11 Questions on Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War A Deep Dive with Robert
Recently, I was granted the chance to interview Robert Crandall, the CEO and Creative Director at On Target Simulation, the company responsible for the beloved Flashpoint Campaign series of wargames. With Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War, so close to its release date (20th November, 2025), there’s no better time to go over the history and the favorite games of Robert, what makes Flashpoint Campaign so special, and what the third entry of the series is going to improve upon.
1. Hello, Robert! Can you please introduce yourself? Who are you? How did you get into wargaming?
I’m a wargamer of 50+ years now and the founder of On Target Simulations. As a very young teenager, I was exposed to the likes of Avalon Hill’s “Bismarck” and “Tactics 2”. Mostly those are repressed memories now, but I did really like SPI’s “Napoleon at Waterloo” when a good friend introduced me to it at age 16. That sparked an interest in military history that continues to this day.
The military history fed off the wargaming and vice versa. When personal computers became a thing, all 3 became intertwined in my life. My day job was a software developer, mainly for small businesses and startups. I had all the early SSI computer wargames and started writing my own to improve on them. I programmed them in my free time as a way to learn new programming techniques in a safe-to-fail environment, and to scratch my creative itch that wasn’t being satisfied during normal working hours.
2. Let’s say I’m new to the franchise. Can you please explain it to me in your own words, and what makes it special when compared to other Cold War wargames?
At the time I started work on this, Colonel Boyd and the ‘Boyd Cycle’ were a new and very interesting theory to read about. Better known now as the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop (“OODA loop”), it was a key to what NATO rather bravely thought would help it in any future confrontation with the Warsaw Pact in Germany. “Fight outnumbered and win” was the motto, and getting ‘inside their command cycle’ by having a distinctly shorter OODA loop was central to their training. So was having the biggest possible technological superiority. Thermal imaging, for example, to fight at night and see through smoke, was absolutely critical for us to have.
This game explicitly models the OODA and allows it to change over the course of the game. If your forces are on the smaller side but fresh and rested, you will have a short command cycle. As they become fatigued and take losses, especially HQ losses, your turn lengths will get longer and longer. If you rest and reorganize your forces, then they can shorten up again. Larger forces inherently have longer cycles, so that is a bit of an impediment to the Warsaw Pact player. Finally, the turn lengths for each player can vary independently of each other. A nimble, cohesive force can have two turns while the larger force is forced to react to old information and follow old orders.
For the latter point on technology, we have gone to great lengths to model equipment, platforms, weapons, and sensors in great detail, and to back it all up with appropriate sensing, movement, and combat models. When you try out the different nations, you will quickly notice the differences in how they move and fight.
3. Can you briefly explain the unique WEGO turn system and how it creates a sense of tension and realism that other turn structures miss?
In this game, there is an Orders Phase, which pauses the action and lets you tell your units what to do. It takes several minutes (and potentially longer) for your orders to reach the units and take effect. They then continue in effect until new orders are received. For example, if you order a unit to move a long way, it doesn’t just magically move to what it can reach in a turn. It plots a path and moves along it, and it might take multiple turns to complete the entire thing.
A good way to play the game is to take your time planning out the whole battle and issuing extensive pregame orders. Then you hit the clock button and start to watch the action unfold. At some point, the enemy will be spotted, and you can start to check what you thought would happen compared to what is actually happening. Often this leads to a sinking feeling. You then wait for your next orders phase to intervene and start ordering fresh orders in response. If you have a short command cycle, then lucky you, you might get these orders in good time. If you have a long cycle, then you might be like countless real-life commanders who knew exactly what to do but could not get their orders out in time to do it. The forces of each side have momentum and cannot just pivot on an instant’s notice. This affects both sides equally, which leads to great tension as to whose course of action will prevail.
4. What’s new in this game when compared to the previous 2 titles? What are you looking forward to seeing players interact with?
The headline new feature in this game is Air Assault – the ability to load troops into helicopters and land them far in the rear of the enemy. That is so easy to say and so much work to program! You will see this expand more in the future. We have helicopter and truck movement now, and will add amphibious assault in the future.
Apart from this, we have a better variety of encounters, i.e. there are more NATO counterattacks than before, and friendly Standard Operating Procedures (“SOPs”) allow (but do not require) a whole new level of customization of your commander’s intent. We have added Poland and Belgium as new Nationalities for the first time, and the maps now cover almost the entire Inter-German Border.
5. How do the new Air Assaults and Tactical Transport features fundamentally change how players can plan their operational moves on the battlefield?
In days gone by, front lines were linear. There was our front line, no man’s land, and their front line. This was already a bit of a stretch in the Cold War due to much lower force densities, but conceptually it was still a consideration. Now, with air assault troops, rapid movement directly into the rear of the enemy is feasible and expected.
The Warsaw Pact, in particular, had air assault troops to move ahead to seize key terrain in advance of the ground columns. They were not heavily armed, but they were there to be used, and all NATO planning had to shift to account for the possibility of their use. In other words, for the scenarios that have it, uncertainty at the start of the scenario is higher, and the action starts much more quickly.
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