by Aaron Danis, 18 August 2025
“The basic premise of Connections is that whatever purpose or context you apply wargaming in, you can have a useful, productive conversation with others who use similar tools.” – Tim Wilkie, Connections 2025 co-organizer
click images to enlarge
After my visit to Historicon (parts one and two), I had the opportunity for a return visit to Connections USA 2025, the annual professional wargaming conference, held this year at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (JHU/APL) in Laurel, Maryland. It is part of a series of professional conferences held under the Connections header in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and of course Armchair Dragoons’ own co-sponsored Connections Online. Recently Connections Netherlands ceased operations. The first US conference was held in 1992 at the U.S. Air Command and Staff College, and it has grown from there (see Matt Caffrey’s presentation on the organizations history), and been held in a wide variety of locations such as the National Defense University, US Marine Command and Staff College, the US Army War College, the Institute for Defense Analysis, among others.
While the orientation of this conference is professional games for the Department of Defense or other parts of the US government, or for educational purposes (my interest), there is overlap with the commercial side of wargaming, and over the years ideas from one vector have been adopted in the other. For example, Rand Corporation’s use of hexes in the late 1950’s was adopted by Charles Roberts of Avalon Hill to replace the use of squares in his first two games, Tactics II and Gettysburg1. Also, you now see cards, innovated by noted professional and commercial game designer Mark Herman, used in professional games.
For this review, it will be published in two parts because there are a lot of games to cover, most of which will never be published commercially (I will highlight those that are and from where).
Day 1 (Tuesday)
This was my first visit to JHU/APL since 2002, at the start of the Global War on Terror, when I attended a conference on that topic. The conference center was decked out in Connections signs.
At least you weren’t going to get lost… notice that the foyer floor is made up of brown hex tiles!
Registration was simple because you had to register online beforehand and prepay for the optional $185.00 food package which provided breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 2 days and breakfast on day 3. After breakfast there was a scheduling change right off the bat when the Department of Defense keynote speaker cancelled because of changing Pentagon guidance about attending conferences, so the organizers had the attendees jump into the Game Lab discussion in the eating area, which consist of attendees sitting at one of 28 tables based on their interest in that table’s gaming discussion topic. As one organizer stated, “Game Lab celebrates the growing span of thought and breadth of the wargaming community.”
I chose table 7, and the topic was “What are effective strategies for developing a realistic adversary?” We had about 10 people with very different professional backgrounds at the table who energetically discussed this topic for 45 minutes (as did the other 27 tables with their specific topics), and I took notes because as a former intelligence officer, my interest in this topic is genuine. There was another Game Lab discussion scheduled for Wednesday after lunch, and I already was looking forward to it.
With this we broke out to hear the various speakers (agenda here). There were two speaker sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and most of those were broken into shorter sessions. Some were held in the auditorium, and the rest in the three expanded classrooms. I am not going to go into these in any detail because I only could attend a few each day. I note that most of the presenter slides are available on the Connections website for you to go in and review based on your topical interests. Some of the presentations were standard ones given every year for newcomers (Mike Markowitz’s Wargame Graphic Design is a MUST READ for any board wargamer; I have attended it several times as he updates it). Others were based on new research and practitioner experience in the field. I really enjoyed Ed McGrady’s “Dice: What are they good for?” for example.
My focus is going to be on each day’s Game Demos and open gaming. You REALLY want to see what’s new, or what has changed since last year. Please note that most of these games are not commercially available. Where they are, I will state that and provide a link where to find it.
Dr. Ed McGrady’s VERY interesting hex and counter game on intervention in Colombia and Venezuela. It’s rare to see any game, professional or otherwise, that focuses on Latin America today.
Take that Island! comes from across the pond and the UK Fight Club. It is a beginner game on modern naval warfare, and is an adjunct to their Take That Hill! land wargame. This one is still in development but is getting close to wrapping up according to the designer.
This game, IADS, had serious buzz at the conference. It focuses on air defense, uses real maps, and old school compasses. What’s not to like? You can purchase this game through Game Crafter for $42. You can download the rules from that website for free.
I don’t think those giant dice come with the game.
This is a Japanese military wargame that looks at naval and air combat against China. Forgive me, I didn’t get the name of it, but it was brought by a Japanese military officer. It has large, attractive, easy to read unit tiles. RockyMountainNavy, this has your name all over it…
Welcome to Kanbalah, a Matrix-style game designed by matrix guru Major Tom Mouat of the British Army (in uniform at left). In this, you play a military or diplomatic team trying to evacuate the British Embassy in Beirut while it is under attack. Many of his designs end up on the PAXsims website, but it’s unclear if this will. Yes, it has cards!
Finally, this is Burst on Target, a modern tactical game designed by the US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) so it can assess how well technical advances in U.S. weaponry will perform in tactical situations. If you think that the maps and scenario sheets look a lot like Advanced Squad Leader, you will note that the scenario sheet says Critical Hit in the lower right hand corner. They design the game components, hence the similarity. It is not available commercially.
That wraps up day 1. Days 2-3 are in Part II, and there are more games to see!
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Footnotes
- This story is recounted in Strategy & Tactics #33, “The History of Wargaming” by Martin Campion and Steven Patrick (PDF).
