Thread by @LivFaustDieJung

If you've ever played a certain Falklands War wargame in an academic or other setting, you are probably familiar with the style of wargame where the two sides do not see each other and work in different rooms. A deciding factor I've found, in any wargame setup this way, is not

the tactical choices you make. It's not the broader strategic approach or leadership style you bring to the fight. It's not the randomness of the dice fucking you over/helping you out. It's not the brilliance of your teammates.

You know who wins these wargames? The side with CoC

experience. The side with data management skills.

The side that fills every white board in the room with every piece of data they can get. The side that is tracking not just enemy losses but clearly displaying their remaining strength, force allocations, logistics constraints

etc etc. You don't need to come up with PIR/CCIRs for a wargame that's a bit much & they'll always be in the room with you. But you can write down the rules, any known victory/loss conditions so no one forgets. Spam that shit everywhere the way you would in a ToC/CoC. When my

class played the Falklands Game i was the J2 for the Argentine forces. We handily sunk the British aircraft carriers, most of their amphibs, & stalled the assault long enough to meet victory conditions. (& This is where my Falklands war jokes come from). Not because we made

brilliant tactical decisions. But because myself & a former soldier had both worked in a battalion ops center. And just asked that each role in the wargame (air/ground/naval commanders and subordinate commanders, logistics, intel & command) maintain a tracking board for their

piece of the pie. As one of the planes got shot down/incap'd we tracked it, clearly in a way we could all read. Doubly so if we destroyed an enemy unit. Keeping the total number of enemy aircraft known to us at the start & the total number remaining, opened flexibility for the

commander to take risks he could not have without fast access to the data. The game ended & we swapped rooms. We were stunned to see they had written almost nothing on their white boards and were not tracking our losses at all. Their randomness made a lot more sense when we

realized they had no data from which to form a plan beyond where they had physically spotted our ships/planes and their guestimate to how much we had left.

Anyway, my point being, I've participated in a lot of war games where the teams are separated/can't see the other's pieces.

The winner is super frequently whomever battle tracks better. And I'm super thankful to my Master Guns and Ops Chief for forcing us to undergo frequent battle drill training that almost entirely consisted of battle tracking invisible armies & keeping massive amounts of data up to

date for the commander. It's made every subsequent war game infinitely more rewarding and I learn more from them.

If you work ops, battalion staff, academic settings that wargame, intel etc etc, make your staffs/teammates battle track during their wargames. See the impact.

Not sure who actually cares for this so tags: @MarkHertling @BA_Friedman @MAGTravF @RPG_volley @PAO_kaylahaas @SashoTodorov1 @br4s1d4s @thinkdefence @TheKimulation @GirlSecurity_ @AllegedKurd