Hot Blood & Cold Steel

Tag: Afghanistan

  • Book Review – Bullets and Brains by Leo Murray

    Brains 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.…

  • Games on COIN

    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. 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…

  • Midnight in Some Burning Town –a Review

    I actually enjoyed reading this book, even though it wasn’t the book that I thought I was buying. I had ordered it expecting that it would tell me about the various special forces missions that UK forces had been up to between the first Gulf War in 1990-91 and when it was published (in 2004).…

  • Another side of the COIN

    I ran my game of being an Afghan farmer “The Other Side of the COIN” at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group’s (CLWG) annual conference yesterday afternoon. This was its second outing, you can see my onside report from the first run here. Since the last outing the game has developed further to address some of…

  • The Other Side of the COIN

    An on-side report of how the first run of ‘The Other Side of the COIN’ went. In all a fun day with a lot of useful positive feedback on how to make it better for the next time we play it, and there will be a next time.

  • Thoughts on an Insurgency Game

    An article I read in the New Scientist on why people got involved in the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia triggered some ideas about trying to run a game about the locals caught amidst an insurgency campaign. Farming Today, Fighting Tomorrow? This is a game to explore why people become insurgents (or perhaps not).…