Sussex Sorrows

Jorit Wintjes studied ancient and modern history, Latin and ancient Greek at the University of Würzburg. He wrote a dissertation on the Antiochian orator Libanius and a Habilitationsschrift on Roman naval operations in north-western Europe. His research interests include ancient and pre-WWI military history, the role of women in warfare and the use of conflict simulations in officer training. He is a member of the Conflict Simulation Group.Steffen Pielström studied biology at the University of Würzburg. He wrote a PhD thesis on organization processes, information use and decision making in ant societies. His current research interests include computational text analysis, the application of quantitative methodology in humanities research, and the simulation and modelling of conflicts. He is a member of the Conflict Simulation Group.

The Conflict Simulation Group has begun using conflict simulations as an educational tool in 2011. Since then, the group has developed a number of rule sets addressing various topics, and conducted research on the history of conflict simulations in military training. "Sussex Sorrows" is a facilitator-based, operational wargame covering a fictional French invasion of southern England in the 1880s. The rule set presented here is an adaptation of a Kriegsspiel published in the 19th c. by Prussian officer Jakob Meckel. Optimized for simulating operations at division to army corps levels, it includes elements such as logistics, casualty management and civil-military interaction. "Sussex Sorrows" has been used by the authors for several years with groups of up to 40 participants and is publishd here with the supplemnts "Doom of Eastbourne" for urban warfare scenarios, and "useful Idiots and Insufferable Geniuses", a set of rules for simulating subordinate commandrs in facilitator-based wargames.