"The Importance of the Operational Level: The..." Topic

…. Ludendorff Offensives of 1918.

"It is widely agreed that there are three levels of war. From the more general to the more local, they are the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Strategy is the alignment of means and ways to accomplish a political end. Strategy is about winning the war. Tactics consist of locally achieving victory through a series of actions that, taken globally, participate directly or indirectly in the accomplishment of strategy. Tactics are typically about winning battles. Finally, operations consist of connecting the tactics to the strategy. To do so, the operational level aims to create campaigns—a series of tactical actions which pursue specific operational aims—to ultimately accomplish specific strategic goals. The operational level is typically about winning a series of campaigns to accomplish the stated strategy.

Each level of war is essential to achieve success, and are all equally important. The Ludendorff Offensives of 1918 provide an illustration of why the operational level is essential. This article will provide the strategic context before presenting the objectives of the German campaign, its execution, and an analysis followed by a conclusion…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Does anyone use hex and counter wargames to model the operational level and a tactical level wargame to represent results on the operational board?

I'm intending to do this with Objective Havana by Modern War magazine for an invasion of Cuba.

Basically I move the chits on the Objective Havana game and play out the key parts of confrontations using 20mm figures and an undetermined ruleset. The result of the tactical game is applied back to the Objective Havana game.

I haven't started the campaign yet (still building models and terrain) but has anyone else here done something similar?

Naval, any of the War At Sea series games by Avalanche Press. WW1 link WW2 link Some of them even have enough aircraft to run an air war game (e.g. La Regia Marina)

Air, Yaquinto's Bomber (8th AF) is available on Vassal. Although you'll need a copy of the rules.

For land you'll need to make sure each counter is a combined arms force, or can reasonably be made as one. For land warfare you will need to divine terrain that you needn't do in the air or at sea. Some roll for terrain system?

>Does anyone use hex and counter wargames to model the operational level and a tactical level wargame to represent results on the operational board?

In the past, Ancients to Napoleonics to WWII gaming for campaigns, but campaigns tend to run out of interest. Once helped umpire an ancients weekend that used some area (not hexes) wargame paired with Classical Hack miniatures rules. Lots of big battles, but too much recruiting to make up losses.

I've had much luck playing in and umpiring Napoleonic Campaigns in a Day using Snappy Nappy rules across multiple tabletops. It takes a long day (from 11 to 5) and multiple tables, but it's a lot of fun. Blog detailing annual "SnapCons"

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Little Wars TV review of SN

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Full disclosure: I wrote SN and have been running these large multi-player multi-table campaigns in a day since 1994 (25 years!). Write-ups in the old MWANs: 78, 88, 94, 116, and 122 if you've got the issues.

You can certainly adapt the concepts from the Campaign in a Day to WWI as long as you have a simple set of rules.