Like Intel, Views of War Change in Boots on the Ground Deluxe

RockyMountainNavy, 5 September 2024

Boots on the Ground Deluxe by designer Sean Cooke from Worthington Games (2024) attempts to be many things. First, Boots on the Ground Deluxe attempts to be a game capturing the essence of counter-insurgency in the post-9/11 U.S. military at the skirmish-level of wargaming. Second, Boots on the Ground Deluxe attempts to be an easy to learn and versatile game system that gives players several options of play with an emphasis on playing “the good guys.” The end result is that Boots on the Ground Deluxe is an easy to learn, relatively quick to play boardgame using a somewhat sugar-coated, even video game, view of history.

Terror gaming

Before discussing the game design elements of Boots on the Ground Deluxe, I believe it is important to understand what designer Sean Cooke intends the game to represent and where they drew inspiration from to better understand the in-game story the designer delivers to the players.

The world has changed since World War II. Small battles and civil wars flare up around the world. As one of the dominant super powers, the United States and it’s allies have the premier armies and equipment, responding to events across the globe. Terrorist organizations and groups wage a new type of warfare of kidnapping, bombings, and destruction. Your team of specialist are ready at a moments notice to respond, to get to the site as quickly as possible and get Boots on the Ground… (Rulebook, p. 1)

click images to enlarge

 

In a June 2024 interview with The Players’ Aid designer Sean Cooke in talked about their design intent for Boots on the Ground Deluxe:

Grant: What is your upcoming game Boots on the Ground Deluxe about?

Sean: When I originally designed Boots on the Ground in 2010, the “War on Terror” was in full swing, and the news cycles constantly repeated the story of soldiers walking house to house searching for insurgents and terrorists. They stood out as apparent outsiders, and danger was always around the corner. I was intrigued by the unknown threat and how the enemy was not clearly uniformed, like Green vs. Gray. The game tries to replicate this everchanging battlefield.

In the interview, Cooke goes in to discuss other inspirations for Boots on the Ground, especially those in popular culture:

Grant: Why was this a subject that drew your interest?

Sean: I love war movies, and Black Hawk Down from 2002 has a special place in my memories. That and the politics of the day drew me towards this game. This is a subject that truly is interesting and I was really interested in how a game could simulate the changes in an environment and more mimic the real world situation.

Soldiers’ gaming tool kit

From a game design perspective, Boots on the Ground Deluxe is a very versatile tool kit for gaming. The game can be played by one to three players in several different modes:

• • Solitaire – Player plays a squad while cards drive insurgent play.
  • 2-player Competitive against Game- First squad, Alpha or Bravo, to complete the objective wins.
  • 2-player Competitive against Insurgent – One player plays the insurgents, the other an allied squad or squads.
  • 2-player Cooperative – Both players command a squad against a card-driven enemy to complete a shared goal.
  • 3-player Competitive – Two players control allied squads with third player controlling insurgents. (Boots on the Ground, Rulebook, p. 1)

The rules for Boots on the Ground Deluxe are relatively short and easy to learn. The 16-page glossy, double-column rulebook is actually only eight pages of rules and eight pages of mission briefs. Of the eight rules pages, graphics explaining units or counters and a comprehensive example of play take up almost four complete pages of content. Game play itself is actually very simple with each mode of play using some variation of squad action by players and card play for insurgents.

 

For players, the rules for movement and combat in Boot on the Ground Deluxe are extremely simple. Movement uses movement points with few conditions; firing units can shoot at enemy within weapon range and line of sight with only a small handful of firing modifiers needing to be considered.

Card play for the insurgents in Boots on the Ground Deluxe is driven by Intel Cards (hence the game’s subtitle, “Intel Always Changes”). The Intel Cards Events (rule 2.1) are in many ways the gaming “bot” that drives the insurgent actions. The list of possible events/actions includes::

• • Place 1, 2, 3, or 4 (each card would only have one value) new Insurgent(s) in the closest unoccupied window or door space and fire.
  • Move 1, 2, 3, or 4 (each card would only have one value) Insurgent(s) up to 5 spaces and Fire on closest Allied forces.
  • May Medivac (place one injured unit and place in green zone restored to full health) one injured Allied member to the closest Green Zone to restore full health.
  • Insurgents take cover and may not move or fire.
  • Move All insurgents up to 5 spaces each and Fire on closest Allied forces.
  • Closest Insurgent becomes a Heavy Weapons Expert, Demo Expert or (any out of range) Sniper for rest of game.
  • Closest Insurgent becomes a Heavy Weapons Expert, Demo Expert, (any out of range) Sniper for the turn and fires.
  • Closest Insurgent throws a grenade towards Allied team.
  • Replace any KIA team member with a G.I. No insurgents can fire.
  • Closest door explodes from IED.
  • Place up to two G.I.s (if available) adjacent to Team Leader as reinforcements. (Rulebook, p. 4)

 

Black Hawk Down in PG

Taken as whole package, Boots on the Ground Deluxe is an easy to learn, quick to play, yet relatively sanitized view of the war on terror. The game is very two dimensional, both in presentation (neatly gridded city streets of single-story buildings) and in representation of battlespace occupants—allied squads versus insurgents with few civilians that are either neutral (removed from game when revealed) or turn into an insurgent or ally. There are also elements of game play that are borderline satirical or outright video-game like.

 

The game board for Boots on the Ground Deluxe shows a neatly gridded streets with roads/alleys of fairly uniform size. All the building are square, single story, with doors and windows. There are some visual elements on the map that imply rooftops but there are no rules in the game for such terrain. It is a very clean—even sterile—battlefield and very much unlike the reality faced in the streets of Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia.

 

Winning in Boots on the Ground Deluxe is also very binary; players win by completing objectives while at the same time avoiding casualties. If playing a 2 Squad or 2 Player Game, the Competative Multi-Team Mission version of scenarios actually goes as far as to incentivize players to work against one another. Nowhere is this better illustrated than rule 3.2 SEQUENCE OF PLAY FOR 1 PLAYER WITH 2 SQUADS OR 2 PLAYER GAME which specifies (emphasis in original):

• • Alpha activates a team or individual firrst.
  • Bravo player draws Intel card for insurgent activation against Alpha player and conducts actions with insurgent units.
  • Bravo activates a team or individual.
  • Alpha player draws Intel card for insurgent activation against Bravo player and conducts actions with insurgent counters.
  • If the mission objective is completed or failure occurs the game ends, otherwise, go back to step 1. (Rulebook, p. 5)

The near satirical elements of play in Boots on the Ground Deluxe are found in rule 8.1 BOHICA¹  – OPTIONAL MISSION VARIANTS. While the first part of the rule is useful for balancing player experience levels, the last part, “Mystery Date,” adds a randomly selected person to your squad. The random addition can be helpful (a Colonel, a CIA agent, or a Mercenary) or add “difficulty” to your mission (a Diplomat, the Media, or a VIP).

 

Frankly, the presence of a Colonel in Boots on the Ground Deluxe as an entity that helps your mission (as labeled on the chart on page 9) is humorous to me since I have long “known” that the definition of chaos is really “Colonel Has Another Outstanding Suggestion.” I also see the special ability of the CIA (reveal any Lock Box within a 3 block radius without having to occupy the spot) as very video-gamey and a missed chance; the CIA agent could have been used to add variation to missions like maybe find the civilian that is actually an asset and get them to safety.
The Mercenary in play is a very powerful ally but, again, there is a missed chance in the game as more they could be more than just a buff but another element driving the game narrative. I generally accept with the depictions of the Diplomat, Media, or VIP which don’t contribute to combat and tend to hinder movement. Again, however, there are narrative building opportunities missed by the very binary outcomes built into the game (units—allied or insurgent—live or die); having the chance a Diplomat or Media or VIP could be perhaps captured potentially add another element of story to a somewhat restrictive two dimensional theme.

 

Speaking of video games, the rules for Lock Boxes (Rulebook, p. 3) in Boots on the Ground Deluxe are very video-game like and break my “believability” of the game-generated narrative. Per the rules, when a player ends movement on a Lock Box the token is flipped to reveal a result. Of the eight possible results, six are helpful “supporting” events or abilities, one is bad, and the last adds a mission objective. This “Loot Box” game mechanism, while adding a fun element to gameplay, comes across to me as exceedingly random and story-breaking. Perhaps it is necessary given the game focuses on no more than two squads in play without rules for external support. Regardless of the design intent, it leaves a negative impression of play in my mind.

 

Urban combat study….not

The wargame practitioner in me looked to evaluating if Boots on the Ground Deluxe could be useful to teach, on some level, lessons on modern urban combat. To assist in the evaluation, I looked to “Urban Warfare Project Case Study #7; Second Fallujah” (or Fallujah II) found at the Modern War Institute at West Point. This 2023 study noted that, “The First Battle of Fallujah provided many lessons that the American-led coalition documented, analyzed, discussed, trained on, and ultimately used to create an operational plan for the Second Battle of Fallujah. That process was vital to the second battle’s ultimate success. Yet many lessons—at the strategic, operational, and tactical level—can be learned from the second battle as well.” As the authors point out, “The Second Battle of Fallujah became the heaviest urban combat that the United States had been involved in since the Battle of Hue in 1968 during the Vietnam War.” Alas, few of the lessons learned are reinforced through playing Boots on the Ground Deluxe.

Planning

“While planning for the battle, coalition forces carefully studied and applied lessons they had learned from the First Battle of Fallujah. One such lesson was that a successful attack on the city required sufficient time to gather intelligence, plan the operation, and prepare and position forces. As such, the coalition waited until November to initiate its attack. As a result, Operation al-Fajr included a thorough intelligence preparation of the urban environment; sufficient time for troops to prepare; an extensive shaping, deception, and information operations campaign; an impressive logistics buildup; and a careful fires support plan.”

The very subtitle of Boots on the Ground Deluxe which says, “Intel Always Changes,” announces that the mission has little actual intelligence preparation behind it. Players must constantly adjust to an unpredicatable (swingy?) game state.

Combined Arms

“From November 10 to November 14 the American and Iraqi battalions continued their deliberate, methodical advance southward. Some districts offered only light resistance while others provided surprisingly heavy combat. To achieve success, the Americans employed a routine that has been common throughout urban warfare history and one that American soldiers had employed in Aachen during World War II and during many other urban battles. First came an airstrike, followed by artillery or mortars. Next, combined arms teams of armor, infantry, and engineers working in a symbiotic relationship of protection advanced down the streets. This was followed by infantry and engineers working together to breach into a building and clear the inside. The insurgents were unwilling or unable to launch night attacks, so the American units could post minimal security during these darkened hours while allowing personnel to rest, recover, and eat the food that was being brought forward according to the well-organized logistics plan.”

Combined arms combat is not represented at all in Boots on the Ground Deluxe.

Close quarter battle

“Insurgents soon learned that fighting on the streets was a death sentence due to the coalition’s overwhelming firepower; thus, they generally chose to fight from inside buildings in individual groups of four to twelve personnel using small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, and IEDs. Fighters that engaged the attacking forces largely fell into two categories: guerrillas who tried to kill as many Americans as possible and then withdrew to fight again using hidden escape routes, and martyrs who tried to kill Americans and remained in place until they themselves were killed.”

“Like so many other urban battles, fighting was up close and personal, and the Americans learned to use overwhelming firepower—including tank and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle fire, small arms, grenades, artillery, mortars, and fixed-wing gunships—to root out stubborn or hidden defenders. According to Canadian Army doctrine, offensive urban operations can consume up to four times more ammunition than operations in other environments because of the unique defensive qualities the physical terrain gives a defender and the ammunition needed to overcome those defenses.”

Boots on the Ground Deluxe admittedly comes very close to depicting the small building-to-building street fight. Once again, however, the lack of supporting arms is not depicted, giving the game only the narrowest of abilities to showcase the challenges of the modern urban battlefield.

Strategy

“The first strategic lesson learned from the battle was that senior political and military leaders must be fully integrated into the planning and decision-making with full understanding of the time and costs needed to create and execute that plan.”
“Successful urban operations also require an effective information operations campaign, and this is a second strategic lesson illustrated by the battle.”

Boots on the Ground Deluxe makes no pretenses of trying to depict strategic lessons from urban combat so it has no applicability here.

Operations and Tactics

“The first operational lesson from this battle was that urban operations require a thorough intelligence preparation of the environment from the operational to the tactical level.”
“Units attacking a city must isolate it to prevent enemy reinforcements and resupply from supporting the fight, and this is the battle’s second operational lesson.”
“Urban operations are resource intensive, so a good sustainment and logistics plan is critical. This is both an operational and a tactical lesson.”
“A second tactical lesson from the battle is that urban operations require effective combined arms maneuver employing all available enablers and, given the complexity of the urban terrain, these units need to be fully trained and thoroughly interoperable beforehand.”

None of these lessons learned—intelligence preparation of the battlefield, isolating the battlespace, logistics and sustainment, or combined arms are represented in Boots on the Ground Deluxe. The game design is extremely narrow focused on small unit skirmishes at street level.

 

A good…boardgame

Granted, I may be taking Boots on the Ground Deluxe a bit too seriously, but then again I am a wargamer that enjoys using wargames to explore history. Perhaps I need to reframe my vision of Boots on the Ground Deluxe and see it more as a sanitized, pop culture-like viewpoint of the war on terror played via a fun, skirmish-level strategy boardgame than any sort of a “serious game.”

[I also respectfully draw your attention to the Extended Round Table discussion of Episode 104 of Little Wars TV on “Deadly Fallujah Wargame.” Regretfully, the full discussion where, “our guys discuss the very notion of ultra-modern wargaming and how it sits with them as veterans. How would you feel as a wargamer, playing out a conflict on the tabletop that you or your friends may have fought in not long ago? Do these games trivialize the actual events?” is behind a pay wall but first few minutes of the abbreviated version is still very much worth a watch.]

Even with those last thoughts in mind I am not disappointed that Boots on the Ground Deluxe entered my boardgame collection. The game is an excellent candidate for a weekend family game night bringing fun play in a manageable time span to the gaming table. The different options of play offer interesting choices in how we want to play the game as it does not automatically have to be head-to-head competition. Nonetheless, I need to present the game in the right way to other players; this is not a history lesson by any real measure but a game to be played for fun above all else.

 

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