Assymetric wargames

[Schmoly War]

Assymetric operational wargames, do they exist? Ive seen about two very limited two scenarios in TOAW3.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare

There should be a few now, since it is the most prevalent warfare in this century.

[hellfish]

Nope. There are some board games, but nothing's been attempted on computers as far as I can tell - at least nothing publicly available. I suspect asymmetric warfare isn't 'fun' enough.

[Stalins Organ]

Here's a game report from Phil Barker, noted wargame rules writer, about a set he's producing for table-top games - I hope it is of some interest, 'cos otherwise it was a waste of time seatrching through aftermail to find it!! It's not operational level...but I found it quite interesting anyway.

IIRC the game was played at a convention in the UK known as COW - The Conference of Wargamers, put on every July by Wargames Developments - a group founded by the late and much lamented Paddy Griffith that likes making new wargames and seeing what other people have dreamed up in the last year!

IIRC "Sharp End" is available from Phil's website...ah - yep it is still there - http://www.phil-barker.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

the original was posted to WRGmodernwargames@yahoogroups.com on 7/7/2008

BUGGARARUPISTAN

Onside report by Phil Barker

This was a scenario not totally unrelated to the current activities of the British Army set in the city of Bhangbhangduq in Buggarupistan and using a restricted sub-set of the "Sharp End" rules first introduced here two years ago. "Sharp End" is a by-product of consultancy work for the Ministry of Defence and is intended in time to cover all infantry-heavy and counter insurgency warfare from Palestine 1945 to 1948, through Malaya, Korea, Aden, Oman, Borneo, Hungary 1956, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan until the near future. Some of the troop control mechanisms are taken from other rule sets of mine such as DBA, but the combat mechanisms are new and intended to maximise adrenalin flow. My hope is that players will feel they have been in a battle. I don't normally write rules for contemporary combat as being a little too near the knuckle, but I feel that it would be no bad thing if civvies (or even politicians) understood a little more about what real soldiers have to do on their behalf. If any one wants an updated version of the rules, email me at [email redacted to help avoid bots - you have his web page if you need it] and I'll attach a copy.

THE SITUATION

The playing table was roughly 8 feet by 4 feet, covered with a desert finish cloth. A minor river ran down the southern long side, with Green Zone trees on the far side at its western end. The western and northern parts of the table had a series of gentle hills (placed under the cloth), with an isolated house set in a compound towards the western end. The eastern part was occupied by the town of Bhangbhangduq, partly of commercial card buildings with a removable outer shell over a ruin base, but with a scratch-built slum area of winding narrow alleys. The town had a central square surrounded by elegant buildings including a towered police station and an imposing mosque at its eastern end. A dirt road entered the town from the east passing through poppy fields and after passing through it bent around to leave the table's north edge. There were also a number of narrow cross country tracks.

The town was occupied by three potentially insurgent factions, whose leaders' briefs were:

SHAIK ITALLABOUT - Your band of experienced ex-Mujahadein warriors speaking Pashto and Dari, dedicated to expelling infidels and supporting honest poppy farmers against government interference and armed with AK and a plentiful supply of RPG, have taken over the police station and its inhabitants, their two police cars, plus their money-making road checkpoints to shake down motorists for cash and uncompromised cell phones. You support your local mosque and its rather stick-in-the-mud leader, but find his youthful followers a little tiresome and far too brash. The small band of Foreign Fighters in the town are potentially useful, but an obnoxious bunch of trigger-happy idiots who may need to be sorted out when the occasion suits. Ruddy foreigners coming here and telling us what to do!

FAKIR OF ZIPPI - You control a small but select band of foreign fighters speaking Arabic and Urdu but with little fluency in Dari, trained in Chechnya and similar places, receiving occasional communications from the great Osama and lavishly equipped by emissaries of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard with sophisticated explosive devices. You have a secret bomb factory in the town capable of constructing both radio and wire detonated IED. The bomb-maker must be competent since he has not blown himself up yet. You have a single very big aircraft bomb. You also have access to suitably impressionable suicide bombers, but only one can drive. You can always steal more cars. You and your men are interested only in killing infidels, not in humouring self-serving locals who are all expendable in a good cause. God will know His own. Referring to you as the Mad Fakir of Zippi is serious disrespect and should be severely punished. Since there is a price on your head, you frequently change location. You have access to cell phones, but know that these are liable to intercept and consequent bombs or missiles out of an apparently clear sky, so are personally reluctant to use them.

MULLAH LAIT - You are a fervent and eloquent cleric whose Friday sermons are much admired. Some might unfairly call you a "rabble rouser", but I couldn't possibly comment. You speak and read both Pashto and Dari and read Classical Arabic. The mad fakir's men have heretical ideas and will not listen. They think they know everything, which is very irritating to those of us who do. You are known as a good man who has the interests of the townsfolk at heart. You command the armed support of the younger locals, who are prepared to grab the family AK and hasten to your aid at any time of day (except that they tend to sleep late). Their numbers and youthful enthusiasm are surely an adequate substitute for experience. Many live outside town, but have access to family or neighbours' vehicles. Many have cell phones (and alas, often Game Boys).

The insurgent players were allowed to prepare the battlefield before the soldier players saw it. This involved putting insurgent combatants in buildings, but the Shaik also placed small squares of card bearing a question mark (which I later realised to be totally redundant!). Soldiers entering the building then diced for what they found, which was usually nervous innocent civilians, but could be noisy screaming women whose disturbance would rouse the neighbours, a stash of opium or of ammunition substantially more than the legal two AK magazines, or (which I did not mention to the insurgent players) an informant providing one of a series of preprepared snippets of potentially useful information. The Fakir also had to plant a card signifying a bomb factory, and to place a number of mines and IED.

In real life, a bomb maker specialises, but for the game I allowed a mix of radio and wire detonated IED and a variety of mines, including a single "mother of all bombs" huge enough to destroy a heavy AFV, and also a man on foot with a shaved head, big black beard, staring eyes and bulky coat and a similar man driving a car laden with explosives. The problem with gaming mines and IED is that if you put a marker on the table, no player will go anywhere near it. With mines, you can slide a marker under a road or track (sometimes with an arrow pointing to a mined verge). For the IED, I hit upon using a 1 inch long by ¼ inch wide sliver of card pointed at one end. This was placed at the site of the (virtual) "dicker" controlling the mine. It was marked underneath with "Radio" or "Wire" and the distance to the target site (or sometimes "dummy" or "false"), and its upper side painted in stippled ground colours. This proved very successful in concealing them from a casual look or distracted player, especially when placed next to a building or similar object.

INTENTIONS PAVING THE ROAD TO HELL

I had intended the game to be a mainly dismounted operation by a platoon split into two multiples, with support from vehicles and off-table only if things started going pear-shaped at the starts, with 3 players on each side. Having excess volunteers, I had to escalate to a company-level operation with Warrior platoon, Challenger troop, Artillery observer, MFC and I had set it up for non-cooperation between the insurgent factions, and had thoughts of the Fakir's car bomb being used to demolish the police station; or for him to conceal a sniper in the mosque to drag in the Mullah's men, who would then launch wild uncoordinated attacks on the soldiers. However, this was not to be, because the soldiers had a Cunning Plan. This was devised by Steve Bowns, who I had made British commander because (a) he had been a real infantry company commander, ( his consultancy company had in effect financed the rules and © because he is a mad scratch-builder who had modified some of my SA-80 armed figures with LSW, so that each "brick" had one of these as well as its Minimi LMG (and had painted Minden flashes on the gunners) and had turned up on the day with a lovely Predator drone built out of plasticard.

THE GAME

The game started an hour before dawn would be signalled by the call to prayer from the mosque. Steve had infiltrated his infantry dismounted under cover of darkness. One section pounced on the isolated house, kicking in the door with big soldier boots on catching a pair of insurgents (an element) asleep. These protested their innocence, and when I diced for the query card also in the house it said the same, so they were politely detained but their AK and cell phones removed. The other two sections entered the table through the Green Zone trees, and started moving down the streambed. At this point, the only locals moving were the Mullah, preparing for the call to prayer, a few fake policemen setting up a road block and a solitary innocent motorist possibly intending to sneak past the road block before it was ready.

There was now an extremely loud bang, because the motorist had found the "mother of all bombs", removing him and the section of roadway. Very unlucky. If I had not thrown a 1, the pressure plate would have been set for a heavier vehicle... Everyone woke up, though most stayed indoors until they had found out what was going on (unexpected loud noises deduct 1 PIP). Two fake policemen went to the wreck but found nothing valuable had survived. Two others stopped a beaten-up old Chrysler in the town and shook down the driver. While they were engaged in this, another car overtook. They were possibly quite lucky they had not stopped this one, since the driver had staring eyes... He parked a little up the road. All this was now being watched by the Predator far overhead.

More ominous noise and dust was now occasioned by the arrival of 3 Challengers and 4 Warriors at the western end of the table, where they sat revving their engines and attracting attention. The call to prayer now rang out, preventing the Mullah's young supporters hastening to the edge of town to find out what was going on. A group of fake policemen at the edge of town saw the tanks and decided not to attract attention. A Warrior with the section that had raided the isolated house went forward to question the pair that had investigated the car. These decided at the last moment to shoot it out, but were overpowered protesting before they could put finger to trigger. A cell phone message (passed note) from the Shaik to the Mullah was noted by a Nimrod and its position of origin in the police station passed to the British commander.

While all this was going on, the two sections of infantry had waded down the stream bed until opposite the centre of the town, then emerged, formed a skirmish line and headed for the back wall of the police station. Until then, they had been invisible from its windows and there had been no one on the roof or in the tower. AK now opened up on the advancing soldiers, who took cover and shot back. Almost simultaneously, the top of the tower was demolished by a 120mm HESH shell from one of the Challengers. The other two missed and I hope they did not happen to anyone that did not deserve it. This was actually the only bit of non-proportionate response by the Brits - they could have used a single practise KE shot! The section shot back. An ILAW failed to make a big enough breach for entry (there being no door in that wall), but Minimi and SA80 suppressed the windows and an under-slung launcher put a grenade through one of them and killed the Shaik. The second section did find a door and enter the house next door, which was empty.

At this point, the dinner bell went and we had to stop. The session before lunch is only an hour and a half, which is not long enough for a big game. I should have been greedy and asked for a double session. The Mullah's men never got involved and the Fakir never had a chance to use his explosive surprises. Not that they would have done him much good, because those nearby were radio controlled and were being jammed. IED would have been useful to hinder access from the river, but even wire-detonated IED would have had a good chance of being spotted by troops in skirmish mode. With the most important insurgent faction leader dead, half a dozen of his men captured and the rest distracted by tank fear, it was quite a model victory for the British army. And I never had to bring in Steve's nice little model Harrier.

[dieseltaylor]

Amusing. Nice to hear some of the grand old names of wargaming.

Another deliberate asymetric game was called Seastrke. Both sides chose a card and the forces and the objective the force was tailored to were read. One side might have a slight objective like nail two patrol boats and the other side might have take out two AA sites and the HQ, or sink a cruiser.

Played on the floor with cut-out counters it was always a tricky one to play. But a very clever system. Possibly I still have my copy.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7590/seastrike

[Stalins Organ]

I remember that too - yep, played on floors oh...25 years ago??!