Client Case Study

Client Challenge: The UK Fight Club is an organization that helps the British Armed Forces, in conjunction with NATO partners, improve their tactical, operational, and strategic skill sets. With its members dispersed across Europe, conducting a wargame is always a challenge – particularly at the strategic level, where there are very few commercial options. An early attempt at conducting a distributed matrix wargame relied upon multiple technology systems (email, Slack, PowerPoint, Word, and others) which made game management difficult for the White Cell, while the participating teams did not always have the same view of the current situation. Problems were made worse with COVID, which made discussions within and across teams even more challenging.

Client Results: The UK Fight Club partnered with Strategy Connections, LLC to create WarPaths and conduct an asynchronous matrix wargame with 60 participants dispersed across 8 time zones. The players were organized into 6 teams and conducted a grey zone competition game on laptops and smartphones. The game, MAELSTROM, was sponsored by the UK Ministry of Defence.

The game focused on five political, military, and informational conditions, which are represented by shades of colors on the main map. Teams submitted up to three arguments, or “moves,” per turn that were oriented on changing these conditions while undermining competitors’ strategies. One argument could be designated as secret and seen only by the White Cell. All teams were able to critique each other’s arguments as well as respond to those comments. This allowed the White Cell to have a full picture of the strengths and weaknesses of each teams’ approach for adjudication purposes. Timers controlled the length of each turn and comment/response periods. For Operation MAELSTROM, Fight Club used one week for each cycle.

The Policy Advisor to the Secretary of State for Defence was briefed on the outcomes of the game, and he requested a second wargame be conducted on WarPaths.