The Craft of Wargaming

“The Craft of Wargaming is a superb book on how 'art' and 'science' can interact to enrich the craft of war gaming…. It’s an excellent primer on the science and art of war games: what they are, what they are not, and what they can provide —when properly designed and executed. Please read, mark up, and aggressively employ The Craft of Wargaming, and thereby build better commanders, leaders, planners, and staffs.” —Naval War College Review

“The Craft of Wargaming is a very useful book that guides the reader through the initiation, design, development, conduct, and analysis of wargames.... One notable feature of The Craft of Wargaming is the integration of a series of ten practical exercises, built around an included wargaming scenario: a stabilization operation in the fictional country of Zefra. This makes the volume especially useful for teaching purposes.... The book’s clarity and structure also make it very suitable for use as a self-learning guide.” —PAXsims

“Appleget, Burks and Cameron make a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of wargaming and its place in the deciphering and deconstruction of complex problems. By contextualising the current utility of analytical wargaming the book provides a readable, thoughtful and useful guide to help the military and businesses to consider problems and make decision. It is highly recommended.” —Canadian Military History

“The Craft of Wargaming does a great job of summarizing the origin story of analytical wargaming in the U.S. Defense Department. The authors come from operations research backgrounds and focus much of their story on the influences of the Cold War on U.S. analytical wargaming practices. For those unfamiliar with how high levels of reliable intelligence and seemingly limited conventional military options influence the balance of science versus art in wargaming, there is much of interest in this story…. The book delivers a practical approach that novices and journeymen will find useful when crafting wargames for a wide range of analytical situations.” —Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies

“The Craft of Wargaming: A Detailed Planning Guide for Defense Planners and Analysts provides a primer for understanding the institutional traditions and practices that developed to support wargaming in analytical purposes. It complements previous handbooks and adds a focus on the institutional implementation of wargames.” —The Strategy Bridge

“Periods of great geopolitical and technological change, like the one we find ourselves in today, often lead to sharp changes in the character of war. But the implications of the changes are often not apparent at first, leading to strategic surprise and changes to the global military balance. One of the best way to penetrate the “fog of future war” is to conduct war games designed to illuminate potential advances and to highlight new operational concepts and organizational constructs to exploit them. After a long period of neglect, the Department of Defense is seeing a renaissance in wargaming, and this handy guide on the craft of wargaming is sure to help keep this renaissance going strong. It is a superb compendium for both defense planners and analysts as well as the designers of quality games. An absolutely must-have addition to the shelves of any serious practitioner of war games or consumers of their output.” —Robert O. Work, 32nd United States Deputy Secretary of Defense and Undersecretary of the Navy

“The analytical war game is a vital tool in the arsenal of the military planner who faces no greater challenge than determining the concepts and capa