War Game Review

By Dave Banks - Febuary 28, 2022

Reading Time: 5 min 

Background: Unless Canadian Army officers are lucky enough to serve with Allied forces, their exposure to operations at brigade and higher levels will likely be limited to attending Command and Staff College, or to participating in a UNIFIED RESOLVE or a MAPLE RESOLVE exercise. The opportunities to think, plan and fight at formation level are hard to come by. But, as the German Army learned in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a small army can still school its officers to think “upwards and outwards” so that when war comes, the fundamentals of combined arms fighting at formation level are already instilled in well-exercised theory. The game Operational Art of War IV provides a useful, challenging, and cost-effective tool to introduce, maintain and hone those fundamentals.

About the Game: The first version of Operational Art of War (OAW) was introduced in 1998 and is now in its fourth iteration. (You can read about its history here). While the game has the ability to represent combat from sub-unit up to army group level, its greatest strength lies in depicting the brigade/division/corps levels. It is a fairly standard “hex and counter”- type game, whose appearance may remind you of a board game, with basic map graphics and standard NATO symbology on counters. Do not let that fool you. Under the hood are the results of years of game design improvements that allow the game to consider a wide range of factors such as terrain, weather, fatigue, digging in, supply, weapon types, air support, vehicle capabilities and command and control each time it digitally resolves a combat action.

Scenarios: The game includes around 100 scenarios ranging in subject matter and period from the American Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam to Desert Storm and future hypothetical conflicts. A powerful scenario editor allows you to modify any of these scenarios or to create your own. Hundreds more scenarios are available through the online gaming community. Scenarios give you the opportunity to examine the many ‘what-ifs’ of military history.

Game Play: OAWIV uses a turn-based system known as ‘I Go-You Go’ which is similar to that used in any board game, although as conditions change the game will decide which player, human or Artificial Intelligence (AI), has the initiative to go first. Reinforcements are received (or not!), forces moved and deployed, and combats resolved. Games range in length from as few as 15 or 20 turns to over 100, depending on the scenario. Games can be played with either side as human or AI, or ‘head-to-head’.