The stewardship of the U.S. economy is one of the most important political concerns for modern U.S. presidents, and American economic performance has a large and undeniable impact on election outcomes. Yet Mr. President isn’t, and doesn’t want to be, a macroeconomic simulator. The complexity of macroeconomic modeling, the limited effectiveness of most economic tools, time delays, confounding factors… the list goes on and on, and macroeconomics in particular (the study of aggregates, as opposed to microeconomics’ focus on how individual people and firms make decisions) has competing schools of academic thought. Mr. President is about a balancing act at a higher level, and the problems you’ll confront are more practical.
This Crisis card represents a major bank failure. Like many other Cascading Events it has a clear play-around: if you can rescue the economy and get it back to 6 or more, then its stage 2 and 3 events will fizzle. Many of the economy-themed Crisis cards adjust one of the four State of the Economy tracks modeled in the game – U.S., China, Russia, and the Eurozone.
Sometimes one power’s economic problem is another’s opportunity – here we see Crisis Card #72, Oil Prices Spike to Record Highs. This card shows a unique pattern: in addition to immediate political pain in the form of Domestic Crisis and a Public Approval penalty, the public demands specific action in the form of energy independence legislation. Russia, as a major gas exporter, gets an immediate economic bonus; and if China and the U.S. are on good terms, a deal can be struck to help both countries recover.
But why do these economic tracks matter? For you, as U.S. President, a strong economy will offer political advantages. At high levels, you’ll get continuous upward pressure on your approval rating, bonus Action Points, and Congress will warm to you (every elected official wants to be seen as part of the solution to economic problems!). You’ll also get Economic Assistance actions that allow dice-free improvements to relationships with foreign allies or Regional Alignment – and those are precious, because it’s often easy to miss on them with standard actions, and high Regional Alignment will help you counteract the spread of Russian and Chinese influence. But a poor economy will cost you in all of these things, particularly with respect to your relations with Congress.
For Russia and China, your peer rivals in Mr. President, economic success brings bonus actions during their activation segments. This generally leads to more headaches for you: more influence spread, more military growth, or even war.
The Eurozone’s economy mostly drives that region’s Stability – at high levels, there are a couple of phases where the Eurozone can improve its Stability just by having a good economic level. Stability, of course, limits the presence of terror groups and civil wars, so more stability almost always means fewer headaches for you as President.
TRADE AND SANCTIONS
Two economic elements that get some explicit handling in Mr. President are Trade Agreements and Sanctions. Trade agreements, created with the Make a Trade Agreement action, require good relations with Congress to have a reasonable chance at passing, and carry a host of benefits and risks. In high Stability regions, they can lead to a lot of American economic gains on the State of the Economy and Public Approval tracks. They can also directly remove Russian and Chinese influence. But they can also lead to friction in both the trade partner’s Region and at home. Maximizing the impact of Trade Agreements requires a close eye on actions that preserve or improve Stability, and a strong relationship with Congress.
Sanctions, conversely, can only be targeted at four specific nations: Russia, China, the DPRK, and Iran. Sanctions make it harder for the latter two to develop their nuclear programs, and consume critical actions from Russia’s and China’s action budgets (which may mean fewer actions to spare for greater mischief).
WRAPPING UP
That may have seemed like a lot, but the simple track-based approach for modeling economic health, and the relatively small but well-purposed suite of actions that allows the player to interact with them, give economic considerations a scope and complexity budget appropriate to Mr. President’s big-picture design approach. The most complicated economic phenomena are reserved for the Crisis Cards, who can use their individual text to inject economic uncertainty and drama into the game without requiring players to learn a complicated economic model.
Ananda’s Previous Articles about digital Mr. President:
You can also check out Exia’s Mr. President Substack here for updates and perspectives from Exia’s artists, programmers, and developers.
This is the second in a series of InsideGMT articles from Paul Hellyer about his board game Tsar, currently on GMT’s P500. You can view the first article here.
As part of Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896, the Tsarist regime planned an event to placate the common people of Moscow: a giveaway of food, kvass, and souvenirs at the fairgrounds known as Khodynka Fields. By early morning, hundreds of thousands of people had already gathered in eager anticipation. As often happened, the government’s plans were incompetent. The number of police on hand was woefully inadequate and the terrain dangerously uneven. When rumors of a shortage circulated, the crowd surged forward, people began to stumble and fall into ditches, and mounted police were swept along with them. Within minutes, 1,300 people were crushed to death. That evening, Nicholas attended a ball as scheduled, leaving the impression he was indifferent. The “Khodynka Tragedy” (or “Khodynka Massacre” as some called it) became a symbol of the regime’s callousness. People took it as a sign that Nicholas’s reign was cursed.
In the game, a Coded Card recreates this event at a fixed point in time. In the first round of 1896 (the winter Quarter), players get an instruction to seed this card in the game board’s “Q+2” slot, meaning it will be played two Quarters later, in summer 1896. The card is viewable at any time so players can plan for it. Like all the events in Tsar, Public Banquet on Khodynka Fields presents a mix of historical reality and player agency: the event might unfold as it did in real life or, through careful planning, the players might achieve a happier outcome. To avoid the tragedy, players need a competent government (as measured by the Total Adviser Rating in the red circle) and at least 2 Gold (to buy adequate supplies).
These requirements are not particularly difficult to achieve, but like the real-life regime, players will be distracted by their own factional ambitions, which exist in tension with the need for responsible government. Will you appoint the most competent advisors, or prioritize your own Faction’s Characters to maximize power for yourself? Will you leave enough Gold for this event, or spend it on your Faction’s scoring goals? One player has an immediate incentive to avoid disaster: the player who controls the Tsar’s current “Favorite” Character. The Favorite occupies an asymmetric role in the game, with enhanced authority over government appointments and scheduling, but with the burden of personal responsibility for setbacks. If the Khodynka tragedy occurs, the Tsar will direct his anger at the Favorite, as represented by the yellow “Favor -2” icon shown on the card. The other players in the game might also want to avoid destabilizing the regime or, if they’re in a more aggressive mood, might deliberately maneuver toward disaster to unseat the Favorite. These factional problems drive the game’s strategy as well as its simulation of the weak government that plagued Russia in the Tsarist period.
The Port Arthur Coded Card is another example of a card based on a specific historical event. After winning the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Japan forced China to cede Port Arthur, a strategic port city in northwest China known today as Dalian. This move alarmed the Tsar, who coveted Port Arthur for its year-round, ice-free access to the Pacific Ocean. With support from France and Germany, Russia pressured Japan to give up its claims to Port Arthur, supposedly out of concern for Chinese territorial integrity. Next, Russia shamelessly grabbed Port Arthur for itself by pressuring China to sign a long-term “lease.” Japan was infuriated, and this incident became a key cause of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.
The Port Arthur Card has several functional differences as compared to Khodynka Fields. The latter card applies one of two possible outcomes based on current conditions without giving players any choice—although it does depend on choices players made before resolving the card. Port Arthur, however, is a Council Decision with two numbered options: as long as players meet the requirements for Option 2, they may choose between the two options. The choice is made collectively through a simple bidding process using Influence Cubes (we’ll discuss decision mechanics in more detail in a later article). Tsar uses a mix of condition-type cards like Khodynka Fields and decision-type cards like Port Arthur, but either way events always have alternate outcomes, ranging from two to six different possibilities.
Although Port Arthur is initially seeded at a fixed point in time (Winter 1896), it can be reintroduced through the randomly-drawn Era Card The Kaiser, so that if players fail to secure Option 2 on their first attempt, they might get a second chance later in the game. This is why Port Arthur’sOUTLOOK instruction for Option 1 tells players to return the card to its deck (so that it can be drawn again), while the OUTLOOK instruction for Option 2 tells players to remove the card from the game (so that players can’t seize Port Arthur twice). Likewise, The Kaiser’s Option 1 removes the card but Option 2 leaves intact the default discard rule for Era Cards. Many cards have distinctions like this in their OUTLOOK fields, so that the game can distinguish between outcomes that might recur and outcomes that can happen only once.
Another difference compared to Khodynka Fields is that Port Arthur is a scoring goal for the Autocracy and Pragmatism Factions, so this card is more likely to provoke a struggle in multiplayer games. But like all scoring goals in the game, seizing Port Arthuralso contributes some non-scoring benefits: it boosts Russia’s Trade Capacity, raises Navy Morale, and increases Popular Support in the Bourgeoisie Sector. It also avoids the Favor penalty that comes with Option 1. These other features give non-scoring players something to consider: in a solitaire game, Dynasty or Reform players might still want Option 2, and in a multiplayer game, they might dial back their opposition.
Aside from its immediate effects, Port Arthur also impacts the game’s narrative direction and legacy-style play. The “Japan -2” effect means that Russia’s relations with Japan are dropping by two points, putting Russia and Japan closer to war. You still have a chance to avoid war through diplomatic maneuvers or by shoring up your defenses, but otherwise, seizing Port Arthur means you will fight the Russo-Japanese War in Era II. (Each Era is played as a separate game in a legacy style, with Era II bifurcated into peacetime and wartime tracks.) This is one of the clearest examples of the way your choices in Tsar can change history.
Tsar’s Coded Card and Q-Slot system can also support longer-term, multi-stage events such as Trans-Siberian Railway. During Era I setup, you’ll place this Coded Card in the active Hand that players share; if players choose Option 1 (“Begin work . . .”), they’ll have a chance to apply Option 2 and complete a stage of the railway two Quarters later. At that point, the card will be reseeded in the Q+4 slot, so that work on the next stage can begin one year later. This card will remain in play until the railway’s three stages are complete. Aside from advancing the players’ scoring goals for Industrialization and Grain Production, Trans-Siberian Railway also alters the historical story, albeit in a more subtle way than Port Arthur. This card is one of many that shape the game’s economic history, which in turn affects the regime’s ability to project its power and survive. When war arrives, you will find the outcome depends on Russia’s infrastructure, economy, and political stability.
Many other events in Tsar are generated randomly through the shuffled Era Decks. These decks include “All Era” cards that mostly feature generic, repeatable events like Drought and The Tsar Greets a Crowd, mixed together with Era-specific cards like Bosnian Crisis (Era III), Greco-Turkish War (Era I), and Maxim Gorky (Era III). Because they are shuffled randomly, the timing of these cards is unknown and they may not be drawn at all. This enhances the variability of the game and gives players a mix of long-term planning goals and short-term opportunities. The more problematic events in the “Unrest” and “Famine” decks are also shuffled randomly, but these are drawn only under certain conditions. (Drought is one example of how a Famine Card might be triggered.)
The game also includes many events that never happened in history, but might have happened. During the Russo-Japanese War, the British Empire came very close to entering the war on the side of its ally Japan—and in this game, that can happen if you don’t manage your relations with Britain carefully enough. Other alternate histories include political reforms that Nicholas II rejected in real life, Russian control of the Turkish Straits (see the Coded Card above), a military alliance with Germany, and construction of the Moskva-Volga Canal. That last one is something that actually occurred later (during the Stalinist period), and there are a few other features in the game that draw their inspiration from post-1917 events.
In the next InsideGMT article in this series, we’ll examine how Tsar’s game engine simulates the regime’s stability and the possibility of revolution.
As seen on TV, or at least in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, the Leper King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem was a striking figure in a silver mask to hide his leprosy. There is no evidence that Baldwin IV wore a mask, though he suffered from disfigurement of his face and limbs as his disease advanced. When he was young, he was considered quite handsome, though sometime after ascending the throne at around the age of thirteen his leprosy accelerated. How disfigured he was at the time of Montgisard is unclear with some sources saying he was unable to lead the army and others saying he was at the head of it. What is known is that six years later he could not walk unaided and was blind.
King Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Baldwin was thirteen when he ascended the throne and a regent was appointed. When he reached the age of fifteen and was King without a regent, he planned an invasion of the Ayyubbid Kingdom of Egypt. He had some success against Saladin in 1176, but needed ships to besiege the port cities along the coast. He formed a short-lived alliance with Byzantium that fell apart before they could make headway in the invasion.
While the army of Jerusalem was engaged in the north helping Raymond of Tripoli attack Hama, Saladin planned his own invasion of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from Egypt. Learning of Saladin’s plans, Baldwin IV, a teenager with leprosy but a most able commander, left Jerusalem with, according to William of Tyre, only 375 knights to attempt a defense at Ascalon, but Baldwin was stalled there by a detachment of troops sent by Saladin, who, again according to William of Tyre, had 26,000 men. Accompanying Baldwin was Raynald of Chatillon, Lord of Oultrejordain, who had just been released from captivity in Aleppo in 1176. Raynald was a fierce enemy of Saladin, and was the effective commander of the army, with King Baldwin too ill to command it personally.
The Christians, led by the King, pursued the Muslims along the coast, finally catching their enemies at Montgisard near Ramla. Saladin was taken totally by surprise. His army was in disarray, out of formation and tired from a long march. The Islamic army, in a state of panic, scrambled to make battle lines against the enemy. As Saladin’s army rushed to prepare, Baldwin began the charge across the sand.
The Jerusalem army smashed into the hurriedly arranged Muslims, inflicting huge casualties. The King, fighting with bandaged hands to cover his terrible wounds and sores, was in the thick of the fighting and Saladin’s men were quickly overwhelmed. They tried to flee but hardly any escaped. Saladin himself only avoided capture by escaping on a racing camel. Only one tenth of his army made it back to Egypt with him.
The historical text above was lifted from the Infidel Battle Book’s Historical Background for the Battle of Montgisard. In the game, the Army of Jerusalem is only 10 units arrayed against 65 Ayyubid units. That sounds like it should be a one-side loss for Jerusalem, but the Ayyubid army begins in complete disarray and within Charge range of the Knights!
(Note that the stream and hill in the image is ignored for the Battle of Montgisard)
You can learn more or pre-order the Men of Iron Tri-Pack 2nd Printing here.
In today’s article, I wish to discuss the context around designing A Fading Star as an ongoing conflict. The game covers a pivotal period of the Somali Civil War (2007-2014), which one could term “the golden age of Al-Shabaab.” But since I started working on the game and researching this topic, the situation that stemmed from this timeframe evolved. As the designer of a game about an ongoing topic, how do I position myself with those developments? What are some of the themes approached in the game that are still relevant today?
Let’s look at a timeline of the Civil War.
A timeline of the Somali Civil War, as covered by various different games
About a decade will have elapsed between the end of the timeframe depicted in AFS and when the game should hopefully hit the player’s table. Within that decade, the latest documentation I used to establish the model was from 2021. Simply put, there will be a 5-year “information void” where the latest expert studies and journalist investigations on the civil war will be unaccounted for in my model. And…that is all right! The first challenge in designing a modern ongoing conflict is to accept that we have to set hard bounds if we want to achieve a cohesive result, and to learn to not look back on this decision.
A less easy task is to contemplate the war’s latest developments and avoid seeing validation bias! In AFS, we ask open questions, some biased, some open-ended. How about checking some of those developments and how they relate to these game statements? Rather than a faction-per-faction analysis, let us focus on the Federal Government and how the institution operated over the years.
A “fixed” Somalia?
The Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) is comprised of six federal member states (FMS), each with its own degree of autonomy (or independence in the case of Somaliland). The biggest challenge for the internationally recognized government back in 2007 was to earn legitimacy and the trust of the FMS through state-building and interclan diplomacy. Not quite the easy fit when your seat of power is besieged by an all-mighty Islamist insurgency and your only military support at the time came in the form of an unpopular foreign occupation from eternal rival Ethiopia.
Through combined efforts with African Union forces, Al-Shaabab was ousted from all major urban centers in the country by 2012, allowing the FGS to achieve the minimal degree of legitimacy it needed for the country to start recovering from its status of failed state. The same year, delegates from most FMS would gather to approve a Provisional Constitution, setting another important milestone. A Fading Star’s timeframe closes around this period, with Al-Shabaab on the backfoot and still a looming number of tasks for the government to settle now that the country is back on track.
Navigating through several crises between institutions in the following years (2021 and 2024), the FGS would also see several political figures from various horizons being voted in by clan representatives, alternating between rival sides without blood being shed. After two traumatizing decades of warlord conflicts, Somali political apparel finally reached a minimum level of maturity, despite an endemic level of corruption at all levels of the state. This new state of affairs led to other important developments for the country: the lift of the weapon embargo in 2023, Somalia joining the Pan-African EAC economic alliance in 2024, and a victory at the International Court of Justice on a maritime dispute with Kenya. Without a doubt, the Somali State was back. However, this would be seeing the glass as half-full.’
With Great Power…
One important obstacle for the FGS has consistently been achieving authority and legitimacy among all member states. With foreign aid and weapons pouring into the hands of the new country’s military, a new temptation was born: bypassing interclan talks and instead coercing or corrupting the weaker states into submission.
Under President Mohamed Abdullahi “Farmaajo” Mohamed’s presidency (2017-2022), the FGS focused on large centralization efforts, using all tools available to bolster the government’s reach to the FMS, at the expense of the more autonomous Puntland and Jubaland.
In a more recent example set in 2024, an attempt by elements of the Somali National Army acting on behalf of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to oust Jubaland State President Ahmed Madobe was thwarted, ending with dozens of federal soldiers captured.
They were already prominent personalities in the” Al-Shabaab Golden Age” era portrayed in A Fading Star, and faces of the decentralization vs. federal consolidation efforts.
The same president has also been accused of focusing the counter-offensives against Al-Shabaab in his home region rather than in more militarily relevant areas. This temptation is nothing new, and interfaction violence has always been a large obstacle towards stabilizing the country and unifying the war effort against Al-Shabaab. In A Fading Star, this uneasy relation is reflected through the ability of the federal government to attack any Somali elements (unlike African Union forces), regardless of their affiliation, or to redirect foreign aid towards subjugating FMS elders (as a reminder the Pirates faction also include minor clans):
With friends like that…
Somalia’s relationship with its neighbors Ethiopia and Kenya is another important factor in the fight against Al-Shabaab and in stabilizing the state. Both countries have contributed an important number of troops that helped retake large parts of South-Central Somalia from the Islamist group, especially in the mid 2010s. Until recently they manned many of the Forward Operating Bases established to maintain a military presence in the areas reclaimed by Al-Shabaab.
It is an understatement to say that without those states, the situation would be most certainly different today. However, this assistance did not come out of pity, and it is no mystery that both Addis Ababa and Nairobi have a vested interest in stabilizing the country … up to a point, solong as it serves their national interests.
For example, with the FGS’ reach and potential increasing over the years, the relationship between Somalia and Ethiopia has been rocked from places like presidential bromance to Somaliland-related tensions, nearly bringing the countries to the brink of war.
While Mogadishu accepted the presence of Ethiopian troops in the peace-keeping process to make up for the small size of its forces, Addis Ababa was primarily seeking to secure its borders and did not hesitate to undermine any process that could have led to a strong, centralized Somalia. That is the adversity of these two actors, who need each other to achieve their short-term goals but whose long-term policies will inevitably clash and result in heightened tensions, threatening the whole region in the process.
An example of major development in this aspect came with the de facto dismantling of Ethiopian-backed Ahlu Sunna Waljama’a (ASW) after clashes with federal forces in 2015. ASW is a Suffi militia that was instrumental in fighting against the Islamist militants but also an entry tool in Somali affairs for Addis Ababa in the earlier years of the war.
This agitated relationship is nothing new in the Horn of Africa’s political landscape. In A Fading Star, it is reflected through the tumultuous link between the federal government player (TFG) and the AMISOM (African Union) faction, which includes forces from both Kenya and Ethiopia, and their respective goals.
The former tries to achieve a greater centralization of power through territorial control and the establishment of allegiances with local clans and embezzlement of FMS funds. The latter pursues the decentralization of Somalia through the ”4.5 formula” seeking more autonomous (some would say easy to manipulate) member states.
This political rift and manipulation of the Somali civil canvas are modeled through game elements such as the Support level in an area, the Patronage accumulated by the government, and the inescapable Clan Trouble that will appear when those factions try to contain one another (sometimes at the expense of the minor clans).
Some of the Events that reflect Nairobi and Addis Ababa’s long-standing policy of containing the influence of Mogadishu in its own country
A problem: Al-Shabaab is still (very) relevant today
I would like to clos0e this article with an important statement: as mentioned in the timeline above, the military situation on the ground to this day was close to a stalemate with none of the factions involved making breaking progress. The Somali National Army was being retroceded by many of the countryside FOBs as African Union peacekeeping troops were rolling out of the country. The Somali were now in charge of their own security, with the backing of many countries such as Kenya, Turkey, Egypt or the US still contributing essential logistics, troops, or trainers.
ATMIS is the transition mission that succeeded to AMISOM, with a role focused on support rather than kinetic operations against Al-Shabaab. Source : ACLED
However, at the time I am writing these lines, the situation in South Somalia is degrading as Al-Shabaab is making important progress towards the capital, Mogadishu, in a trend not far akin to the existential threat they posed back in 2007-2011. This situation could be the very consequence of the interclan fighting and political instability that the federal government has been navigating in recent years and described in this article.
This is a good reminder that modeling an ongoing conflict is about providing the tools to understand its underlying trends and dynamics, rather than “forecasting” an outcome. I hope the game will help you understand why past and future events transpire a certain way and what we can learn about matters such as small-state diplomacy, terrorism, state-building, and counter-piracy. But ultimately, when A Fading Star hits your table, please take this product as a modest take on the Horn’s affairs, during a precise time frame of the Somali civil war (2007-2014). Nothing else.
Despite the signs of progress made in securing Somalia’s future, the White Star is still not safe from fading away. As the country is especially sensitive to humanitarian crises amid conflict and climate-related disasters, please consider donating to NGOs that help on the ground, such as Action Against Hunger or the Danish Refugee Council.
While the game comes with 12 scenarios, there is also a 2-page roll-your-own scenario system that will generate a HISTORICAL situation in about 5 minutes, after which both players secretly choose from one of many historical forces of platoon-to-company size with which to fight.
-Chad Jensen on Combat Commander: Europe (2006)
Magical Realism
The premise of Combat Commander’s Random Scenario Generator teeters close to absurd for a board wargame. Not Campaign for North Africa absurd where you’re tracking pasta rations, but “is that even possible” absurd. Random variables that generate plausible wargame scenarios across the breadth of World War II sounds like magical thinking. The number of permutations that can be generated from the variables of the RSG are astronomical. Just the two Allies and their troop quality, across the five years in the base Europe box, has tens of thousands of combinations. Balancing the outputs, so that a high percentage of the generated scenarios exist within a margin of error for fidelity sounds impossible. Yet, you roll one up and the evidence is right there waiting to be played. Magical. I became obsessed with that magic, and as I studied it I soon found Chad’s secret – research and data. Understanding how this data bridged the gap between history and the model, was central to our design process for Combat Commander: Vietnam.
Orders of Battle and Support Tables from Combat Commander: Europe
Wargame systems are notoriously data driven. Variables on counters placed in hexes with scale measurements and visual references for terrain with modifying effects. Detailed play sequences, with phases referring to one or more charts to resolve actions with sub sequences. Where Combat Commander differs is that the majority of charts in the game are for the Orders of Battle (OoB) and Support. In other words, the tables are focused on the receipt of units and their weapons, not about their use.
A design decision Chad made was to put most of the actionable data onto the unit counters and in the fate decks. Many mistake this shift to card driven mechanics as an abstraction that might reduce the game’s fidelity. Yet these asymmetric decks pack more faction and game data across their card counts than you would find in most of the tables and charts from other wargames. They also keep the games flowing smoothly, the actions immediately resolved, with little need to consult a table to determine a result. The heavy lifting of the design is not in the play itself but rather how each game is set up. Becoming a strong Combat Commander player includes understanding how setup impacts play. This is taken one step further with the RSG, which includes scenario as well as unit set up. For Combat Commander: Vietnam we wanted to provide a similar level of agency for players, grounded in the history, but balanced by their choices.
Page from the RSG rules in Combat Commander: Europe
The Balancing Act
To shape the balance of the RSG system, Chad provides agency in the setup process. Players are able to build formations with a bid for initiative balanced against available support weapons and fortifications. Playing through the RSG and having to make these decisions takes practice but it is where the model reveals itself. With experience, players will find the fidelity of the scenarios they generate increase. This comes from an increased understanding of the Orders of Battle and Support tables, and their competitive values in various situations. That they map closely to their historical values for the theater and period generated reinforces the decision space of a historical company commander, and we wanted to take the same approach withCombat Commander: Vietnam.
The first two volumes of Combat Commander, Europe and Mediterranean, were originally designed as one box, a point stressed to us by Kai Jensen when we first started working on Combat Commander: Vietnam. In order for the system to work across multiple years and areas, all of the faction data had to be balanced against each other, which meant that they all had to be designed at once (the following volume Pacific, redesigned the system to account for the additional theater). The primary reason for this was the central role the RSG system had on the whole design. Even some designed scenarios are balanced against what the RSG might generate.
This is a testament to just how powerful Chad’s design approach was. By putting so much of his research and data into getting the variables of the RSG system right, he designed a sandbox from which any WWII engagement at the tactical level could be modeled and validated. Appreciative of this, our first goal for Combat Commander: Vietnam was to build from the premise and design an RSG system that could generate scenarios for any region, with historical combatants, across the 15 years of the Indochina conflict. If we got the RSG right it would mean we could design and validate scenarios for any engagement at the game’s scale.
Anderson, Arnsten, and Averch, Insurgent Organization and Operations (August 1967).
We went through a number of iterations for the Order of Battle tables for Combat Commander: Vietnam, sourcing documentation of the force composition and weapons across the factions. Translating this data to unit values on the OoB formed the basis of the RSG system. As we started working on building out the maps for the base game, pulling from the 1:50,000 scale maps used during the conflict, we could immediately check the composition of forces from the primary sources against how they would be represented by the RSG. After months of iterations we started to find the magic.
Orders of Battle with Support Tables from the Combat Commander: Vietnam Playtest Kit
Campaign for Randomness
As the map count for Combat Commander: Vietnam increased and we continued playing RSG scenarios across them, something started to feel missing. In isolation the playthroughs gave a decent overview of the types of small-scale engagements seen across the conflict, but, without the context to really place where and how they fit into the broader war effort. To provide that context, we had to bring something completely new to the Combat Commander system.
When it comes to military operations, the easiest way to provide context is to go up in scale, and understand the significance of an engagement to the higher command. Combat Commander was originally called Company Commander in reference to the scale it models. Going up from the company is the battalion. We posited that if Combat Commander: Vietnam players could play a series of connected games as a battalion campaign it would contextualize the choices made in the individual engagements to better understand why fighting in Vietnam was so different.
Records of an ANZAC Battalion’s Operations. The Combat Commander: Vietnam Campaign system is built to represent this level of operation.
Campaigns have been in Combat Commander since John Foley introduced them in the second battle pack. To this point however they have primarily been a way of sequencing scenarios, both designed and randomly generated, to play in a historical succession. This allowed players to fight out multiple days of battle in Normandy or Stalingrad to great effect. Yet, these campaigns have only existed as add ons, not parts of the core rules. The last challenge we gave ourselves with the Combat Commander: Vietnam design was to build out a campaign system that was a part of the core. This meant expanding the system to be able to generate random campaigns across the factions, for any region, at any time during the conflict.
Composing the large battles are any number of small fights, little connected, and sometimes at cross-purposes one with the other. Each is local and limited in the feelings of the men who engage. Company fights company, platoon goes against platoon. How the regiment or brigade fared as a whole is something that has to be computed later.
-S.L.A. Marshall, Battles in the Monsoon (1967)
From the Combat Commander: Vietnam core box, using the Random Campaign Generator (RCG), players will be able to generate an area of responsibility for a battalion commander over a month-long operation as a campaign. The perspective provided by this form of play contextualizes the individual engagements in a way that allows players to experience the decision space of Vietnam at the tactical level with the context to understand the implications of their decisions operationally.
Campaign Map showing a Free World Forces Battalion operating in a relatively remote, Communist controlled area of II Corps.
With the RCG system in place we are also able to design historical campaigns which allow players to replay known operations. So much of the research that went into the design captured primary accounts from all sides including their operational maps. The campaign framework is a direct reflection of this, with the historical campaigns providing the decision space of their historic counterparts.
What will come in the base box forCombat Commander: Vietnam will be all of the things players already love about the system. 24 scenarios that can be set up at any time for a dynamic game full of the flavor but grounded in the historical realities of the conflict. The RSG system will expand the scenario potential from those base maps increasing replayability. The amount of variety you will get playing one off scenarios will be satisfying to system veterans and newcomers alike.
The Hurricane II, FFV Magazine, May 1967
For those looking to form a better understanding of the war and how it progressed over time, Combat Commander: Vietnam’s Random Campaign Generator will prove to be the central experience. Playing campaigns with a single faction will provide a deeper understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. Across multiple campaigns you can see how their capabilities changed over time. Explore how the terrain in the different corps zones affected how formations operated. With the historic campaigns you can face the decisions of your historic counterparts.
All of this has been done in an effort to make Combat Commander: Vietnam the most comprehensive tactical wargame experience on the conflict. It gives players infinite replayability with the opportunity to enrich their understanding of the challenges faced by all sides during the war. Even more, all parts of the design are fully extensible which means future battle packs and expansions will provide even broader coverage. For anyone looking to immerse themselves in the Vietnam Experience, this is the starting point.
