Matrix Games Forums

I would be interested to hear from the developers on the process of creating a Cold War wargame versus creating a wargame from other periods in history. From what I understand, most "Cold War gone hot" scenarios in games like FCCW or the ones from Wargame Design Studio are based on orders of battle and declassified documents about wargames, contingencies, available technologies, plans of attack, etc., leaving the scenarios ultimately hypothetical in nature and relying on the imagination more so than studying battles that actually occurred. This thought came to me when I switched from playing FCCW last night to one of WDS's American Civil War games and earlier in the week, War Plan Orange: Dreadnoughts in the Pacific.

What is your process for creating scenarios that are hypothetical but nevertheless believable? Do you feel differently about wargaming hypotheticals versus battles that actually occurred? Is one more or less constraining than the other from a designer's POV?

I'm happy to be corrected if I'm off-base with any of the above, as the Cold War is not an era I am intimately familiar with. And thank you for all your work on FCCW!

A very interesting question. While doing historical games has its pitfalls, such as having to have every name and rivet noted properly, it does make folks get crazy on you in the forums. You do have historical information and setups that don't require creativity. In our case, in the land of the hypothetical, we do need to use historical information on unit data, formations, and maps to ensure we are properly representing the time and place of the battles. We do gain the benefit of being able to craft the narrative of the "war" and therefore the location and time of the fights and who and what is involved. We do have a number of retired military folks on the teams, and a number of us who have been involved in Cold War and other gaming for decades, and using information from the time, we can construct scenarios and campaigns with very plausible settings. A war that never happened, thankfully, gives some artistic license and allows some meandering around the real timeline. We can include equipment that never went into full production, but was tested in or planned during the decade. We also want to make challenging and entertaining scenarios. Sometimes that may include adding or removing certain force assets that might not have been used or needed elsewhere.

With our Dev team, Content Team, and Playtesters, we review and work to provide the best content for the game's players.

Shortly before FCCW came out, I read this book (which made me salivate for FCCW...)


It is a historical analysis of a possible war in Europe in the late 1980s, which starts with the strategic situation and comes down to how the armies of the various countries would have fought on the field. It is not a "what if" novel, but it is the best effort from the author to distill what is now public knowledge into a realistic evaluation of "the war never fought."

Going further into the book, you find analysis about operations, tactics, and even different fighting conditions (weather, time of the day, terrain...) The book also explains why different armies employed different doctrines, including tracing ties to WWII that remained unbroken.

It is a book full of surprises. For example, US Army doctrine prompted it to fight a 3,000m direct fire battle. The same US Army, however, judged that, given the nature of terrain in Western Europe, 85% of the engagements would have been fought at 2,000m or less! The two things were never reconciled. However, the transition in the West from "Active Defense" to "Overland Battle" (thanks to the arrival of new weapon systems on the battlefield) shows how a war fought in 1980 would have been an entirely different affair from a war fought in 1988.

Ironically, in a chapter of the book, the author grumbles against commercial war games (he is a war gamer himself...) and disses the idea that they can be an instrument to really understand an unfought war. While I disagree with him, I must admit that he has a valid point: many players lack knowledge about military doctrine and do not understand why, for example, the Bundeswehr fought in one manner while the BAOR fought differently. To quote the book:

"Many gamers play the same way regardless of which ‘army’ they game with. They simply switch between different equipment and organizations but use the same tactics. They may not command Bundeswehr forces as a Bundeswehr commander would do, for example."

Anyway, it is an excellent book that, while presenting analysis of the war at different scales, seems to be written with FCCW's scale at its center. For example, there is a chapter where the author tries to imagine a "Cold War Gone Hot" in September 1987 where he gives "practical" examples of his theories. The result is a gold mine for scenario designers.

Tl;dr: I have a lot of books about the Cold War. This is one of the best, and my first suggestion for those who approach FCCW and wish to understand why they are equipped in a certain way, what they have to do, and how.

CapnDarwin wrote: Wed Jan 07, 2026 6:41 pm A very interesting question. While doing historical games has its pitfalls, such as having to have every name and rivet noted properly, it does make folks get crazy on you in the forums. You do have historical information and setups that don't require creativity. In our case, in the land of the hypothetical, we do need to use historical information on unit data, formations, and maps to ensure we are properly representing the time and place of the battles. We do gain the benefit of being able to craft the narrative of the "war" and therefore the location and time of the fights and who and what is involved. We do have a number of retired military folks on the teams, and a number of us who have been involved in Cold War and other gaming for decades, and using information from the time, we can construct scenarios and campaigns with very plausible settings. A war that never happened, thankfully, gives some artistic license and allows some meandering around the real timeline. We can include equipment that never went into full production, but was tested in or planned during the decade. We also want to make challenging and entertaining scenarios. Sometimes that may include adding or removing certain force assets that might not have been used or needed elsewhere.

With our Dev team, Content Team, and Playtesters, we review and work to provide the best content for the game's players.

Thank you for your response! I put in bold a couple phrases that struck me. I had assumed that technology would become a front and center talking point in Cold War wargaming because it's what we have that's tangible, as compared to actual battles that unfolded. Then, the war that is "crafted" on top of that technology factors in times and places that were epicenters of tense geopolitical maneuvering. I find these kinds of hypotheticals fascinating and they remind me of the interest I've taken in War Plan Orange (the book by Edward S. Miller and the game published by Matrix eons ago).

The possibility for scenarios and locales seems to be virtually endless.

RFalvo69 wrote: Thu Jan 08, 2026 4:46 am Shortly before FCCW came out, I read this book (which made me salivate for FCCW...)

It is a historical analysis of a possible war in Europe in the late 1980s, which starts with the strategic situation and comes down to how the armies of the various countries would have fought on the field. It is not a "what if" novel, but it is the best effort from the author to distill what is now public knowledge into a realistic evaluation of "the war never fought."

Going further into the book, you find analysis about operations, tactics, and even different fighting conditions (weather, time of the day, terrain...) The book also explains why different armies employed different doctrines, including tracing ties to WWII that remained unbroken.

It is a book full of surprises. For example, US Army doctrine prompted it to fight a 3,000m direct fire battle. The same US Army, however, judged that, given the nature of terrain in Western Europe, 85% of the engagements would have been fought at 2,000m or less! The two things were never reconciled. However, the transition in the West from "Active Defense" to "Overland Battle" (thanks to the arrival of new weapon systems on the battlefield) shows how a war fought in 1980 would have been an entirely different affair from a war fought in 1988.

Ironically, in a chapter of the book, the author grumbles against commercial war games (he is a war gamer himself...) and disses the idea that they can be an instrument to really understand an unfought war. While I disagree with him, I must admit that he has a valid point: many players lack knowledge about military doctrine and do not understand why, for example, the Bundeswehr fought in one manner while the BAOR fought differently. To quote the book:

"Many gamers play the same way regardless of which ‘army’ they game with. They simply switch between different equipment and organizations but use the same tactics. They may not command Bundeswehr forces as a Bundeswehr commander would do, for example."

Anyway, it is an excellent book that, while presenting analysis of the war at different scales, seems to be written with FCCW's scale at its center. For example, there is a chapter where the author tries to imagine a "Cold War Gone Hot" in September 1987 where he gives "practical" examples of his theories. The result is a gold mine for scenario designers.

Tl;dr: I have a lot of books about the Cold War. This is one of the best, and my first suggestion for those who approach FCCW and wish to understand why they are equipped in a certain way, what they have to do, and how.

Thank you for the recommendation! Too bad it's not available in any of my local or statewide library systems. Might need to grab it from Amazon, as it sounds quite interesting.

The quote about wargaming is also interesting because in order to enforce that kind of mentality, a wargame would need to have rules in place that narrowly reflect how a commander in those particular circumstances would have fought or acted. It reminds me of the widespread theory in tabletop role-playing that players always end up playing versions of themselves, eventually, just with different settings, names, items, and narratives. Wargaming is historical until the moment a player moves a piece...

Thanks for the Battlegroup! shout! I bought the Kinlde edition, it looks to be an interesting read for sure. No "Fulda Gap", eh.

My perspective on this:

From a combat system/scenario development standpoint, real-world scenarios (i.e., battles/campaigns that actually took place) are valuable for validation purposes. Setting up a real scenario and letting it play out allows you to compare the simulated results to the actual ones (although, of course, certain real-world factors cannot be captured adequately in a simulation) and can inform changes to unit statistics, combat mechanics, and other aspects of the game.

However, from the standpoint of a player, historical scenarios have a drawback in that the historical "unknowns" are known in advance. For instance, a player replaying the Battle of Waterloo knows (or at least can find out) that the Prussian army will arrive at a certain time, in a certain location, whereas the actual participants did not know this from the start. This can be compensated for with randomly occurring variants (hypothetical CoAs that differ from the actual ones taken, variations in available forces, etc.), but it is still a major consideration in any historical setting. Using a hypothetical conflict/scenario avoids this pitfall but has its own potential issues (lack of validation being among the top ones).