Friend or Foe

Historical Miniature Wargaming Channel Little Wars TV has put out a "record a video of your game" challenge. Quick Strike AAR Challenge "We are officially throwing down a challenge to every historical wargamer who owns a camera. We want to see your best historical miniature battles at home in a new, easy-to-produce video format that we're calling the "Quick Strike AAR Challenge!"  There just three rules for entering the challenge: (1) The video must be under 10 minutes long (2) Your report must include some historical background, the scenario description and objectives (3) Recap the entire battle, start to finish! The rest is up to you!

I posted about these before, in Professional Wargaming . But I just continue to be very impressed with the production quality, interest, historicity and to much of the lessons apply equally to wargaming as warfighting of the videos produced by The Army University Press . Some people may not like the Army doctrine educational aspect. But I love it. When I was in the USN I checked out every manual I could from the library. And when I wa deep into the computer game Combat Mission I read several U.S. Army FM books. Because real life tactics worked in that game. Their latest series France '44 has got me really wanting to break out OCS Beyond the Rhine. First is " The Wet Gap Crossings at Nancy " detailing crossing major water obstacle with mechanized forces. The latest, " The Encirclement at Nancy ", I found more interesting. Detailing encirclement of German forces in and around Nanncy and the German's failed counterattacks.

Professional in that war fighting is your job, aka military. Rather than "playing" for fun, you game to become better at your job. These professional war games really confused me ~30 years ago as a college freshman looking up war games in Univ of Kansas libraries. It's a different world . Yet the commercial war gaming hobby (and RPG hobby ) owes it's existence to military war gaming. I've since found it interesting to peak over the fence from time to time. This recent article on Teaching Professional Wargaming  provided the inspiration for this post. Invicta Youtube channel recently had a series on the US Naval War College. Specifically it's history of war gaming. Extremely informative on how professional war gaming works. Tangential to war gaming but in line with educating professionals, The Army University Press Youtube channel has several excellently produced analyses of famous battles with the objective of highlighting and teaching modern US Ar...