British Army Desert War Game, The - MOD Wargaming Rules 1978 (Reprint)

These rules were written in 1968 to wargame, at a tactical level, the desert warfare battles in a potential invasion of Iraq in the mid-1970’s. They are a piece of wargaming ‘archeology.’

The Land Rules for a Wargame in a Desert Setting in 1978 are an example of a military map based wargame. Written both for training and analysis, they have detailed information on matters important to the military and often ignored by hobby wargamers.

Deployment times, lead times for preparation of assaults, ammunition constraints, shadowing retreating units and communications are all dealt with by the rules.

Although based at platoon level for the British and company level for the Russians, the rules have both unit based combat results and individual vehicle fire combat tables.

Military wargames are traditional heavily umpired, with a large supporting case of assistants to help run the game, but this book contains guidance on how a modern wargamer can recreate the original game in a practical form on a single map.

These wargaming rules were restricted until recently, when they were released into the National Archives.

The British Army Tactical Wargame (1978) was originally printed for distribution within the British Army as part of the 720 Series of Map Based Wargames. The other rules in the series have not currently been found in the archives.