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Philip A. G. Sabin

Simulating War: Studying Conflict through Simulation Games Paperback – Illustrated, 10 April 2014

by Philip Sabin (Author)

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Over the past fifty years, many thousands of conflict simulations have been published that bring the dynamics of past and possible future wars to life.

In this book, Philip Sabin explores the theory and practice of conflict simulation as a topic in its own right, based on his thirty years of experience in designing wargames and using them in teaching. Simulating War sets conflict simulation in its proper context alongside more familiar techniques such as game theory and operational analysis. It explains in detail the analytical and modelling techniques involved, and it teaches you how to design your own simulations of conflicts of your choice. The book provides eight simple illustrative simulations of specific historical conflicts, complete with rules, maps and counters.

Simulating War is essential reading for all recreational or professional simulation gamers, and for anyone who is interested in modelling war, from teachers and students to military officers.

Print length

416 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date

10 April 2014
Dimensions

15.93 x 2.31 x 23.7 cm
ISBN-10

1472533917
ISBN-13

978-1472533913
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Review

Brilliant. Professor Sabin has produced a masterwork, one worthy to grace bookshelves that are home to Von Reisswitz's Kriegsspiel, Wells's Little Wars, Morse and Kimball's Methods of Operations Research and Schelling's The Strategy of Conflict. If you want to learn more about the unquestionably horrible but quintessentially human activity that is war, you need to read this book. --Dr Peter Perla, Senior Research Analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria VA, USA and author of 'The Art of Wargaming'

In Simulating War Professor Sabin provides us with a scholarly and very useable toolkit that allows us to supplement the dry data of statistical analysis or computer simulation with the realities of human interaction and the play of Clausewitz's "chance". Wargaming is a neglected and misunderstood art in the modern military: this book does much to put that right, and should be on the shelf of any thinking military professional. --Major General Andrew Sharpe, Director General of the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre, UK Defence Academy

Anyone with an interest in wargaming, be it professional or recreational, must buy this book... Simulating War is a clear, logical and balanced guide that provides all the building blocks and insights necessary to design manual games and then use them to best effect. This expert knowledge will be just as useful to military planners, trainers and educators alike, to gaming software developers, operational analysts, those in experimentation and to recreational wargamers. --LBS Blog

About the Author

Philip Sabin is Professor of Strategic Studies in the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, UK. He has worked closely with the armed services and appears regularly on TV and radio. He has also co-edited the two volume Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (2007).

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Academic; Illustrated edition (10 April 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1472533917
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1472533913
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.93 x 2.31 x 23.7 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 85,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 64 in Defence Strategy & Research
- 128 in Media Studies (Books)
- 310 in Military History of Strategy, Tactics & Military Science

Customer reviews:
77 ratings

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2 star		4%
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Paul Wisken

Interesting dissertation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 August 2016

Verified Purchase

A fascinating book that has inspired me to work on my my own games

One person found this helpful

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Mr. J. Curry

Book about developing your own micro board games

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2012

Verified Purchase

Book Review of Phil Sabin's (2012) Simulating War Studying Conflict Through Simulation Games

As someone who has edited and written more wargaming books than most, I am always pleased when a new book says something original about wargaming. This book has a message. The message is micro board wargames are good for education and training. This book argues the case that wargames, in particular manual board games, are an invaluable tool for examining tactical and operational military history. The best of these games are worthy of inclusion of any study of military history.

The first part of the book is a summary of the academic potential of wargaming techniques. The value of games to education and training is indisputable in the academic and business world. Phil takes that view and argues that wargaming can be used as tool to understand military history, supporting this with some academic evidence and his own experiences of using games as part of his teaching of military history at Kings College London.

The second part of the book is a straightforward guide to building simple `micro-board games'. These are games that are smaller than even the smallest of commercial `folio' type board games. Small and simple enough to be used as part of a two hour teaching session. Building on the work of Peter Perla's Art of Wargaming and James Dunnigan's The Complete Wagames Handbook, the book offers a recipe for analysing historical conflicts and distilling them into a board game format.

The third part of the book gives a number of worked examples of such micro-board games. It includes games from the ancient world and World War II. There are also two tactical games; one about a battalion attack in WWII and the other about a company level assault on a built up area. The latter is still relevant to modern conflict. Although one could cut up the colour plates in the book to play the games, most people will download the game components from the book's web site and print them themselves or use play them on the computer using the free Cyberbox software.

The book may not appeal to all parts of the disparate hobby of wargaming. Some miniature (figure) gamers are sometimes overly keen with their mental model of wargaming that is based around a game with realistic terrain features using miniature figures to represent every battle. Such miniature wargamers may `scratch their heads' about the large number of references to classic board games within this book.
Board gamers have often spent years developing their skills on a variety of complex simulation and so they may look upon the games within the book as too simple for their own tastes. Personally, I would hope they will be inspired by the book to take their wargaming to the next level and start to develop their own board games. The act of creating one's own game is a very interesting learning experience and one that Donald Featherstone, and the other early pioneers, would all thoroughly approve of.

Professional wargaming, practised by the military, is largely insular and inward looking. Many of these professional wargamers are in apparent ignorance of the wider developments of the commercial and hobby wargaming, so some of these professionals will see little relevance to any book giving examples that are not from the immediate past, current operations or probable immediate future. However, attitudes can change. The British Army has recently started doing study tours of the 1944 Battle for Normandy and the American military has a long tradition of scholarship about military history that is often the envy of other nations. The American armed forces have long placed great value on studying military history as an essential part of the education for their potential senior commanders. Many of the books by recent American commanders make reference to historical strategies which demonstrates they have at least a passing knowledge of military history.

The book is clearly a work of scholarship, but what will the wider academic community make of the book? Phil's writes in a lively accessible way, using many anecdotes from his own experience. This is in contrast to the many academic text books that are written in a style as `dry as dust'. A purely academic book would have had more on games theory (and less on practical examples) and would have included some quantitative studies of the impact of using board games for studying military history compared with traditional teaching methods (supported with statistics and graphs). I have used such games in my own teaching and I have no doubt they encourage `active' and `deep' learning. Many teachers struggle with using games in their teaching. Games are outside their comfort zone, games (especially ones created by the teacher) may apparently `fail' or descend into lively chaos. My own experience is that such failures do not matter, the students always find the games interesting and rewarding, even if the game does not actually work that well. However, this book is aimed at the wider world of wargaming rather than just the tiny world of academic wargames.

I can whole heartedly recommend this new book to anyone who is looking to develop their understanding of wargaming. Developing wargames is great fun and this book will help get started on that path.

John Curry, Editor of the History of Wargaming Project.

23 people found this helpful

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jorge quadros

A very good study in wargames and wargame making

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 August 2013

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In my opinion this study is not for everyone, not even for all those who like wargaming. It is a serious study although presented in a clear and simple manner (as is usually the case with the author - see Lost Battles), about how one should approach the study of a conflict simulation (wether at the grand, stategic, tactical or other level), how to develop a working module, test it, norture it and finally how to obtain from all this labour a reasonably detailed, accurate and fun to play simulation.
I was a bit disapointed because I was expecting the games components to be better presented (like some sort of annexes) but nonetheles it still is a must have for the gronard wargamers and anyone who may also be a fan of this kind of simulations.

3 people found this helpful

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Chris

Successfully argues for the utility of war games as tools for the historian

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 June 2013

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In this book Philip Sabin argues that constructing a plausible war game requires at least as much research and insight as that required for writing a traditional historical narrative. A war game is presented as an intellectual model in which the designer must completely understand the key dynamics of how the entities in the system interact; if the designer does not understand these relationships then the model is very unlikely to behave in a realistic manner. This exercise of refining models until their behavior corresponds with documented reality is a very powerful intellectual tool and the author is clearly very experienced with the technique.

A successful war game has particular characteristics and advice is given on how to design games that will work well. In particular the secret lies in balancing simplicity and brevity with historical accuracy - as the author explains, this is more of an art than a science.

The other key point he makes is the efficacy of playing these models with students as a teaching technique. In this case the author cites his long experience of playing war games with both military and civilian students as evidence. This is perhaps the most contentious part of the book as war games seldom seem to be used in this context (Philip Sabin is obviously something of a pioneer in this field). However the book also discusses the stigma that has unfairly arisen around war gaming and explains how this has acted to discourage their use beyond hobbyists and a small cadre of professional military designers.

A discussion of published war games points out that academic historians, hobbyists and military professionals would all have different requirements and therefore games designed for one sphere might not work in another context. For example, for teaching purposes the hobby games tend to be far too complicated (without necessarily being better historical models) while professional military games tend to be "command simulations" based on potential future conflicts rather than historical investigations.

I had no previous experience with war games before reading this book beyond popular computer simulations like Total War or Call of Duty (the shortcomings of which are explained in detail). I am now keen to discover more although unlike the author I believe the digitization of these games will ultimately prove completely irresistible so I don't think I'll actually buy any of the physical board games listed in the bibliography.

3 people found this helpful

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