Best posts made by Redleg13A

Hello all, I’m currently an ROTC Instructor at a university and am also an avid gamer. I’ve been playing military strategy board games for years and am truly convinced it has helped me as an Army officer to developed key tactical/strategic concepts of warfare. Plus, it’s a helluva lot of fun!

To the point of my post. As an instructor I’m offering “additional instruction” to any of my cadets who are interested in not only playing the game (global 1940 2nd ed), but also to develope their ability to foresee and understand the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects to the decisions they make. Not to mention key concepts like massing, diversion/feint, logistics/supply, staying power, timing, holding actions etc…essentially all the key things that I think would be useful for an actual military commander to know while putting it in a format that is going to get a typical 18-19 year old cadet to participate.

I’m wondering if anyone has done anything like this before and if they have what were some of the things they did to maximize the limited amount of time they had with their “students”? I’m also planning on incorporating games like flames of war, conquest of the empire, and perhaps a game a friend of mine and I created in college based off of the medieval time period. Ideas anyone?

@wittmann:

You might be right YG.
Cannot remember how many Division heads were at that war games conference in Rennes, but I am sure one died trying to return, if not two. Think it was a 7th Army do, not solely Marcks 84 xxx.
Will have to check who died. Think it may have been the commander of the 711 Static Division.
Rommel was celebrating his birthday in Germany! The Allies really got lucky there.

No disrespect to your thread and original post meant Redleg13A

No offense taken.

A few things on your conversation though…

1. The war was pretty much over by the time of d-day.

2. Soldiers don’t fight 24/7 throughout the duration of a war.

3. The german high command actively condoned participation in such events because they were good for officer development as well as socializing among the officer ranks.

4. Even if it DID cost them the war, so what? That’s a good thing right?

During the little down time I had during my combat deployments I played poker and sometimes strategy war games, does that mean I helped lose the war in Iraq? If you believe that, well, I’ve got some beachfront property to sell you in Arizona! Lol

Let us keep these things in perspective, one shouldn’t assume these officers knew the time and place of where d-day would occur for if they did I’m positive they would have forgone the games and fought the war.

So, I haven’t posted here in a while but I have been doing the additional instruction throughout the semester. Here are some pics and products of what we’ve done. We started with Axis and Allies and moved our way down to flames of war but without them being able to see their pieces.

@Cow:

Try playing Battlefield 4 competitively. It is pretty bad for Joes that have PTSD as the gunshots are realistic and the combat experience is relatively similar.

Good for squad based tactics against an equal size equally equipped squad. America is not always going to be picking on little guys forever. Personally I would never fight the Russians in a war unless the Russians declared it themselves, trust Putin more than Obama, trusted Putin more than Bush 10 years ago, nothing changed.

No….no it’s not. At least not my combat experience anyways which includes the battles of Baghdad and the second battle of Fallujah…the FoW allows for a company sized or more fight. Battlefield can’t simulate lack of logistics, enemy capturing your intel, or you as a leader only working with part of the picture from a map. You can’t use pre planned fires, co-ordinate close air support, or ensure each platoon stays on line to prevent gaps where the enemy can slip through.

Picking on little guys…seems to work just fine for them, if anything we will be fighting “little guys” for the foreseeable future. We’ve been doing it since we started this country. Ever since we’ve had an army there’s been some LT with his platoon all by themselves in the middle of nowhere tasked with doing a job that a battalion should be doing…the formula for success in a big war at the company level is pretty cut and dry. The formula for success in a “little guy” war is much more elusive because it requires finesse, study, and surgical precision direct action.

Read the whole thread.

Perhaps I should post all of the PMs he sent also. Mr cow claims to be a veteran and is apparently really angry with me for being in the military. I have reported many of his posts to the moderators so they can see that he is simply trying to derail this thread and is admittedly trying to troll me. I thought there were repercussions for that kind of conduct on this forum …am I wrong? I thought that part of the agreement that every member signs is that we won’t be discriminatory towards other members. Cow is clearly breaking that term of use…so, where are the mods I ask?

To mr cow, you never served. Claiming to be a veteran when you’re not one is illegal and there is a new fervor in the US to catch these phonies. You’re not nearly as anonymous as you think you are…