The History of Wargaming Project

The project aims to make the largest possible collection of wargaming books and rules available to the modern reader. Ranging from second editions of wargaming classics, to professional wargaming rules used by the military and innovations in current wargaming.

History of Wargaming Project Logo
Documenting the Development of Wargaming
Recreational Wargaming Professional Gaming Serious games Military Novels Recourses Book Reviews Links Credits

Professional Wargaming

Matrix Games cover Matrix Games for Modern Wargaming Developments in Professional and Educational Wargames Innovations in Wargaming Volume 2 14 Aug 2014
by John Curry and Tim Price MBE
“In Matrix Games, knowledge, imagination, and persuasiveness dominate. Both the referee and the players find their greatest success by drawing on their storytelling skills. In many ways, Matrix Games boil down the art of gaming to its essence”. Peter Perla Invented by Chris Engle, Matrix Games are an innovative way of wargaming situations and conflicts that traditional wargaming methods find hard to model. This book was written as a manual to help develop and run matrix games about modern conflicts. The examples included have all been used for real military training to develop understanding of complex confrontations. This book includes:
  • A foreword by Peter Perla, author of the classic Art of Wargaming.
  • An introduction to Matrix Games
  • S.C.R.U.D. Simple Combat Resolution Using Dice
  • The five scenarios are:
  • The Falklands War (1982)
  • Chaoslavia- Former Yugoslavia (1993)
  • Crisis in Crimea: A Counter Revolution (March 2014)
  • The Red Line- The Civil War in Syria (August 2013)
  • Lasgah Pol- Peace keeping in Afghanistan (2008)

Note: matrix games as noted in this work is a term used to describe the Chris Engle wargaming matrix game methodology and is not connected or related in any way to Matrix Games Limited or their video game products.

Paperback
Shipping UK/ BFPO
£12.95 + £1.50 shipping
 

Paperback
Shipping EU/ North America / Australia
£12.95 + £2.50 shipping 
 
Paperback
Shipping Rest of World
£12.95 + £5.00 shipping
 
Product details:
     Paperback: 56 pages
     Publisher:
History of Wargaming    Project
     ISBN:
9781291979657 
     Dimensions (cm):
21.59 wide x 27.94 tall   


  Supporting Materials for Matrix Games

Matrix Game Handouts

The Falklands War (1982)
      Falklands Map
Chaoslavia (1993)
     Chaoslavia Map
     Characters
     Counters
Crisis in Crimea: A Counter Revolution (March 2014)
     Ukraine Map
     Characters
     Counters 1
     Counters 2
The Red Line: Civil War in Syria (August 2013)
     Map
     Characters
     Counters
Lasgah Pol- Afghanistan (2008)
     Lasgah Pol Map
     Characters
     Counters
Playing aids
     Failchits

Academic References for Matrix games

I was preparing a lecture on the use of wargaming for education for a conference at Bristol University in July 2016, when I started looking for references to the use matrix games (invented by Chris Engle). I stopped after the first 10.
Bryan R. (2016) Exploring matrix games for mass atrocity prevention and response https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/exploring-matrix-games-for-mass-atrocity-prevention-and-response/
Major Mouat T. (2016) Matrix games for language training https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/04/22/matrix-games-for-language-training/
Colonel Hall J. and Lt Col Chretien J. (2016) Matrix games at the US Army War College https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/matrix-games-at-the-us-army-war-college/
Taylor B. (2014) Toward serious matrix games https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/toward-serious-matrix-games/
Dixson M., Couillard M., Gongora T., Massel P. (2016) Wargaming to Support Strategic Planning  http://cradpdf.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/PDFS/unc223/p803607_A1b.pdf
Capt Davis C., (2016) Using a matrix game as an intelligence training tool https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/using-a-matrix-game-as-an-intelligence-training-tool/
Nicastro L. and Platz I (2016) “Burning Shadows”: Toward matrix gaming as a tool for joint professional military education https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/03/09/burning-shadows-toward-matrix-gaming-as-a-tool-for-joint-professional-military-education/
Major Mouat T. (2015) Cyber Operational Awareness Course matrix game https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/cyber-operational-awareness-course-matrix-game/
Bryan R. (2016) Exploring matrix games for mass atrocity prevention and response https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/exploring-matrix-games-for-mass-atrocity-prevention-and-response/

 

Review of Matrix Games by Rex Brynan

First published on the Pax Sims Blog on 20/9/16 and is reproduced with permission

“Matrix games” were first invented by Chris Engle in the early 1990s as a free-form, umpired alternative to more rigid, rules-based games. In a matrix game players typically take turns making an argument about what they wish to do, why they believe they would be successful, and what effects they expect this to have. Other players may be invited to identify counter-arguments. The outcome is then adjudicated by the umpire, with or without the use of dice.

PAXsims was recently involved in running a matrix game on the situation in northern Iraq, accounts of which you’ll find here and (via John Curry) here. You’ll also find some published games available at Hamster Press, and a large collection put together by Tom Mouat here.

Game map of Ukraine

Matrix Games for Modern Wargaming is a slim volume by John Curry and Tim Price that outlines how to play such a game. It introduces the topic, including a brief history of the approach and examples of how it has been used within the UK defence sector and elsewhere. The booklet includes a concise discussion of the rules and procedures used, different options for resolving player arguments, as well as a simple system for determining the outcome of battles between military forces. In addition,  the authors have useful suggestions for how to deal with arguments that players wish to keep secret from others, when outcomes should require multiple sequential successful arguments, dealing with ongoing effects, and how to finish and review such games. More than half the booklet consists of five ready-to-play games, complete with scenarios, briefings, objectives, maps, and (for most of these) copy-and-cut game counters too: The Falklands  War (1982); Chaoslavia (set in the Bosnia c1993); Lasgah-Pol (a fictional tactical scenario set in Afghanistan c2008); Red Line: Civil War in Syria (chemical weapons use in Syria, 2013); and Crisis in Crimea (March 2014, but easily modified and updated for subsequent or future developments). A version of the latter is also available via an earlier PAXsims article on contemporary Ukraine-themed wargames).

Certainly the volume contains everything one needs to design, facilitate, and play such a game. I would have liked to have seen a somewhat longer discussion of game techniques, strengths, weaknesses, and challenges, as well as possible modifications and alternative approaches. It would have been useful to examine how matrix games can be linked to other gaming methods (for example, providing the strategic backdrop for a series of operational- or tactical-level games), and how such games could be run by email or otherwise used in a “distributed” approach with players in different locations or playing asynchronously. Indeed, as I write this review I’m struck how easily and effectively an online role-playing game platform like Roll20 (which allows multiple players to share and manipulate an online game board while linked by video, voice and text communications) could be used to host a matrix game.

Not surprisingly for a guide published by the History of Wargaming Project, the volume places most of its emphasis on the gaming of war and warfare. However, as the authors note, matrix games can be used to game pretty much anything in which there are multiple actors with differing or overlapping objectives. It would be very easy to imagine running a matrix game of the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa, for example.

Finally, while I found the booklet clear and straight-forward in its presentation, I do think it would have been useful to have extended at least one of the brief examples to a longer narrative of a few rounds of play in order to give neophyte players or umpires a better sense of how a game might unfold.

That being said, Matrix Games for Modern Wargaming is the most useful publication yet available on how to use such games for serious analytical purposes. I certainly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn about the method, and how to use it for serious and not-so-serious wargaming alike.

Copyright John Curry (2016) About    Credits