Johns Hopkins' SAIS Wargaming Club

Event attendees and Wargaming Club staff issuing orders on the First Island Chain. 🗾

Aloha, IADS: The Game Gang!

Happy to announce the success of our guest speaker appearance at Johns Hopkins’ Wargaming Club. Huge thanks to Mr. Jakub Wozniak and the Wargaming Club staff for the invitation; we were floored by the group’s professionalism, intellectual curiosity, and international diversity. Really looking forward to our next presentation on your beautiful campus.

Ric chatting with attendees around the Strait of Hormuz operational navigation chart (ONC) before the event.

The format for this event was so different from what we’re used to. For me and Ric, an event is usually a hurried set-up followed by wave after wave of interested passers-by. By the start of the afternoon, we’ve usually got our canned intro down pat and are starting to lose our voices from the whooping and hollering over unexpected hits and misses.

Alex leading the discussion about how our game teaches IADS principles and how we operate our small indie board game company.

The Johns Hopkins Wargaming Club is headed by the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS, pronounced “SICE,” rhymes with “TWICE”). A much more serious, intellectual forum than the board game and cosplay conventions we’re used to, the club secretary, Mr. Alex Taylor, sat us down to discuss rather than roll dice. Questions spanned everything from running a small business to the inclusion of laser weapons and I-HAWK (maybe in the next iteration of our legacy expansion).

After the discussion, we broke out into demo tables. Here, Ric is facilitating a 2v2 VUL.

Mr. Wozniak provided the questions beforehand, and they prompted Ric and me to reflect deeply on our little company and everything we’ve done. I turned that into a bit of a historical timeline that I’ll post here as a blog post at some point; it’ll be fun to track our history in a neat online ledger!

I facilitated a 3v3 VUL on the Bohai Gulf ONC. Although the Blue/Green team dove straight in with a Heavy Bomber escorted by an Air Superiority Fighter, Red/Yellow team's Long Range SAM ultimately dominated the air space and deterred further pushes, allowing them to successfully Bunker Down when they were up in Attrition Points!

Jakub, John, and Brent making their simultaneous offensive and defensive C-C-C-Combo after a lengthy team huddle between turns!

The questions also prompted me to ask Ric about the technical and air power related things he included in the game. It was fascinating to take a dive into that side of the lore of our game, which is something I’d only really considered in the background as I was rolling to meet-or-beat 10 to destroy enemy Headquarters. I’m excited to learn more, but when I hear Ric talk about it, I can see why the “not intended as a training aid” disclaimer we have gets disregarded so often by professionals in the defense and wargaming industries. 😅

Ric getting hyped to teach new players! We're so grateful the SAIS students were all very welcoming and open to learning IADS concepts via our game!

Ric demonstrating that movement Speed, Detection Range, and Shot Range are all measured in card diameter, 3.5 inches.

After the forum, we broke out into two groups and got a few VULs in. Ric and I were stoked to meet a prior German Air Defender (thanks for the sticker, Matthias!), a student who’d served in the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, and a slew of brilliant soon-to-be U.S. State Department and World Bank employees.

Group photo after the event with the SAIS Wargaming Club Staff 😊

All in all our first collaboration with SAIS was a huge success. To be invited to be the first-ever guest speakers to this brand new club at such a prestigious university and program… it’s amazing. Again, huge shout-out to the deep minds at JHU’s SAIS! We’re so grateful for the interest in IADS: The Game.

Looking forward to our next sorties!

Issue Orders!

– Madonna