A new board game simulates how a US-China war would be fought

Business Insider

10-05-2025

America and China may go to war someday and no one knows what that war between superpowers will be like. How can armies survive on a battlefield laced with so many lethal weapons like hypersonic missiles and hunter-killer drones?
Answering those questions is the genesis of "Littoral Commander: Indo-Pacific," a board game that depicts combat between American and Chinese forces around 2040. Based on Fleet Marine Force — a tactical-level training simulation for the US Marine Corps — "Littoral Commander" is now used by the US Naval Academy and various US and foreign military schools.
The game is now available to the general public for about $75. "Littoral Commander" is part of a genre known as "serious games," which are educational tools for teaching complex subjects such as healthcare and foreign policy. The idea is that games offer a more immersive experience than manuals and PowerPoint lectures.
"Littoral Commander" is intended to illustrate what has emerged as the crux of modern warfare: the " kill chain" in which sensors locate and identify the enemy, developing targeting data that operators use to attack the enemy target before it does the same. Think of it as a more realistic version of the game of "Battleship." Already in the Ukraine war, the F2T2EA (find, fix, track, target, engage, and assess) process has become crucial as Russia and Ukraine race to speed up the sensor-to-shooter connection.
"The game at its very deepest core is about the F2T2EA process, whether kinetic capabilities such as missiles and drones, or non-kinetic capabilities such as electronic warfare and cyber," Sebastian Bae, designer of "Littoral Commander," told Business Insider.
"Littoral Commander" resembles the paper wargames that date back to the 19th Century kriegspiel used by the German military to train staff officers. Units are rated for firepower, range and speed. Players alternate taking actions such as movement, initiating combat (resolved with a 20-sided die). and resupply. Depending on the scenario, victory conditions include destroying enemy units, seizing ground or preventing the enemy from taking territory.
An "Influence Meter" reflects how popular support may affect a campaign — for example, destroying at least three enemy units in a single turn, or if the enemy conducts a missile attack on friendly units in a city (presumably injuring civilians), then the Influence Meters shifts in your favor, resulting in benefits such as additional resources.
"Littoral Commander" comes with multiple maps, including the Ryukyu Islands (including Okinawa), the Taiwan Strait, the Philippine island of Luzon and the Luzon Strait, and the Malacca Strait between Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Also included are several scenarios, such as battling for a key island or attempting to stop enemy ships passing through a strait; players can also devise their own battles.
The American forces include Marine infantry platoons, backed by amphibious combat vehicles, rocket artillery, air defense and logistics units, as well as US Navy destroyers and submarines. They face Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy Marine Corps mechanized infantry and reconnaissance platoons, supported by light tanks, howitzer and rocket artillery, air defense, and logistics units, as well as destroyers, frigates and submarines.
This order of battle reflects the many small-scale fights in a US-China war. Rather than the massed armies or huge fleets that fought at Midway or Okinawa, a new Pacific War would likely be waged by relatively small but heavily armed amphibious units battling to establish missile bases, airfields and listening posts on strategic islands. Indeed, the US Marine Corps has radically revamped itself for this mission by adopting Force Design 2030. The Marines shed their cumbersome tanks and created mobile littoral regiments armed with anti-ship missiles, which can interdict Chinese warships transiting waterways such as the Luzon and Malacca Straits.
Games like "Littoral Commander" are meant to spur thought and imagination, rather than create a surefire plan to defeat China. "It is not a depiction of warfare of the future, because I cannot predict the future nor can any game," said Bae, a former Marine sergeant and Iraq War veteran who now designs wargames for the Center for Naval Analyses think tank. "I created 'Littoral Commander' to be an intellectual sandbox for people to explore, engage, and learn about capabilities. How these capabilities work and what challenges and opportunities they may offer."
"Littoral Commander" illustrates the panoply of current and future capabilities through 200 "Joint Capability Cards", complete with separate US and Chinese decks. Cards include drones, bombers, cyber operations and signals intelligence, minefields, special forces raids, naval gunfire and other extras that players purchase using a limited number of "command points." The mechanism is somewhat gamey — battalions commanders don't get B-52 strikes on demand — but the practical effect is to allow players to experiment with a wide variety of capabilities. "As a tactical leader, you only get a tiny sliver of them at any given moment," Bae explained. "But I wanted players to think, plan, and assess how and what they needed to execute their plan."
Winning at "Littoral Commander" means mastering a few key variables. Perhaps the most important is detecting the enemy: as the Ukraine war has shown, what can be seen can be destroyed. Counters on the "Littoral Commander" map are considered "concealed:" flipped upside down so that the opponent can't see whether they are an infantry platoon, a missile battery — or a dummy piece simulating the fog of war.
The dilemma is that concealed units can't be fired at. Yet they lose concealment when they fire, or when their locations are scouted by enemy reconnaissance platforms or ground troops. Thus "Littoral Commander" becomes a contest of hide-and-seek, where the combatants try to pinpoint enemy troops for missile strikes. All while screening their own forces from enemy reconnaissance or, if spotted, changing position in order to vanish.
As the Ukraine war has shown, long-range fires dominate the modern battlefield. Missile and artillery units in "Littoral Commander" have enormous firepower and range, but the combatants only have a limited number of guided munitions. The same applies to air and missile defense units, which have a limited supply of interceptors. Players have to carefully decide not just when to fire their long-range weapons — and lose concealment — but also whether to expend munitions or save them for future battles. Picking the right Joint Capability Cards is crucial: for example, the Chinese CH-901 drone swarm cards offers additional long-range strikes, while the US Space Satellite reveals concealed Chinese units.
Bae already has published a commercial sequel — "Littoral Commander Baltic States" — with expansions planned for Australia, Japan, Norway and other nations. In addition to teaching military professionals, he hopes these games will educate the general public.
"I want people to learn various capabilities of modern warfare and how they interact," said Bae. "Like how having a long-range missile means nothing if you cannot find the enemy, and how sequencing and timing matters in the types of actions you do at the tactical level."
"I wanted to make the game accessible to my professional community, which is the Department of Defense," Bae said. "But I also wanted normal people to understand our community better in an engaging way."
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.