ULTRAMODERN WARFARE

This article is one I'm hoping to offer to Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy magazine as a quid pro quo for some advertising space. If they bite (and, thus far, I've had a nibble) then I'll pass it on to them for publication in a few months' time. If not, it'll appear on TTGUK in due course.

In recent years, we’ve seen a small growth in rules sets offering players the option of wargaming in the tail-end of the 20th Century or the first half of the 21st. Spectre Operations, Force on Force, Black Ops, Team Yankee and the criminally-unappreciated Oscar Sierra Charlie are just a few that have popped their heads up to take on this area.

But given that console and PC games set in a modern or ultramodern environment are chart-topping hits, it’s surprising that more miniatures wargames haven’t chosen to take on this subject. I have some thoughts as to why this might be the case, which we’ll get to in a moment. But I also have some thoughts on the features designers need to think about when writing ultramodern games - and which players can use to help house-rule their favourite miniatures game into an ultramodern setting, if they feel so minded.

ETHICS AND THE ULTRAMODERN WARGAME

Although games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Counterstrike and Rainbow Six: Siege have strutted confidently through the ultramodern genre without much more than the usual controversy, the recent announcement that the delayed 2009 game, Six Days in Fallujah, will be having a general release later this year resulted in an immediate media explosion. I don’t plan to unpick the rights or wrongs of this game here, but it’s enough to point out that, whilst folks are generally comfortable with the concept of ultramodern warfare in a fictional setting or when the targets are clearly Bad Guys (preferably either terrorists or communists or both), putting it into a real-life historical context requires a great deal more nuance.

Miniatures wargames are never going to attract the kind of sale-boosting headlines that have made Six Days an obvious bestseller before it’s even been released. But, if anything, that makes getting the tone right on an ultramodern game absolutely critical, because in a market where success is measured in hundreds of sales, rather than millions, even just a few dozen people talking down a game for political reasons can leave an otherwise excellent design floundering.

In the case of Six Days the controversy was regarding the very idea of making entertainment - or even edutainment - out of a conflict whose survivors are still living with its scars. But the controversy in miniatures gaming goes deeper than that when wargamers themselves are, in their vast majority, living in countries on a single side of any recent conflict. The recorded history of these conflicts is still being unpicked. It is hard to deny, then, that a player’s understanding of the cultural context of an ultramodern faction is going to be vastly different depending on whether they are commanding a platoon of US Marines or a brigade of the Mujaheddin.

When we move into conflicts in the community of African states, then, another hot-button issue enters the pictures: that of race. The existence of violent amateur militias fuelled by a heady cocktail of radical religion, drugs, tribalism and aggressive music is undeniable, but - for all the visual appeal of such fringe groups - to give them too much prominence (especially when well-organised, trained and disciplined armed forces are more common on both sides of African regional conflict) is to tap into racist tropes to no one’s benefit.

ULTRAMODERN FUN

Having said all of that, I don’t want to discourage you from playing ultramodern miniatures wargames. They are fun. I am an Army veteran and, although I served in neither Iraq nor Afghanistan (through circumstances that may have been lucky or unlucky depending on whether you’re me or my family), I certainly had many friends and colleagues who did. Some didn’t come back. Some came back with parts of either their body or their mind irreparably damaged. So I’d like to put it clearly on the table that you can simultaneously acknowledge these facts and still have fun playing a wargame in an ultramodern setting, just as you can have fun when you play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare or any of its various relatives.

To maximize the fun you have playing an ultramodern game, I would make these suggestions:

1. Play a faction you can identify with. You don’t have to agree with them, but you at least have to understand their point of view.
2. Play scenarios in which all sides have something positive to achieve. If your only objective is to kill the enemy, it encourages you to dehumanize them. If, on the other hand, each side is trying gain something specific then it makes sure that you stay invested in their motivations.
3. Acknowledge that everyone is equally ultramodern, even if they express it in different ways. Tribal fighters still have smartphones, and some of them may be better educated than you are.

So, with that said, let’s look at the features of an ultramodern game and how you can either build these into a new system or adapt an existing system to include them.

WHAT MAKES ULTRAMODERN?

Ultramodern Warfare is Asymmetric

Unless you are playing a Red Dawn Rising or Team Yankee-style World War Three scenario, its is likely that your two sides are going to have a significant disparity in technological supremacy. This is the most obvious expression of asymmetry and feeds into the next most obvious: that of numbers. Generally, where there is technological asymmetry in the favour of one side, there will be general numerical supremacy in favour of the other.

But this leads us to the key point about asymmetry in ultramodern warfare: it is a function of tactical planning. A key feature of modern tactical planning which has, as far as I know, been unchallenged for over half a century is that you do not willingly engage an enemy without having tactical superiority. And, not only that, but the minimum level of tactical superiority you are expected to hold is a three-to-one ratio.

But in an age of asymmetric warfare, how one defines a three-to-one ratio will vary enormously. Is a single Delta Force commando worth three regular infantry? What if that infantry has an Apache helicopter in support? How does it affect the ratio if one side is fighting from within a defended position?

Good news! You don’t have to know the answers to any of these questions. You just have to be aware that they are questions. If you are presenting any sort of ultramodern game, you need to have some way to express asymmetry. The most popular approach is “one small, elite force versus one large, irregular force”. But there are many other ways of doing it. One small, regular force in an isolated defensive position, with low morale and limited supplies may well face a tough fight against a well-motivated enemy with plentiful ammunition even if the numbers of the attackers are equal to or even less than those of the defenders.

But avoid the temptation of a scenario in which two equal sides just “happen upon each other”. In ultramodern warfare, that situation only goes in one of two directions. Either both sides carefully move away from each other, avoiding conflict; or they enter an extended period of stalemate only broken when one side is faster than the other in bringing reinforcements to bear that gives them superiority.

Ultramodern Warfare is Mission Oriented

Modern forces don’t enter a situation in which lives are on the line without purpose. And that purpose is never simply to destroy the enemy. The destruction of the enemy is always geared towards some greater objective. The closer and more intimate you can make that objective, the more interesting your game experience will be.

For example, if the object is to seize control of an airport, the battle to secure the air traffic control tower before it can be destroyed (or to destroy it before it can be seized) will be more interesting that the fight to clear the enemy from the vicinity of the main entry point.

Or if the object is to ensure that a convoy of civilians/traitors (depending on your perspective) makes it to the demilitarized zone, the mission to protect the civilians will be more interesting that the one to capture a nearby potential mortar site.

That’s not to say, incidentally, that these latter examples might not be interesting games. But the games that are closest (physically and conceptually) to the objective tend to be more interesting.

If you can see it, you can hit it...

A common problem with - especially - sci-fi wargames is a tendency towards absolute range limits. The idea behind this is that, if ranged combat beyond, say, 24” is possible, no one will ever get into the exciting close quarter battle! But if you want to give a feeling of ultramodern combat, you need to get away from thinking about the game and get back to thinking about the battle.

In an ultramodern context, conflicts very rarely take place in open, featureless areas. And, when they do, they tend to involve one side ambushing the other, which makes for a short, dull wargaming experience, so avoid them. Instead of adapting the rules to accommodate the tabletop, adapt the tabletop to accommodate the rules. Infinity the Game has made a huge impact on miniatures skirmish games by opening up a world in which a 4’x4’ table positively filled with terrain is now a common sight. Ultramodern games don’t necessarily need the neon cyberpunk look of Infinity, but a diverse range of dense terrain will really enhance the experience and make it possible to give all weapons an essentially-infinite range. These may be fences, ditches, shipping containers, abandoned vehicles, small clusters of buildings, large rock formations, undulations or wadis… whatever suits your collection and vision. But don’t stint.

The consequence of making long-range firepower possible is that players will shoot when they can. The consequence of plenty of terrain is that players will close with the enemy when they can. Get these two factors in balance, and you’ll have a compelling ultramodern play experience.

Of course, I should add that, just because you can hit something, doesn’t mean that you will. How you handle range modifiers is up to you, but there are two basic approaches from which to choose: shooter or target. You can either make the odds of the firing mini succeeding much smaller (for example by increasing the odds of a hit from 4+ on a d6 to 5+ and even 6+ at the longest ranges), or you can make the odds of the target avoiding the fire much larger (for example, from 4+ on a d6 to 3+ or even 2+). Or, of course, you can combine the two.

...If you can hit it, you can kill it

Ultramodern weapons are designed to hurt. A lot. The object of most infantry body armour isn’t to allow a soldier who has been hit to keep fighting, but to allow a soldier who has been hit to be evacuated to safety before they die. A hit on a kevlar helmet - even a glancing blow - will leave a soldier dazed and unable to continue fighting for several minutes. A direct impact on the ceramic/steel chest plate from a 7.62mm AK round may not penetrate (depending on the range it was fired from) but it will break ribs and leave the soldier incapable of continuing to fight.

It has been said - albeit denied by the authorities - that the 5.56mm NATO standard round wasn’t only chosen for its lighter weight over the 7.62mm round, but because it was more likely to lead to wounding/disabling hits than lethal ones. And it’s a truism of modern warfare that, if you kill an enemy, you remove one enemy. But if you wound one, you remove two, because their buddy will stop to render first aid. Wounded soldiers also consume more logistical effort and expenditure than dead ones, as evacuating them is a high priority and they continue to drain time and resources in their medical care.

But for wargaming purposes our interest isn’t really whether a hit target is dead or not. “Dead”, in wargaming, is really just a state that indicates that a hit target will play no further role in the game.

And anything that can be hit can be “killed”, from an infantry soldier to a main battle tank. Small arms fire may not be able to harm the people inside an MBT, but it can deafen and disorient them, and they never know if one of those attackers - who are close enough to hit them with small arms fire, after all - might be preparing to fire an RPG or anti-tank missile that could ruin their day.

Of course, as with the odds of hitting a target at long range, the odds of damaging a vastly more armoured target with a low-powered weapon must be commensurately very small. But the odds - in ultramodern wargaming - should never be zero.

Ultramodern Warfare is Technological

If you restrict your hardware in an ultramodern game to rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and armoured vehicles, you might as well play Bolt Action.

The aesthetic of ultramodern warfare needs to focus on the application of novel battlefield technologies, from night vision, to satellite overheads, to drones, to electronic warfare, to IEDs, to smartphones. Modern combat forces wear bodycams. Special forces units on mission-critical deployments may be watched, real-time, by their elected officials. Even low-tech militias may be using smartphones held by civilians to stream enemy locations, or to make footage for propaganda purposes.

You need to find creative ways to inject cutting-edge battlefield technology and innovative use of commercial electronics into the narrative of your games. This is one of the most fun parts of working on an ultramodern game or adaptation, and you should feel free to get imaginative, whether it’s using camera drones or a machine gun on a Boston Dynamics robot. You can easily push this over the edge into science fiction, of course, but at a push almost anything you can imagine - from a powered armour frame to a laser rifle - could be subject to classified field trials.

Ultramodern Warfare is Public Warfare

If you want to give your ultramodern game that extra twist to really summon up the feeling of 21st Century combat, you need to get the media involved.

Whether you go for the direct presence on the battlefield of a camera crew, or just have some impact upon morale or objectives influenced by media pressure (such as having the rules of engagement made tighter if a player accidentally killed a civilian in a previous mission), this will really embed the game in the here-and-now. And this is only more intense, with the explosion of “citizen journalists”, streaming real-time footage of international conflict to social media sites and into the hands of the general public all over the world.

Last Thoughts

I hope this brief trip through the opportunities and challenges of ultramodern wargaming has given you some food for thought and, with luck, some inspiration. Although I mentioned some games at the start that already seek to provide an ultramodern gaming experience - and do so with various degrees of success - but you don’t need to pick up one of these to do ultramodern wargames (I mean, you can, of course, and you definitely should, but you don’t have to).

Sci-fi skirmish games like Infinity, Core Space or Horizon Wars: Zero Dark can already be easily adapted to an ultramodern setting just by stripping away the power armour and sci-fi and making some house rules along the lines I described above. Even tabletop stalwarts like Warhammer 40,000 can be adapted to play ultramodern games if you just want to try out a Modern Warfare-style tabletop gaming experience without jumping into a whole new game.

And, doing so, you can even start to mix and match genres. If you’ve got an ultramodern adaptation of 40k, now add Tyranids back into it for that Starship Troopers feel. Or if you’ve got a nice ultramodern version of Core Space going on, you can stick the Purge alongside your squad as bipedal support drones (that may or may not go haywire and end up being your enemy, later).

But, as a final note, it’s important to say that ultramodern might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Just as some players may not want to play against a Waffen SS army in a game of Chain of Command, so not everyone is going to want to re-enact events from the Syrian Civil War or Blackhawk Down. And it’s important to respect these feelings even if you disagree with them. The ultramodern setting offers all kinds of hypothetical future or classified conflicts you can tap into, and adding those more cutting-edge technological elements can help to separate the ultramodern from the modern day in a way that makes it accessible and fun for all.