One Small Step Board Games Putin’s Northern War

This is a wargame in which solitaire play can be fudged but is more usually played with two, whereby one (the “Russian player”) commands the Kremlin’s forces and the other (the “Allied player”) commands the Finnish-Swedish alliance opposed to him.

This isn’t a simulation of the “opaque (a.k.a. gray) war” techniques most recently used by the Russians in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Rather, it’s designed to facilitate the examination of the strategic possibilities (along with their operational undertones) inherent in this potentially larger and more drastic situation.

The crisis being modeled here, though not yet much discussed, will certainly come into being if the drift of the two “neutral” Scandinavian nations toward NATO membership continues. That would, in turn, most likely occur if – probably in reaction to the growing Muslim in-migration crisis there – a conservative government came to power in Sweden. Part of that altered worldview in Stockholm would then likely also move that government to want to join the Western alliance. Since the Finns are already allied with Sweden (and Denmark), it’s hard not to imagine such a shift wouldn’t also pull Helsinki in the same direction.

All of which would be unacceptable to Putin. His goal here would therefore be to bring off a quick and victorious blitzkrieg-like campaign against Finland, while probably also seizing the low-hanging geo-strategic fruit of Sweden’s Gotland Island. That would allow him to install a fully subservient government in Helsinki, turn the Baltic Sea into a Russian lake, and simultaneously recast Sweden into Finland’s former role: a quiet and pliant neutral.

This game can be played as a stand-alone, or it can be used as part of a new “Grand Campaign Scenario” for combined play with its parent game, Putin Strikes.