AoS Homework: IPOE Step 4

 

Introduction

If you've made it this far, then you are pretty much ready to be an intelligence officer in the US military. Joking aside, thank you for continuing to learn with us using military doctrine as a framework for becoming a better wargaming general. If you haven't already, give us a follow, leave a comment, and now you can sign up for email updates for when articles are published. Today we will finish up with the last step of the IPOE process and discuss how we can perform all 4 steps in a pretty expedited fashion. Pull a seat up to the table, warmaster, and we will discuss some tactics.

Step 4: Determine Threat Courses of Action

All of the previous steps we performed culminates to this: what is the enemy going to do? Or at the very least, we aim to determine what they are very likely to do. But allow me to drive this home yet again, in each of our actions, the best possible maneuver we can perform is one that places the initiative firmly in our hands. If we can position ourselves in such a way that we limit the options available to the enemy commander, we are retaining the initiative. In the US Army, a commander has a staff they utilize to game out what they think will happen based on all of the factors we have reviewed thus far. When executed properly, the staff can help the commander choose an approach that will allow for tactical flexibility and "accept all comers" when it comes to the enemy's choices. 

The enemy will be trying to do the same exact thing (or at least you should be anticipating that they will be doing so). The following steps will reduce the chances of you being surprised by their actions and help you maintain control of the game. The substeps for determining threat courses of action are to develop threat courses of action (COAs) and to develop an event template and matrix. The former is merely a process of molding the Threat Template from the previous article into the context of the terrain and other operational environmental factors. 

Develop threat COAs

This is simply a process of putting yourself in your opponent's shoes and considering what they are likely to do. Consider the exact some factors when you are formulating your plan: how will I score primary objective points? What battle tactics are available to me? What part of the board do I want to control? The list goes on, but let us focus on what is most likely to happen (MLCOA) and the most dangerous course of action (MDCOA). This is a useful, expedient way to prepare for what might happen next. Let's say you are matched up against the Ogor player from the previous article. It is the bottom of turn one after your opponent moved up the board, took some objectives, and did some chip damage with shooting their ironblaster.

Now consider what you think are the MLCOA and MDCOA. The MLCOA would probably be to put themselves in a position that they can continue to score battle tactics and that they will commit part of their force to melee combat in order to do so (many of the current battle tactics would require this). If you are considering the characteristics of the defense effectively, they likely won't see an opportunity to exploit the following turn, and you can maintain the initiative, or at least trade it back and forth as the rounds progress. The most dangerous course of action could result from you taking a calculated risk by overextending, banking on the double turn to mitigate their ability to charge and therefore inflict maximum damage. If you do not get the double turn, the tables have turned and now you have provided the Ogor player with exactly what they have been trying to create: an opportunity to exploit. This is your MDCOA. 

Right now we are just trying to generate these contextualized COAs with all the information we have and visualizing second and third orders of effect that might take place. Take the threat template we have generated previously and let's massage it into the operational environment. If the player can utilize some impassible terrain near where they've deployed, that will likely give them the ability to screen out an ever larger portion of the board because they need not fear being flanked from that side. Is there key terrain or an objective they can move block you from? Their defense will likely gravitate around that area. These are the sorts of "branches and sequels," what the opponent will do based on their current postures and actions for subsequent plans, we can envision and interact with when we go through this process. A common trend during our opponent's turn is to focus on what they are doing, but it is just as important, if not more so, to think think about what we are going to do in response during their turn.

Develop the Event Template and Matrix

These steps focus largely on information collection and reconnaissance efforts for military commanders, so we are going to distill it to the most basic and necessary information. Usually you would use the Event Template and Matrix to lay out when throughout time and space you expect things to happen. You then use this information to direct collection assets to these "named areas of interest" (NAIs) so you can observe indicators that a particular enemy COA is happening. In the example below, indicators for each of the threat COAs may be the emplacement of obstacles, multiple linear defensive positions perpendicular to obstacles, and setting up near intervisibility lines, respectively, clue us in as to what the enemy's intentions are while we rule out other COAs. 

What's the significance of this? If we have a better idea of what the enemy can do, we have more opportunities to affect their operations. Namely, it helps us understand where their key components will be in space and time, and helps us develop strategies to create opportunities so we can neutralize or destroy those components. The key here is tactical flexibility. Try to find your own courses of action that can account for different enemy decisions. Taking it back to our Ogor scenario, you could theoretically set yourself to tie or even go down on points in order to put your opponent in a position that they have to abandon the defense to continue to get battle tactics and disallow you from pulling ahead as the tempo shifts. This can be a viable path to victory, depending on your army capabilities. 

Conclusion

There is not a panacea that I can tell you, "in this scenario do this," because it does not exist. Rather, I aim to help you reconsider how you view and process information as the game progresses. This process can be clunky and protracted, but luckily the vast majority of it you can do outside of the game. You need not ask your opponent to wait while you furiously mark up a sheet of acetate with NATO symbols. I'm just asking you to consider how you go about accounting for what your enemy may do and what you plan to do in response. The more prepared you are, the less likely you are to make poor decisions and you reduce the amount of mental fatigue you incur. This is just a way to do it in a procedural manner. Thanks again for joining Sparkle Strategy once again on this journey. Remember to leave some feedback, subscribe for updates, and most importantly, stay sparkly.