Pluie de Balles

Pluie de Balles (PdB for short) is fundamentally a Kriegsspiel-type educational wargame developed for a specific set of purposes; it is aimed primarily at early career military decision makers (for exceptions see below); it has been successfully run by the Conflict Simulation Group for almost a decade now. In PdB, the facilitating team of a traditional Kriegsspiel is replaced by competing teams of participants controlling their units according to simple tabletop rules while at the same time feeding back information to their staff teams; all participants are divided into staff teams and force commanders and therefore have different learning experiences.

Staff teams learn how to organize themselves as a staff, how to prepare a plan and how to manage their force commanders; actually having to organize the operation of an army corps is an efficient way to learn why military staffs work the way they are - and why they are a good idea in the first place. Force commanders are confronted with basic tactical problems and learn about the importance of terrain in military operations (and freshen up their map-reading skills!); PdB works particularly well in illustrating the problem of moving forces in restricted space and under contraints of limited time.

Both staff teams and force commanders experience the interdependence of staffs and the forces they control: bad operational guidance by the former will have consequences that are just as unpleasant as bad information sent from the former to the latter.

Staff teams are fully exposed to the effect of fog of war and friction; they experience how the feeding back of information from the force commanders will vary in quantity and quality depending on the situation on the ground, as force commanders will cut back on information when involved in intensive combat. Force commanders will make the strange experience of having initially a god’s eye view of the battlefield, which will give way to the fog of war once their forces are entering combat. This is, it should be noted, the one thing that participants without prior experience of PdB literally never believe - that there will come a point when they are so focussed on their own section of the front that they don’t see what happens just a yard to their left or to their right.

Force commanders will also experience the need for prioritizing what they do, because once combat has started there is often not enough time to do everything one intends in one turn as well as writing reports. In general, force commanders are in for a stressful experience. PdB is deliberately designed to push force commanders beyond their comfort zone through a combination of restricted time (2 minute turns), handling challenges (a division can easily have 120 individual pieces or more) and physical discomfort (kneeling or lying for hours on a map).

All of the above has direct consequences for the quality of information that reaches the staff teams. Therefore, in addition to processing information and making decisions, they also have a limited leadership function: they have to make sure the force commanders work together as a team, and, if morale is going down, staff teams will have to make an effort to prop it up again. Staff teams, while sitting in the relative comfort of their command posts, also - and this is another interesting experience many participants without prior experience of PdB have difficulties in believing - have to face the psychological pressure of their fellow team members, who work possibly in discomfort on the big maps, referring to them for operational guidance as well as measures to prop up morale.

In all, then, PdB provides different experiences for the staff teams and the force commanders, but - at least according to the feedback of the participants - equally valuable ones.

Finally, how does a typical setup for a large PdB game look like? The staff teams will have their individual rooms or table at a distance from where the big maps are; there should be at least two big maps (ideally depicting terrain separated by some topographical feature) with action on one map directly influencing what happens on the other map. This will present staff teams with the need of both keeping their force commanders updated on the overall situation and deciding where to send reinforcements. Ideally, a game of PdB should run over at least 1.5 or 2 days, with the evening providing both teams with the opportunity to reflect on their actions and the staff teams in particular to prop up moral and adjust plans for the following day. PdB can easily be run with 40+ participants; as noted at the beginning of the thread, it is mostly intended for teaching cadets and young officers, but it is perfectly possible to have the staff teams composed for example of captains and majors as well.

The ruleset used for running PdB has been published by the Conflict Simulation Group, for details see the publications section of this website.

To get an impression of how PdB games look like, there are some recent game reports in the blog section; for ease of access these have been listed below (some of the links lead to sites that are picture-heavy). Note that the Liverpool scenario is recurring; with sometimes different setups it is usually run three times a year with a large group of early-career military decision makers.

July 2024 - Once more time for the French in Liverpool

January 2024 - Fighting for Berwick upon Tweed

July 2023 - The French attack on Scarborough

May 2023 - More Liverpool woes

January 2023 - The French in Liverpool - again!

January 2023 - Fighting for Hartlepool

November 2022 - The French in Liverpool

Any additional material will be published on this page.