Hier noch ein Statement von Lt.Col. Barrick über das Event:
Our exercise at the Marine Corps War College (MCWAR) went extremely well. I know one of the participating developers is going to provide an AAR on the game, so I won't go much into detail. But, we had 5 student teams playing the major WW1 powers (30 students), and our control cell played Italy and the Ottoman Empire. We kept 7 computers in the game on a dedicated LAN with each computer playing a different country. Actual exercise time was about 5 hours over two days (lots of pauses for strategic planning and decisions), and we played a year of game time. We ended in August 1915.
Overall, we received very positive responses from the students. I'd categorize it as a huge success. In fact, we decided to adjust our curriculum so that we could incorporate Darkest Hour into our WW2 block. For WW2, we're still deciding how we want to tackle it, but we will probably make our students the Allied countries and have them focus on Allied strategy. Additionally, we want to include the competition over resources between theaters. So, we are going to do some play testing to see if the game will function well with 4 or 5 computers on a side for each of the Allied countries. For the USA, for example, we will assign a couple students to play theater commanders in the Pacific and a couple in Europe. Then another running economic development and technology. Another student will play Marshall and another as FDR to make the big strategic decisions. We'll have another student cell developing future plans and doing combined planning with the Brit and Soviet planners. Should be interesting to see how this works. I'll be doing software testing in December to see what the game can handle. The exercise will go March 31st - April 2nd, here in Quantico at MCWAR.
I am extremely appreciative of the support from the two developers who attended. They had to mod our scenario several times to enable us to do the things we wanted to do. Our exercise would not have been nearly as successful without their help.
By the way, we printed out large (meter square) maps of Europe from the scenario and laminated them. The students used these maps for planning. It was awesome. I commend your map maker!
Anyways, love Darkest Hour. And, as long as I am on the faculty at MCWAR, it will remain incorporated into our curriculum. It is a superb educational tool to teach historical strategy.
LtCol Tim Barrick, USMC
Director Leadership & Ethics
Deputy Director for War, Policy, and Strategy
Marine Corps War College
timothy.barrick@usmc.mil