Connections Online 2026 After Action Report

Armchair Dragoons PAO, 7 May 2026

Connections Online 2025 was held from 7-11 April, co-hosted by the Armchair Dragoons. As with all of our online/distributed events, everything was virtual, and all presentations were streamed through YouTube¹.

This year’s topic was Wargaming Soft Factors and while we don’t require that all presentations incorporate the theme, this year’s presentations definitely steered that way to a greater degree than previous years. Whether that was a more resonant topic, or better recruiting by the committee², or dumb luck, there were plenty of facets of soft factors explored in the presentations.

Following up on the largely-successful inaugural “Infomercial Day” it was repeated again this year, with presentations from Hexwar, ExpertTheory, and the Incident Response Game. A lesson learned for the future: get the “infomercial” presenters to put an event on schedule for attendees to try out the games and tools being promoted.

In our fifth year, Connections Online has thrived. Half of most new enterprises never reach that milestone. It is a tribute to the collaborative elements of our community that enabled us this year to explore how soft factors contribute to the insights we gain from games. We were also proud to be selected as the premier event to announce the new “Professional Gaming Society.” We once again had excellent presentations, included new voices, and explored diverse approaches. My thanks to everyone on our team (Brant, Chris, Jan, Lyssa, and Zachary) who made it happen, all our presenters, and everyone who attended. Please join us again next year!

— Merle Robinson, Connections Online Organizing Committee

Attendance continues to fluctuate over time, with the inaugural conference benefitting from both the novelty aspect and the fallout from the pandemic. This year’s promotional efforts started a bit later compared to others, and might be a contributing factor to our second-lowest attendance.

And repeating our benchmark questions that keep to track year-over-year trends, we continue to ask³

For the last several years, we’ve asked about the audience’s takeaways from the overall conference in terms of value, and more specifically that value to their professional and/or hobby wargaming.

Of the sessions you attended, which session was the most valuable?

We had 13 different sessions mentioned, out of the 26 we offered, indicating to us that attendees were able to find value across the conference. For what it’s worth, we also had 13 different sessions mentioned for the least valuable. There were 6 sessions that showed up on both lists.

Free response comments from the audience

What (if any) takeaways from Connections Online do you anticipate being applicable to your professional role?

I am always looking to expand methodology and application.
I gained some insights in possible future use of games/simulations in my college history courses.
I think the most applicable ones were related to development and project management.
I use net assessment in my wargaming practice. Phil’s overview was a great refresher on the terms, their history, and their use.
I’d like to design a wargame for military professionals. ScudHunt makes me understand how to integrate intelligence to any wargame. It was very simple, but very effective. That should be the aim for any wargame. Military professionals may have very limited time for gaming. Therfore, they should not need too much time to learn game rules.
Knowing how other professionals are thinking about and addressing soft factors in games.
The open sessions and playtests by various organisations, as a good way to get to know people better online, and for them to get to know me.

What (if any) takeaways from Connections Online do you anticipate being useful to you as a general gamer or hobbyist?

Correlation of combat power is one of the significant parts of military planning and also for PME wargame. I believe that human factors are also very important in wars. However, they’re also very difficult (or impossible) to be integrated in planning process. Soft Factors in Historical Analysis presentation has opened my mind. I should find a way to include soft factors when adjudicate military engagements in a wargame. I think I can use Mr. Lawrence’s figures when I explain the engagements results to the players.
Designing simple wargames using AI
Exposes me to a lot of wargaming history
General applications in my interactions with other gamers.
I really found the Turkish wargaming concept of introducing people to a topic that they are familiar with really interesting. As an American running many games on European topics I often shy away from the famous battles etc. but I think perhaps I should run more games on well-known topics as introductions.
In general, ways to think about soft factors and treat them in games.
The soft factors in history panel…Chris Lawrence.

Tracking Over Time

As a virtual conference, Connections Online has endeavored to bring new and different voices and off-the-beaten-path topics to the conference. With a relatively low overhead to participation⁴ the conference tries to cast a wide net for presentations.

To that end as noted above, each year the survey asks respondents to “Please rank our variety & diversity of topics” and “Please rank our variety & diversity of presenters”. In tracking these trends over time, these are the percentages of responses each year that chose either 5 or 6 in their response.

While our topics seem to consistently succeed in being a bit more diverse, our speaker selection could use work in that regard. Please keep in mind that “diverse” topics and speakers are not focused on a single category like age or gender or racial background, or repetition of well-worn topics. The conference focuses on trying to bring new voices to the table from both inside and outside of ‘traditional’ NatSec/professional wargaming, including students, international participants, academics, non-profits/NGOs, the hobby gaming community, emergency management & response professionals (both gov’t and commercial), and more. That said, there are some “friends of the family” that are often involved in presenting at Connections Online, which can sometimes result in “the usual suspects” appearing on screen at every conference.

Connections Online also hit a milestone this year, as this was our 5th conference. Chris Weuve, Merle Robinson, and Brant Guillory discussed the past several years of Connections Online on a podcast earlier this Spring as well. You can also explore the Connections Online annual archives here.

Interested in participating in future Connections Conferences? We’ve got a form that will be coming soon that will allow you to register that interest with us.

Connections Online continues to maintain our social media presence at a limited level and will be sharing a variety of links and information throughout the year. In addition to highlights from this past conference, we will continue to highlight our previous Connections Online conferences. We also endeavor to share other articles and links of interest.
You can follow us on your social platform of choice, and find all those links on our Linktree here.

Livestream Archive

The consolidated playlist is here

WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Shadows and Steel — Designing an Asymmetric Warfare Game
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ ExpertTheory
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ HexWar
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Incident Response Game
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Welcome, & Soft factors in Professional Games – No Easy Solution
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Defining, Describing, and Measuring Soft Factors – Some Thoughts
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Popularizing wargaming – the Sakarya Kriegsspiel
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ SCUDHunt and Shared Situational Awareness
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Wargaming in NATO & Standardization
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Simulating Morale in Kriegsspiel
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Gaming Non-Traditional Security Issues
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Playtesting Wargames – What, How, and Why?
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Modern Augury? Iterative Analytic Wargaming in the AI Age
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Insights on Running Serious Games for Schools
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Best Practices of Net Assessment and Wargaming for National Security
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Matrix Gaming Soft Factors at the Swedish Defence University
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ AI and the Future of Soft Factor Modeling
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Wargaming Civilian Harm Mitigation
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Soft Factors in Historical Analysis
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Concluding Remarks, & The Wargaming Professional Society
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Lessons from the Australian Frontier Wars for Today
SESSION NOT STREAMED ~ Fail-safe — risk-taking in gaming and mental health
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Easy Wins – Making Simple AI Games for Training
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Suggested Approaches to Wargaming Intel/Counter-Intel
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ~ Teaching Wargaming: Going from nothing to something

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