This is my first attempt at a generic modern urban ruleset again with a Bde force (but might flex up to Div and down to Bn) and 2 DOWN manoeuvre units. It is a fairly “vanilla” set, and uses totally different combat mechanics to Festung, and may yet spawn a number of more specialised sets. There are a number of completely different games I want to do looking at different aspects of urban, but need to get this one “out of my system” so as to consolidate some initial thoughts. It's first public showing was at WD's COW 2023.

City and CEMA is designed to reflect many of the significant features of modern, urban, large scale combat operations. The game uses Capability Cards to represent the diverse range of assets and effects available to the modern commander including: Cyber, EW, HUMINT, Space, Air Support and Fires. Fog of War and the use of ISR assets are also key elements. Civilians and Civilian infrastructure play an important part of the game, and every kinetic action has the chance of creating reverberating effects. In order to put the battle in context City and CEMA follows NATO’s USECT doctrine, leading the players through phases covering the Understand, Shape, Engage and Consolidate/Transition aspects of a modern urban war in a large town or city.

Note that:

• The game does not yet reflect all or even much of my PhD research and is largely based on prior knowledge, opinion and bias - but as my research continues I hope to evolve the game to better reflect the research - assuming I don't junk it and start all over again!
• The game does not yet reflect too much of what is going on in the Ukraine. How on earth do you create a wargame where a fight over a small urban town like Bakmut (pop 73k) takes over 6 months? (for reference, Redditch, which I'm using as my test scenario has a population of 86k!)
• The game is currently a bit of a “kitchen-sink” game, with (almost) everything thrown in and probably needs some culling and streamlining - and I'll take COW feedback as an opportunity to start that process.

Here's the City & CEMA Designers Notes as they stood pre-COW, and here is The Nugget Onside report containing my observations and reflections after the COW game.

Pictures from the COW game at https://newconverj.blogspot.com/2023/08/city-cema-at-cow.html and here is the map used for the Redditch game .

Here's the flyer for the game.

You can follow its development and playtesting through my Twitter feed at: https://twitter.com/hashtag/CityAndCEMA.