Connections Online Wargaming Convention 2025

Shall we play a game? How about Global Thermonuclear War?

When you hear the phrase 'war games', what comes to mind? Is it the 1983 thriller where young Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy engage in a battle of wits with a highly sophisticated computer simulation? Is it stodgy Prussian Generals pushing lines of miniature figurines around a map table? Or is it playing Warhammer in your friend's garage or local game store?

From Monday April 7th through Friday, April 11th, I had the privilege of attending the 5th annual online/distributed conference for wargaming professionals where I learned that modern wargaming can be all of those things and none of them at the same time.

The whole point was to find a way to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn't afford to make. -Stephen Falken, WarGames

I was fortunate enough to hear about this convention roughly two weeks beforehand - early enough I was able to check the schedule of presentations, take some time off work, and plan to attend sessions during lunch, between meetings, or during dedicated blocks of time. The presentations themselves ranged from upcoming games from government contractors to veterans and active duty service members developing simulations to the use of wargames and conflict simulations to help improve civilian emergency preparedness.

Roughly 7 months prior to this blog post going live, the YouTube channel People Make Games dove into the world of 'serious games,' as many practitioners refer to them, and discussed the interplay between government funded military war games and the recreational hobby game market that we enjoy. You can get a taste for what some of this looks like by reading an older post on this blog when I participated in an operational wargame for recreational purposes when the Yelling for History Club at the University of Minnesota hosted Don't Panic!. Although that game was a simulation that benefits from decades of hindsight in its execution and doesn't model things with extreme granularity, it still stands as an example of a game that can be played to understand ways in which conflicts could occur and evolve.

Popular topics this year included scenario creation and development, the history of wargames as a discipline, and the use of AI technologies in wargame simulations. Additionally, many presentations were from organizations or companies discussing their new entries in the wargame and simulation space. I found the mix of board games and computer simulations used for these purposes very interesting - you'd imagine cutting edge simulations to be almost exclusively computer-based, but that wasn't the case here.

The highlight of my week was playing 'Neustart - The Blackout Simulator' with Jan Heinemann, a wargame facilitator, historian, and educator from Hannover, Germany and one of the moderators of the convention, GeekGirlLyssa. Together, we played a game of Neustart (New start or restart in German), a tabletop simulation that uses gameplay to simulate the management of a moderately-sized city throughout a power crisis. Each player in the game takes control of one civic department, whether EMS, Fire Department, Construction crews, or Administrative support. We had a limited amount of supplies, regular crises occurring that we'd need to address to contain damage and unrest, and had to communicate very clearly about where we could provide support and what we might be overlooking or sacrificing to provide that support.

Playing Neustart reminded me of an event I participated in produced by the Mayo Clinic in 2019, Bounce Day. Bounce Day was a real-world in-person event held at the Gamehaven reserve in Rochester and included the participation of an incredible number of organizations. It blurred the line between LARP, mass casualty exercise, and civil preparedness drill. Each participating group had a designated role. The amateur radio group and local storm chasers served as communication between teams, the Mayo Clinic and Air National Guard unit. I participated alongside colleagues in the Civil Air Patrol, a civilian auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. Our role was to collect people to perform search and rescue throughout the woods area while coordinating with the local police department reconnaissance unit.

As an amateur in this space, it was really interesting to look under the hood and see the range of applications for these kinds of games. The practical application of asking 'What if...?" cannot be overstated - the backbone of emergency preparedness and anticipating the results of adverse or conflict circumstances is knowing and understanding your limitations and capabilities. The entire backlog of presentations from Connections Online from the original 2021 conference are available on the Armchair Dragoons Website here.