Brian Train is one of those designers, like Mark Herman, Sebastian Bae and Clint Warren-Davey (I could go on – there is a big
overlap), who have worked – in many cases currently work – in the complementary
fields of “casual” or hobby wargaming and actual wargame and simulation
development with military organisations. Mr Train’s specialty is broadly what
gets classed these days as Small Wars (a short essay explaining the definition
and scope of a Small War in real terms is available here), and specifically asymmetric warfare. He’s probably best known for his
contributions to Volko Ruhnke’s COIN series, A Distant Plain: Insurgency in Afghanistan (GMT Games, 2013)
and Colonial Twilight: The French-Algerian War,1954-62 (GMT Games, 2017) (probably my favourite COIN game,
though to be fair, I haven’t got around to playing China’s War (GMT Games, 2025) yet), Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2020), and Brief Border Wars 2 from Compass Games. Mr Train also
has his on electronic imprint, BTR Games, that offers a selection of eclectic PnP games for the craft-enabled.
Mr Train was kind enough to answer several impertinent
questions with good grace and humour. What follows is a very lightly edited
record of our correspondence.
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A Fast Game: What was your first wargame experience? Was it a commercial boardgame
or something you experienced in your time serving [in the military]?
Brian Train: My first experiences of wargaming were as a younger teenager. I was
playing Risk (Parker Brothers, 1959) and Battleship (Starex, 1931) and rolling marbles
at toy soldiers like anyone else, but when I was twelve, I saw a copy of SPI’s
game World War 3 (SPI, 1975) on the desk of
my friend’s older brother. The missile launchers on the cover, the world map
and the mushroom cloud counters had me curious!
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| Tactics II (BGG, courtesy of Deb J) |
When I was 15 my favourite uncle sent me a copy of
Tactics II (Avalon Hill, 1958) for Christmas, and I was off to the races – I don’t think my parents
ever forgave him.
I never had a chance to see or use a wargame when I
was in uniform, though we would play them in our off hours.
I remember on my machine gunner’s course we got a
copy of Squad Leader (Avalon Hill, 1977) and set up one small force with plenty of machine guns
sited on the map according to the principles of placement (using the beaten
zone, interlocking fields of fire, firing from cover etc.) and ran a horde of
Russian riflemen at it, that was fun.
AFG: You work in the professional wargaming and hobby wargaming spaces. you’ve
talked about your professional work in your blog. How much does your
professional wargaming work influence your commercial game design or vice
versa? Does one tend to bring more to the dialogue than the other?
BT: I don’t often design to order, more often I will come up with something
that I’m interested in and try to find a place for it.
I first got into contact with the professional
wargaming world back in 2007 when someone in the Military Operations Research Society, a US organization, contacted me out of the blue to say that he had
used a game I had designed on the Algerian War in 2000 – Algeria (Microgame
Design Group, 2000) – as the mechanical basis for a game he had done on the Iraqi
insurgency that was then in full swing, and would I like to attend a workshop
they were holding on irregular warfare to see what he had done?
Algeria: Battle for Independence (Microgame Design Group, 2000, and One Small Step, 2016) I had never heard of this organization but I went
with alacrity, and found that more than one person had been using my games as a
basis for their own work. Verily, I was a bit of a name among a small number
of analyst nerds!
We need to remember that this was the middle of the
Iraq War and the wheels were really starting to come off in Afghanistan too,
and the bloom was truly on the counterinsurgency rose with the recent
publication of US Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, which drew heavily
on the theories of David Galula.
At that time as well, only two civilian game
designers were being really productive in that end of the spectrum of conflict,
both historical and contemporary: Joe Miranda and me.
Anyhow, after that nice welcome I started to go to
the annual “Connections” conferences* that began in the late 1990s at the
instigation of Matt Caffrey (author of On Wargaming (Navy War College Press, 2019), a very good book on the
history and prospects of the practice and available free at
https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/newport-papers/43/) and were intended to
build bridges between the civilian and professional military wargaming worlds.
These continue today and have franchised into several other countries: the
United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to begin with.
The reason that Matt created this conference was
precisely that civilian/ commercial/ hobby wargame designers did not labour
under the same kinds of restrictions that professional designers did, and could
bring some highly imaginative and illustrative work to the table.
The two kinds of gaming have very different purposes
but at the bottom of things they both have to be workable games in the sense
that they are interactive experiences bounded by some reality-based rules with
the intention of discovering problems and generating useful discussion or
narratives about those problems or conflicts.
I have had only a couple of occasions to design
games that were first and foremost for use by a professional military
organization: the Quick Urban Interactive Combat Kriegsspiel for the California
Army National Guard (2022-24), and Northern Sentinel for the Canadian Armed
Forces (2026).
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A map of downtown Manilla (coloured template over arial photograph) for
Quick Urban Interactive
Combat Kriegsspiel (QUICK). |
In both cases I drew on my knowledge of the many
other civilian/ commercial/ hobby wargames I had designed in the past, to give
them something that was quick to teach and play and satisfied the learning
objectives of the occasion.
So the short answer to your question would be,
“Yeah, commercial > professional but it doesn’t matter much”.
AFG: A History professor once told me
that you should always get at least three papers out of any single research
project, your published games often turn into series, like the District Commander series from Hollandspiel, or more recently Brief
Border Wars 2. You also
have form for revisiting situations through the lens of different systems (e.g. Algeria: the Struggle for Independence,1954-1962 (One Small Step, 2016) and Colonial
Twilight; or notably BCT Command: Kandahar (co-design - MCS Group, 2013), Kandahar (One Small Step, 2013) and District Commander: Kandahar (Hollandspiel, 2020)).
There’s a question coming. Do you
go into a game building a design to fit a particular historical situation –
let’s take Shining Path: the Struggle for Peru (BTR Games, 1997,
One Small Step, 2014) as an example – and work it up into a playable game,
release it, then look at other situations that could be modelled the same way,
or have you already noticed the similarities between the Maoist insurgency in
Peru, the Algerian war for independence, and Taliban insurgency in Kandahar
province during the Afghanistan occupation, or do you look for situations with
broad similarities that might be modelled in a similar fashion and work up from
there?
BT: I’ve designed around 70 games over the last 30+
years. About half of them belong to one or another of seven
distinct “families” or systems I have made, as a general approach to a
particular type of conflict.
You mentioned Shining Path That is one of a system
I call “4-box” and includes other games on the Algerian War, the Greek Civil
War, the Cyprus Emergency and Kandahar in Afghanistan.
I have another called “Between the Wars” which
revolves around armies operating with fragile morale and organization, using
mostly infantry with small detachments of supporting arms (examples include
Finnish Civil War (featured in Paper Wars, Issue 84 - Compass Games 2016). , Red Horde 1920 (Tiny Battle Publishing, 2017), Strike for Berlin (featured in Yaah magazine, No. 11 (Flying Pig Games, 2018), and War Plan Crimson (Tiny Battle Publishing, 2016).
Even within each family, there are considerable variations depending on the
circumstances of the conflict.
But about another half of my titles consist of games
using systems I have never used before or since (though I have grabbed
interesting bits out of them for use in other systems later). I like
experimenting; it doesn’t always work, but then at least you know.
Where do all these games and systems come from? Again to answer your question briefly, “it’s some of
each”.
Every system began as an individual game that had to
fit the particular situation, and it was only later that the mechanics in one
game would suggest themselves to another and then grow into a system.
Besides using a system to fit broadly similar
conflicts (for example the two volumes of the Brief Border Wars system, a total
of eight small games on the general conflict type) I’ve designed enough that I
don’t like to bend or warp a game topic to fit a particular system just for the
sake of consistency or speed.
If it doesn’t fit and doesn’t transmit the kind of
emphasis I want I will try another system, or come up with something new that
might grow into a system on its own.
As an example of this, you mentioned three of my
games that take place in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan in 2009-10,
same place and time but three very different treatments, mechanically and
thematically. (Actually I have done four - the fourth was a complicated design
with multiple factions that I put together for a university class in 2010 but
never published.)
AFG: For someone coming to one of your system
"families" for the first time, do they tend to be mechanically similar enough for knowledge of one to
help with assimilation of the next, or are they each their own beast with just
a shared skeleton? And, which games would make for easier on-ramps to these
systems for someone coming from a traditional hex-and-counter background?
BT: Some of these families are more self-similar than
others, it's true. Two that are quite explicitly this way are the Brief
Border Wars and District Commander systems.
I thought one of the best ideas SPI came up with was
the “Quadrigame” concept of a set of basic rules framed to model a particular
set or type of conflicts, or historical period, with smaller sets of rules
exclusive to each battle to show its peculiarities. These were not very complex games, but there is
still an advantage to laying out the core concepts and mechanisms in a base set
of rules people can learn, then as they explore the other games in the system
there remains only a bit left to learn to reflect the particular circumstances
of each situation.
The basic rules were usually four pages long and each
set of exclusive rules another 2-3 pages, including tables.
They published 16 Quads between 1975 and 1979, for a
total of 64 games ranging from Alexander’s Siege of Tyre (SPI, 1978) to a
still-hypothetical Second Korean War (SPI, 1977).
I wrote an article [about] another 45 or so that were
proposed in S&T or MOVES feedback sections, but were never published (at
least not quite in the form they were proposed). So, I wanted to try the idea of publishing a quad of
my own, with four games in one box, and Compass Games bit on that hook...
twice!
The game system was inspired by how well The Little War (Hollandspiele, 2017) seemed to work. This was a game I designed in 2015-16 on the short but
spirited one-week border war between Slovakia and Hungary in March 1939. Hollandspiele published it as part of a two-fer with
Ukrainian Crisis in 2017.
The game system seemed to offer some potential to
model other somewhat similar conflicts in a simple way, so I chose four short
border wars (from many possibilities!) and got to work.
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| BBW II cover (BGG, courtesy of Jenar Oldic). |
The first quad [Brief Border Wars (Compass Games,2020)] was modern wars: The Soccer War
(1969), Turkish invasion of Cyprus (1974), Third Indochina War (1979) and the
Second Lebanon War (2006). It was quite popular; people liked the short rules
format and short playing time.So Compass wanted another volume, and the second quad (Compass Games, 2025) was pre-1945 titles: Second Balkan War (1913), The Seven Day War (Teschen,
1919), the Nomonhan Incident (1939) and the Italo-Greek War (1940).
These games would be a good introductory path, but
where the SPI Quadrigames were always hex and counter these are area-movement
games with a card-driven system that models the chaotic, stop and start nature
of these conflicts between not very good or prepared armies. This tends to trip up a few players who have a lot
of experience with standard hex-and-counter fare, and sometimes they have to do
a little bit of unlearning to shake out the ideas and rules they are porting
over in their head... I see quite a bit of this, even with the COIN system
games; the hobby has a lot of unwritten mental habits, implicit understandings
and conventional wisdom.
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| Unprovoked Chinese aggression along the Vietnamese border (Brief Border Wars). |
It seems I often do something and then insist on
trying it again, but backwards... so with the District Commander series of
games from Hollandspiele, there is a set of core rules and a further set of
exclusive rules for each game.But these were published as four separate games, one
each in a box... mostly because I took my time designing each one, because
Hollandspiele is a very small company that could not afford to put four modules
in one box, and I didn't want to wait to reach the magic number of four before
publishing.
The District Commander series has a longer history
than Brief Border Wars. I started working on it in 2012, it had evolved out
of an unpublished but rather ornate game
I did in 2010 called Kandahar I (the fourth, unpublished one I mentioned) that
was in turn inspired by another unpublished game from 2008, called Virtualia,
that was an amplification of many of the mechanics in my Tupamaro (BTR Games, 1996) game from
1995, and even some bits and pieces from Green Beret (1996-2015, in different
versions). So my ideas might evolve, but my lack of talent for
clever titles stays pretty much constant.
At first I had the vague idea that this could be a
simple manual game I could give to the professional military, who could use it
in classes to cover the “Clear and Hold” concept contained in US Army
counterinsurgency doctrine (later it became “Clear, Hold and Build”) with no
need for any technical gizmos more advanced than a glue stick.
But it was a silly notion.
Professional military people are usually far too busy and time-starved to
indulge in anything like this – even if
many of them do realize the value of manual games over computer ones… even if
you get rid of the dice that make it seem a trivial exercise to some senior
officers… even if you split it into basic, intermediate and advanced versions,
etc. And by the time Hollandspiele published the first
module in 2019, counterinsurgency was no longer top of mind for the military
anyway.
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| DC Kandahar cover (BGG, courtesy of the publisher). |
Unlike Brief Border Wars, this is a more complex
system with a topic and treatment not often seen: operational (campaign) level
counterinsurgency, where many games are strategic in scale (like GMT COIN
system games) or tactical (Boots on the Ground (Worthington Publishing, 2010), etc.). The two sides have asymmetric menus of operations,
force structures, methods and objectives and games are quite open-ended in
terms of time.It's also diceless: each player holds a hand of
Chance Chits that influence operations when played. These chits will be expended during play as players
perform (or defend against) certain Missions. Note that while chits initially
are drawn randomly, the chits you play during the turn are selected
deliberately.
It’s like being able to choose many of your die
rolls in advance; the randomness comes from the initial random selection at the
beginning of the turn, and the decisions made by each player because of the
unequal ratings of the chits for different types of activity... you might want to
play a chit that is not good for one particular situation, in order to save a
better one for a different situation later.
Again, these are area-movement maps and action in
the game consists of task forces moving about activating and conducting
operations, to score points according to a scheme that is dictated to you by
your senior commanders and keeps changing during the game.
There are also sub-systems for intelligence and a
lot of optional rules for the core rues as well as the exclusive rules, so
there can be a lot of variation in play.
A couple of the games also feature autonomous
factions like Non-State Militia and organized criminals. Foreign forces are also included, they are more
effective militarily but can be difficult politically, and sometimes also act
autonomously.
All of this adds up to something not quite usual and
different even from the COIN system, which is unfamiliar enough to many. But the system has proven quite flexible, and I
continue to work on modules that use it... so one might like it, if one liked
that sort of thing to begin with.
If you want to find out, I still offer the first
module Maracas, about counterinsurgency inside a large city for free print and play (Vassal modules are out there too).
AFG: You’ve designed dozens of games
and game systems, and you’ve come up with your share of innovations in
wargaming over the years. Is there a game or a mechanism by another designer
that you’d put up on a pedestal, something you’d point to and say “Now, that’s
what I call quite good!”?
BT: Without a doubt, James F. Dunnigan is my favourite
wargame designer.
The highlight of my wargame design career was in
2012 when I sat next to him at a panel discussion at a Connections conference
and he said, “I like what you’re doing”.
Squeeee!
He is well known for two great notions:
“There are two overarching rules for game design.
They are: Keep It Simple; and Plagiarize.” (he also said, “use available
techniques” when he wanted to be a bit more euphemistic).
and;
“If you can play them, you can design them.”
He designed or developed many of the wargames that I
consider Damn Clever: Berlin ’85 (featured in Strategy & Tactics, issue 79 (SPI, 1980), Canadian Civil War (SPI, 1977), Lost Battles (SPI, 1971), Minuteman: the Second American Revolution (SPI, 1976), NATO Division Commander (SPI, 1980), Plot to Assassinate Hitler (), Russian Civil War (SPI, 1976), Year of the Rat (SPI, 1972).
What do these all have in common?
They all point out that he was never afraid to
experiment – well, he had little choice but to try new things since SPI was the
first really adventurous wargame publishing company but he pushed that to the
hilt.
AFG: One last question - Paranoid Delusions (BTR Games, 2006) – what’s with
that?!
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| The Spanish-language cover of Paranoid Delusions (BGG, courtesy of THE MAVERICK). |
BT: Hah! That was something I spun up for one of the
Microgame Design Contests that used to be run on Boardgamegeek but I don’t
think are continuing, at least not under that name (to be fair, I haven’t
looked either).
It was the 2006 contest and there were only two
entries: mine and Nemo’s War (Victory Point Games, 2009) by Chris Taylor. We called it a tie at the time, but while my game
languished, Chris has had several expanded and improved editions of his!
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| Paranoid Delusions counter mix (BGG, Courtesy of Federico Galeotti). |
I used to do mail art and was into ‘zine culture
back in the 80s and was familiar with conspiracy culture and other forms of
“high weirdness” before the Internet, [and] I also read my share of Thomas Pynchon.
I wanted to have some kind of free-form game where
you could get away with attacking yourself, for the sake of the greater goal of
solving the mystery to unlock the world and what was happening in it.
Nowadays of course this kind of stuff is so
bog-standard and pervasive it’s barely funny anymore – if indeed it ever was.
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I wanted to thank Mr Train again for his time and sharing so much of what goes on under the hood of wargame design. If you've enjoyed or got something out of this interview, do yourself a favour and subscribe to Mr Train's blog.
* For more information on the international network of Connections conferences, you should check out Rex Brynen's PAXsims blog.
