"Kriegsspiel Made Easy #1 - Creating the Experience" by the International Kriegsspiel Society, April 24, 2024
An ongoing series of articles/videos to provide tools for leaders and teachers in order to develop adaptability to succeed in a culture of Mission Command and Maneuver Warfare.
Vandergriff note: While at Georgetown Army ROTC 2000-2005, we introduced the use of Tactical Decision Games (TDGs), Case Studies, as well as Kriegspiels. After we did the first Kriegspiel, we had so many cadets sign up for the next sessions, there were too many to play. They could only observe. We also set up a Maneuver Warfare Club that met monthly, as well as hosting additional staff rides and paint gun sessions. The enrollment was good and remained that way my entire time at Georgetown ROTC.
The same went with TDGs. If due to some change to our curriculum such as a surprise visitor or administrative requirement I could not ignore (or blow off), the cadets would be upset that we were not doing a TDG. They liked them that much. Many times, they would follow me to my office to talk about the particular problem. A few times, I had to tell cadets to get to their next class so their grades would not suffer. It was a great time to be a facilitator seeing OBL (before it was called that) work in action making and preparing cadets for leadership roles.
We also used Kriegspiels and TDGs in exams. The cadets would be presented an overall scenario at the start, and have begin writing their OPORD. As the process continued, they would get updated intelligence. While writing the OPORD, noise in the form of loud music, would be piped into the room to apply stress. As the end of their OPORD writing phase, they had to make a decision to stick to their plan or what they would modify. This was all in writing form.
Later, each cadet would be brought in to the teacher to discuss their results of their decision, as well as how they translated this in their OPORD. When cadets later became officers or in some cases NCOs, and also leaders in the civilian world, they would contact us to let us know how these tools provided them an edge in combat and in the real world.
Start preface to video.
In this video we will explore how Kriegsspiel scenarios create the pace and command tension that makes playing a unique wargaming experience. Kriegsspiel was invented in 1824 as a tool to teach staff officers about operations. It is the ancestor of modern wargaming. Updating the format with online tools, we can capture the excitement and variety of command in for players. The International Kriegsspiel Society has as it mission to help make Kriegsspiel accessible to everyone.
Websites to gain additional tools and lessons learned on how to teach and develop adaptability and decision making.
Check Kriegsspiel website to learn more:
https://kriegsspiel.org/
Also check out Bruce I Gudmundsson’s The Tactical Notebook website, “In keeping with the motto “everything old is new again,” The Tactical Notebook combines more than six hundred explorations of unsung aspects of recent military history with attempts to make sense of ongoing conflicts, reviews of books and podcasts, and decision-forcing case studies. So, if you are blessed with an abiding interest in “the armies that are, the armies that were, and the armies that might have been,” you have come to the right place.”
“The following links will take you to pages that will give you a sense of the sort of things published by The Tactical Notebook. (The Gateway is organized by subject. The articles in the archive Archive are listed by date of publication. The About page will tell you a little about the history The Tactical Notebook. The Method in our Madness lays out the philosophy that guides our work.”
And check out the Warfare Mastery Institute. “The WMI does many things that complement the work done by the Tactical Notebook. In particular, it publishes articles, e-books, decision games, and complete multimedia courses related to warfare in the last hundred years or so. Better yet, the WMI covers areas, such as naval warfare and aviation, that the Tactical Notebook tends to neglect.
With that in mind, I am delighted to remind readers that WMI offers, at no additional cost, full access to its material to each and every paid subscriber to the Tactical Notebook.https://www.warfaremastery.com/”
That website gave my computer aids.