Military professionals were able to treat the tabletop simulation like a real-world situation, identifying areas of potential threat
Last December we were lucky enough to visit the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom in Shrivenham. In addition to running our own session (using Captain Sonar to teach English as a second language) we observed cadets working with a homebrew tabletop wargame and later navigating a hostile city using the MoD’s ‘Virtual Battlespace’ (think Call of Duty with fewer pixels and more drones).
The game in question, played with painted 28mm figures on a detailed battlefield, pit a small military force of unspecified nationality (notionally the ‘goodies’) against a similarly-sized insurgent force (again of unspecified nationality and, as the word “insurgent” implies, the ‘baddies’). The aim of the session was not to study the tactics of smallsquad actions, but rather to practise the use of the English language (specifically speaking in the future and past tenses, and developing vocabulary).