Connections 2025! (Part II) Professional meets Commercial Wargaming

Aaron Danis, 22 August 2025

“Best Connections to date. Our JHU/APL hosts could not have been more helpful. We live in an increasingly dangerous world and need powerful tools like wargaming. Our adversaries are improving their wargames, so we need to continue to improve ours.” – Matt Caffrey, the doyen of Connections and author of On Wargaming

This is part 2 of my conference review. Part 1 is linked here.

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Day 2 started with the daily keynote from Dr. Jim Miller of JHU/APL. He notably mentioned that APL is building classified versions of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) wargaming tools for the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. We then broke out into our selected presentation sections. As the theme of this year’s conference was “Digital Wargaming,” there were at least a half-dozen presentations on AI and its role in wargaming in addition to the keynote presentation. It was clear that the wargaming community is still just scratching the surface in this area. Again, most of the slides are available online (plus the slides from previous years) thanks to the hard work of Stephen Downes-Martin, who has tried to capture the important outcomes of the conferences.

If I have one complaint about Connections, it is that it is not possible to see all the presentations that interest you because of the (necessary) parallel presentation tracks. The same goes for the after-lunch Game Lab. I chose another topic of interest (maximizing scenario outcomes for policy or resource action), but there were 5 other topics I would have liked to sit in on as well. Too much of a good thing forces you to ruthlessly prioritize your topical choices. One of the more interesting presentations that I didn’t get a chance to attend was David Manley’s “Wargaming Seabed Operations in the Baltic,” that has several games associated with the effort. It demonstrated how wargaming can react quickly to breaking events not previously gamed.

The much-anticipated game night brought out a few new games and at least two commercial games, along with a few from the demo session the night before.

click images to enlarge

As the sign says, this is a very tactile game designed for the U.S. Army focusing on environmental security in Africa. Some of the components are 3D printed.

Here are four pics of the German Multi Domain Brigade Operations game derived from Sebastian Bae’s Littoral Commander (LC) series. This was carried a long distance by several German attendees, and as you can see the components are close copies of LC. The map covers the Suwalki Corridor. Sebastian was excited to play it, and we can only hope this becomes an official part of the growing LC series in the future!

Major Tom Mouat earned his keep at Connections, bringing a second game, this one of historical interest. In it, the Japanese players try to threaten the American homeland and Panama Canal using I-400 submarines, M6A1 Seiran seaplanes, and Fu-Go incendiary balloons (there is a fascinating history behind all this). Please visit Tom’s excellent wargaming website.

The US Air Force Wargame Indo-Pacific was designed by the Air Force Wargaming Institute, and you can purchase it from Game Crafters for $108 (and 30 cents)!

And speaking of CNA, they set up an entire table featuring the full-sized game Sentinels of the Sea a Matrix-style game about maritime domain awareness, and the micro air-to-air game Call Sign among others.

One commercial game I missed getting a clear picture of is LIFTOFF! 2.0, a game on the Cold War space race, so I mention it here. The designer also gave a presentation on the game.

Day 3 (Thursday)

The 2025 Peter Perla Award for Contributions to the Advancement of the Art, Science, and Application of Wargaming was given to Col William Lademan, PhD (USMC) by Matt Caffrey just before Dr. Lademan gave his keynote speech to all the attendees. There was another full slate of speakers on Thursday, and a fantastic career advice panel led by Dr. Yuna Wong of JHU/APL. I sat in on a great talk on the US Marine Corps Fight Club by Tim Barrick, the Director of Wargaming for the Kulak Center at Marine Corps University who created the Operational Wargame System in use at several US military schools.

In keeping with the conference theme of Digital Wargaming, on the left is DIGICAT, or the Digital Course of Action Analysis Tool, a digital representation of Tim Barrick’s manual boardgame Operational Wargame System (shown on the right).

Director Barrick put up a slide (below) on reasons why professionals should do wargame tournaments like those held by the various wargaming Fight Clubs. While aimed at military personnel, I think all these reasons, to a lesser extent, can apply to commercial gamers as well.

The conference was well attended with over 320 attendees, and as one long-standing organizer noted, the attendees now are “aging down” (aka getting younger). An anonymous first-time attendee and new wargamer stated they will

come back next year as they had learned a lot, enjoyed the game nights, and the professional development opportunities.

Among the Connections vets, John Curry stated he thought this year’s conference provided

Fascinating insight into the state of our professional wargames. It is a complex mix of academic and military designers. The most fascinating bits are the conversation on the margins of the conference.

I agree. As during my previous Connections, while I learned much during the presentations, I learned just as much from the informal conversations with old and new colleagues.

Next year’s location hasn’t been selected yet but it is usually held within a short drive of the Washington, DC, area. Even if you are a strictly commercial games designer or player, it may be worthwhile to attend at least once for the Game Demos and game night for new ideas.

I picked up a lot of business cards…how did this one get in there? Which reminds me, one last quote from game designer Chris Weuve:

This (Connections 2025) was easily the second-best Connections event this year.¹

See you all next April!

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1. Chris works with Brant Guillory to hold the Connection Online conference, so he’s permitted to be partial. He also was handing out these cards. 😉