in Undeniable Victory, Ben Moore’s megagame of the Iran Iraq War. I was an Iranian Radical and a member of the Council, starting off as the Procurement Minister responsible for buying military kit.

Undeniable Victory

I was a late entrant to Undeniable Victory, getting a place because someone else couldn’t make it. That said I was pretty happy with being cast as a radical Iranian. I like political roles, and being just off the side of the main targets.

Procurement Minister was senior enough to be interesting, yet junior enough not to be an automatic target. I was one of three radicals in the seven member Council. There was always going to be a move to displace one of us to change the balance of power.

 

Undeniable victory - Iranian Council
The Iranian Council, Defence Minister (Dave), Interior Minister (Chris) and First Minister (Oliver)

The Conservatives had the First Minister and Interior Minister to start with. My fellow Radicals were the Defence Minister and the Infrastructure Minister. The Moderates had the Finance and Foreign Ministries. Ayatollah Khomeini was umpire controlled and mostly absent dealing with religious matters.

Undeniable Victory – Procurement

As a radical council member I deliberately skipped over some of the military bits of the briefing for Undeniable Victory. I didn’t think it would be right for me to have a detailed understanding of the combat system when there were players in the military HQs responsible for briefing me on what they needed. I started off with a straightforward policy of equipping the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with good quality equipment so that they were at least as good as the army.

My chief procurement officer in the military high command (Tim) was a moderate. We had a bit of conflict sorting out how to work things, but we came to a workable agreement. I became aware very early on that he was doing his own deals to get kit as stuff I hadn’t ordered was appearing. Also kit I’d ordered for the IRGC was going to the regular army.

I didn’t bother doing anything about this as I was spending more time involved in setting political leadership in the Council. There were several interesting reminders of the fundamentals of the revolution when we were dealing with events. (As an aside the events were really very well scripted and also had clear game impacts whenever we chose an option.)

Trial & Exoneration

This almost became my undoing. The Radicals, under the august leadership of the Defence Minister, narrowly failed to boot a moderate off the Council and replace them with a fourth Radical. This was followed by us swapping me with the Interior Minister (pictured above). The latter immediately brought a case against me for corruption and treason by way of evidence he’d collected of dealings with the Israelis.

I denied this vehemently and blamed Tim for any transgressions, mentioning that he’d been acting without authorisation on other matters.  Witnesses were called and my version got some corroboration. So Tim was sent for and he immediately confessed to getting kit off the Israelis for free. His testimony was very eloquent and I would have applauded if I’d not been so relieved that I wasn’t going to end up on a lamppost. The Council accepted Tim had acted in the best interests of the revolution and he was warned not to act without authorisation from the Procurement Minister again. He was also sent to a re-education retreat to contemplate the error of his ways. (OOC he was told to go stand on Anerley Station platform for a minute before returning to the game).

Interior Minister

If I ever had to give advice to another megagamer it would be that you don’t want to let me be Interior Minister unless you’ve got a lot of people you want to see dead. Dave, our radical leader and a veteran megagamer, was well aware of this when he organised the swap. He also managed to change the form of the government to advantage the radical position. This sowed the seed for our Undeniable Victory.

Sadly for Dave he was the victim of a council reorgisation in the following season. We’d been too successful too early, and as the faction leader he got hit.  He was swapped out with the Chief of the Army. Alex, a Conservative became the new Defence Minister and lasted there to almost the end of the game. I let the other Radical, Callum, take leadership in the Council for a bit.

Touring the Front

I went on a tour of the front to audit players and procurement to make sure there were no chemical weapons in play. This was in response to allegations that we had used them. The front line visit was an eye opener, I’d previously had no real idea how things were going because the reports back were vague at best.

Back in the Council we’d suffered a massive funding cut for the Interior Ministry. All the money was going into procurement and social support. The latter was something I was strongly in favour of, and I’d rather not repress the people unless they were acting against the spirit of the revolution.

I made the political dissidents kick off by blaming them for everything. This played out well because they blew up a military HQ player and got him out of my beard.

Ayatollah’s Intervention

At this point the war was going very favourably for us. Militarily it really was looking like an undeniable victory. However the Ayatollah intervened because he didn’t think we were playing nicely enough with each other. He was assuredly correct. Some subtle agreement and positive suggestions couched in suitably revolutionary language helped manoeuvre others into actions that suited my agenda. I also did a deal with the Conservative First Minister to try and position the Moderates to take the fall when the time came.

The radicals got the Iranian war goal shifted to total war and we also promoted obedience to the Ayatollah’s desires to strike hard at the little satan. An election also happened at this time and the Moderates campaigned on an anti-Arab platform. The Conservative faction Wendy anti-colonial and we chose anti-imperial. We also chose to lose the vote, playing out worst card. It didn’t make any difference to the Council freedom of action and we came out with our radical credentials intact and a better chance of winning another crucial vote (I kept back the Ace, which was the highest card possible for resolving votes, this was very useful later).

The Council buckled down and focused on the war. We came under increasing pressure from the USA, via the Foreign Minister (Bernie) to end the war. Bernie was a moderate and had taken a very technocratic position, acting in the best interests of the foreign relations agenda throughout. It was clear he had a specific agenda, but as far as I could tell it broadly matched mine, so I supported him. I even did so when the Conservative faction tried to swap him off the Council. He was someone we could work with.

Undeniable Victory – ‘Peace’

Shortly after this we suffered a massive cruise missile strike against the southern oil terminals. This was the US deadline to negotiate running out. Our undeniable victory forced them to act directly.  We’d also lost half our revenue because the oil price had collapsed. So it was time to sue for peace. But this needed careful handling, we still needed the undeniable victory for the home front.

The Council discussion was interesting. Ollie and I saw the inevitable, as did Bernie. Others were for continuing to spend scarce funds on procurement at the cost of social support. At this point there was another bomb in the Council. Chris, the Procurement Minister, was killed but the rest of us were fine. He was rapidly replaced by another Conservative from Army HQ. I later discovered that Tim, the procurement officer, had been behind the bomb as revenge for beingput on trial for dealing with the Israelis.

Succession Planning

We then got informed that Ayatollah Khomeini was gravely unwell and believed that he was dying. It was time to pick a successor. Callum and I had a quick chat, I over-ruled him as the Radical choice on the grounds that he’d been happy, as Finance Minister, to cut social support and buy tanks when the war was effectively over.

The Moderates surprised me at this point. Rather than nominating a Council member Bernie went off and found the Air Marshal and spoke eloquently about all his many successes and sacrifices for the revolution. It looked like he might actually get picked without a vote. So I also praised him and said that he was a true hero and should absolutely definitely replace on the Cpuncil. whoever might be chosen as the successor to Ayatollah Khomeini. I also prayed that it might be some time before the successor need take up post as the new Ayatollah.

So it went to a vote. I played the Ace I’d kept earlier. Thankfully Allah was great and saw that I submitted to his wisdom.

Undeniable Victory - Ayatollah and his chosen successor
The Ayatollah and his chosen successor, the revolution is secured

Ending the War

It wasn’t quite over yet. Although on his sick bed we managed to present a united front and persuade the Ayatollah that the surest way to safeguard the revolution was to discuss peace with the Iraqis. He agreed and a peace conference was set up. Head of State, First Minister and Foreign Ministers were invited. As the designated successor I tagged along. Mostly I stood at the edge and listened.

In the background news of the peace had spread. My fellow Radicals in the army were upset and worried that the Moderates had sold out the revolution. They marched on Teheran with a Division of the IRGC. I took time away from the peace conference to deal with the purge. One of the arrested Moderates (the previous Finance Minister) confessed to being involved in a plot to assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini just before the Americans had forced the peace conference. He was promptly sent for a show trial. The Radical Generals were told not to be too indiscriminate and to make sure there was some sort of evidence against the people they were arresting. It was clear I wasn’t going to be able to stop them completely.

I then got a call from the Ayatollah. He was very worried about all the shooting he could hear. Was a counter revolution under way? I reassured him that there was evidence that the Moderates had been planning to kill him, and that we were reinforcing the revolution by arresting those involved.

Game Over

That was where the game ended. A tentative peace deal underway and a second revolution in Iran to strengthen the radical position. Certainly the Radicals appear to be in the ascendancy for the next few years.  Iran will rise rebuilt as a shining example of radical Islam.

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Book Review – Zero Six Bravo by Damien Lewis

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Zero Six Bravo: 60 Special Forces. 100,000 Enemy. The Explosive True StoryZero Six Bravo: 60 Special Forces. 100,000 Enemy. The Explosive True Story by Damien Lewis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I make a point of reading first hand accounts of special forces operations. I started with world war two tales of the SAS and have worked up to the present time. Since the Bravo Two Zero fiasco I don’t expect much from tales of recent events.

This particular book tells the tale of a Special Boat Service mission in Iraq in 2003. It suffers a bit from excessive hypebole, presumably to garner sales. However it is actually very readable, and although much of the outcome is telepgrahed in advance the way it’s done is through a good hook to keep you reading to find out the detail of how/what happens. Well before all the debates in Parliament in 2003 M Squadron SBS were training up for their mission, changing their role from maritime operations to being vehicle borne. They then went into Iraq just before the air war started in 2003 with an attempt to contact a major Iraqui army formation to persuade it to surrender.

You know when you start to read it that the mission isn’t going to go well. In fact without even knowing anything about it I picked up that it must have gone horribly wrong. However I also knew that it couldn’t have gone that far wrong, because otherwise I probably would have heard about it since I have an interest in current affairs and military operations.

The story follows the perspective of one SBS Sergeant who was the lead navigator for most of the mission. Mainly it focusses on what he sees, and the actions of his three man vehicle crew. On the whole it is an interesting narrative and it gripped me enough to read longer than I normally do.

There’s a clear thread running through it of the forebodings, that may well have been how the central character felt, but are laboured to the extent that it comes across as 20:20 hindsight. There are also some rather strained references to Bravo Two Zero and the similarities with that patrol (both seem to have been compromised because they refused to shoot a child goat herder). That doesn’t really wash with me because the goat incident in Bravo Two Zero wasn’t repeated in the other books about the patrol and The Real “Bravo Two Zero” gives another version of events (apparently two Iraqui veterans of the Iran-Iraq War spotted the patrol, not a child goat herder).

Despite this I still think it’s worth a read, especially if you get it for the knock down price of 99p as I did.

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2D Morale Chart

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Further to the previous post Faith in Morale I’ve tried to synthesize the varioius readings on military psychology into a set of morale rules that might give a realistic ebb and flow to an engagement. I’ve not had a chance to test these yet, but here’s what the chart looks like.

v01 of the 2D Morale Chart, (c) 2014 James Kemp
v01 of the 2D Morale Chart, (c) 2014 James Kemp

Reading through the various OR type publications it seems to me that morale is affected by proximity to both friends and the enemy. The closer solders get to the enemy the more they seem to do things other than follow orders. This is not really a surprise, but it’s nice to see the research back up the gut feel.

Where I can find hard numbers for things I have used them to construct the 2D morale chart. In some ways this is sort of arbitrary, the numbers aren’t comprehensive enough to complete it. I’ve taken distance from the enemy as one axis and propensity to fight as the other axis. Probability isn’t as straightforwards as counting the squares, as I’ve chosen to use a 2d6 roll on this chart. This tends the answer towards 7 and I have used the probabilty of a given result (or greater) as the method for putting the shading on the boxes. Where certain conditions make something more or less likely the difference from the probability of 7 or more is what I’ve used to decide whether the die modifier would be +/- 1, 2 or 3 (most end up as +/-1).

I’ll post up more of this, along with some ideas on how I expect it to work, in a later post. Broadly though each glob of troops will have a marker on the chart showing their current morale state. Each time morale is tested they will roll 2d6 and modify. Scores of 6-8 (about 45%) will remain unchanged. scores of 9-11 will improve morale and 12 will improve it and move the unit closer to the enemy (except for defenders in prepared positions). Scores of 4 or 5 will decrease morale, a 2 or 3 will decrease morale and cause the soldiers to give ground back to cover.

 

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Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray

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Brains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins WarsBrains and Bullets: How Psychology Wins Wars by Leo Murray

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Brains and Bullets is an excellent and very readable book which tries to put some hard numbers on a variety of psychological tactics that can be used to persuade your own troops to fight and the enemy to give up.

This is an excellent work on what happens in combat and why. It is very readable, structured into bite sized chunks on the key phenomena and then some joining up when it has all been explained. Each chapter opens with an account from a real soldier who experienced that psychological effect in combat. This is then analysed and explained, pulling in other examples as required to show that it isn’t an isolated incident but a general effect. Those examples range from the Napoleonic Wars right up to operations in Afghanistan, and they’re the products of proper scientific research not just a collection of war stories from unreliable sources.

That said there is no need to be an operational researcher, or scientist to understand the book. The language used is straightforward and direct, each of the concepts is very well explained and it forms an excellent introductory work as well as being well researched. The target audience is ordinary people without a technical or military background (although the author hopes that many military officers and civil servants will read it and think about it). Here’s my favourite line from the end of the book “if you are paid to be a military analyst, don’t forget that you work for the Crown (or the people) and for soldiers. You owe no allegiance to your cost centre manager. Crack on.”

If you do have a serious interest then it is worth saying that this isn’t fluffy pop psychology (I like those as light reading, having read Psychology at uni). All the conclusions are backed up with hard numbers from years of solid operational research. The author is hoping to influence army officers to use tactical psychology to make them more effective, so for example “even the hardest-fought flank attack seized ground with a smaller force, captured more of the enemy and caused fewer fatalities on both sides. flanking attack was six times more effective than a frontal attack.”

I’m not going to summarise this book like I did for the Stress of Battle, it’s way more available and affordable. Go buy it yourself (or borrow from the Library) and enjoy it. I certainly did.

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Games on COIN

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This post is prompted by an excellent post by the guys at On Violence. You should read Capturing Australia! COIN is Boring Pt.3 to which this was my belated comment.

McCormick model of insurgency
McCormick model of insurgency (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My apologies for coming late to this one, I’ve been on leave for a couple of weeks now and being spending time with the family.

I’ve been interested in designing a counter insurgency game since the mid 1990s. The original trigger for my interest were the decolonisation conflicts of the British Empire. This wasn’t a board game, nor a computer game. The group I belong to designs face to face games for multiple participants, a bit like the sort of command post exercises those of us who’ve done some military or civil contingencies time would recognise.

I never ran the decolonisation game that prompted this, it needed 20 players, which was too many for the free venues and too few to make it economic in the hired halls. However there were a number of spin-off games, including a look at the Palestine/Israel insurgency in 1945-48; Malaya in the 1950s and Aden in the early 60s.

By the time I’d looked at those traditional insurgencies we got into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. My most recent attempt, which sort of almost counts as a board game (it has a map, which is really only for flavour) looked at the experience from the point of view of the Afghan farmers, and the drivers that took them to insurgency (or not as the case happens). I ran it twice, both times with someone who served in Afghanistan as one of the players.

I come at all this as a hobbyist. I make the games I’d like to play but cannot find commercially. The same is true of the people that I play with, we form a community of game design activists. (Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group, mainly in the UK). Over the years I’ve played games as both an insurgent and a counter-insurgent. They hold a lot of game play and interest. However a lot of it defies easy mechanisms that you can write down on a few pages than just about anyone can understand.

Part of this is that insurgencies aren’t all the same. What works in dealing with one group might only make things work with another. You need to get inside the culture and methods of the insurgents to defeat them. Or at least that is how I read it. Sometimes it will be unpalatable for modern players to play those games, either because of a close connection with someone hurt by the insurgency, or because current moral standards differ from those of the period or culture concerned.

That said, I think it is possible to write good games about insurgency. They just need to be specifically tailored to the insurgency in question and the players appropriately briefed in advance. You also need players that will roleplay it a little rather than just play to mechanisms.

 

– See more at: http://onviolence.com/?e=739

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Condor Blues – British soldiers at war

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A very interesting book about the British Army experience from the point of view of two platoons embedded in training the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC) in the aftermath of the invasion (so the first half of 2004 approximately). Both platoons belonged to the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, but one was on secondment from the PWRR.

From the content of the book it is clear that it was not authorised by MOD as it is highly critical in places. Also none of the main players come out of it looking terribly good, you see their flaws and the bad side as well as the bravery and the compassion in places (as well as other emotions at other points). For example,  after a severe contact two of the Iraqi insurgent casualties were found to be carrying ICDC identity cards – which spelt the end of the Argylls trying to teach them military skills.

It is a warts and all portrayal, which makes it all the more convincing. Life in the camp appears to be well described, and feels honest in its descriptions of what the Jocks get up to in combating the boredom they suffered from. I can’t be sure not having been there myself, but having grown up in the same area as some of the Argylls (with references to places I went to as a teenager myself) I can see some of the soldiers I met as a territorial 20 years ago in these men. The perceived authenticity of the camp life makes the stories of the contacts with insurgents more believable.

However although there are proper war stories in here, the book is as much a lament to the lost opportunity to get a peaceful settlement and a sort of disbelief that the British Army apparently abandoned its own doctrine and instead pursued a heavy metal retaliation to incidents, which drove the locals to be insurgents.

Definitely worth reading.

 

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The Defense of Jisr Al-Doreaa

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This is an excellent update of an old classic.

Two books in one, the author’s have brought Swinton’s Duffer’s Drift and re-written it for the modern conflicts (which bear more than a passing resemblance to the Boer War). Swinton’s book is in the second half of the volume.  The basis for Duffer”s Drift (if you aren’t familiar with it already) is that a young officer en route to the Boer War has a series of dreams about his first independent command. In each dream it all goes horribly wrong, but on waking he learns some lessons which he then takes with him into the next dream (without remembering the details of the previous dream). Over the course of six dreams he manages to learn enough lessons for a successful outcome.

The scenario is well set out, with appropriate maps and there is a good logical flow through the dream sequences where the young officer progressively learns from the situation. Although the situations and capabilities are not identical, you can easily compare the Boer War situation to its more modern counterpart about a century later. The lessons are broadly similar, and for those interested in how to train young officers or soldiers then it makes a worthwhile read.

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