Tactical decision game

A tactical decision game is a decision game that puts students in the role of the commander of a tactical unit who is faced with a challenging problem. While most tactical decision games depict problems faced by the commanders of military units, a growing number deal with the situations of types dealt with by police and firefighting organizations .

The tactical decision game is known by a variety of names. These include map problem, tactical problem, one-step war game, and tactical decision exercise.

Like other types of decision games, tactical decision games may either be historical or fictional. If the scenario is based entirely upon a reliable historical narrative, a tactical decision game is also a decision-forcing case. (Such an exercise may also be called an historical map problem.) However, if any of the elements in the scenario of a tactical decision game is fictional, then the exercise is a kind of fictional decision game.

In Chapter 14 of The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli tells the story of the Greek general Philopoemon, who made extensive use of tactical decision games.

“Philopoemon, Prince of the Achaeans, among other praises which writers have bestowed on him, is commended because in time of peace he never had anything in his mind but the rules of war; and when he was in the country with friends, he often stopped and reasoned with them: “If the enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here with our army, with whom would be the advantage? How should one best advance to meet him, keeping the ranks? If we should wish to re-treat, how ought we to set about it? If they should retreat, how ought we to pursue?” And he would set forth to them, as he went, all the chances that could befall an army; he would listen to their opinion and state his, confirming it with reasons, so that by these continual discussions there could never arise, in time of war, any unexpected circumstances that he could deal with.”

Helmuth von Moltke, who served as chief of the Prussian General Staff from 1857 to 1888, made extensive use of tactical decision games to train his subordinates and inform contingency planning. Called "tactical assignments" (taktische Aufgaben), these problems employed fictional scenarios in which ideal units were employed on actual terrain. Some of these games were gathered into a book, Moltkes taktische Aufgaben aus den Jahren 1858 bis 1882, which was published in 1892 as the second volume of a multi-volume set of Moltke's collected works. Two years later, an English translation of this book came out under the title Moltke's Tactical Problems from 1858 to 1882.

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