Red Dragon/Green Crescent (RDGC)
is a strategic-level, intermediate-complexity wargame, with operational
undertones, covering hypothetical future conflicts around the southern and
eastern peripheries of Asia. The timeframe is the near future, between 2013 and
2021. The game has been designed by Bruce Costello using Ty Bomba’s CSR Award
winning system that first appeared in Strategy & Tactics no. 250.
It’s adaptable for two player, multi-player and solitaire play.
RDGC
expands the original game into a two-mapper covering the Indian Ocean and
Middle East, areas strategic to both the US and its allies and the Peoples
Republic of China and its allies.
In the game, Chinese forces that may be
initially deployed into the Indian Ocean area are few, but they also have one
solid ally at start: Myanmar. Besides Myanmar, there are other question marks
for US planners. For instance, would Pakistan stand idly by if India allied
with the US, given the existential threat they perceive of a US-Indian victory
in a war with China? And what about Iran: if that country is ever to make a
move to achieve dominance in the Persian Gulf, what better time than during a
major war while its winners aren’t yet clear? There’s also the rest of the
troubled Middle East (Egypt-Syria-Lebanon-Israel). That collective totality
makes for a wonderfully varied gaming situation. Besides the main scenarios,
there are numerous variants and options, adding new dimensions and giving
literally hundreds of new possibilities for play.
Most of the ground units in RDGC
represent brigades (“brigade combat teams” or “BCT” for the US). The exceptions
are the Singaporean, Malaysian, Taiwanese, Philippine, and Yemeni armies. There
is additionally one new corps of marines for the PRC. Aircraft are mostly
represented by mixed-type combat-wings, though only one aircraft type is shown
on each counter. Long-range bombers have their own mono-type units that can’t
combine operations with the other ‘tactical’ air wings. Ship units mostly
represent mission-oriented groups of vessels such as SAGs, subrons or
individual capital ships.
Game turns represent varied amounts of “real
time,” depending on the “operation” presently being conducted, from one to
three days. An entire match encompasses the first month of the wars being
examined. Scenarios include partial and two-map games, some centered on the
Korean peninsula, others on the Indo-Pakistan area, and others taking in the
entire, huge, arcing region from the Red Sea to Alaska.
This
special edition includes 2 maps (22x34 inches) and 556 counters.