SIMULATIONS LIBRARY/DEFENSE & WARGAMING

Taiwan Strait: The Seventy-Two Hour Standoff

A collision near a lonely atoll. A blockade nobody is willing to call a blockade. Four capitals with seventy-two hours and no clean way out. Nobody wants the war. That is exactly how these begin.

DISCIPLINE

Defense & Wargaming

TEAMS

ROUNDS

RUNTIME

~2 hrs

PLAYERS

Up to 16

MODALITY

In-person or remote

DIFFICULTY

Intro

01 / THE SITUATION

PREVIEW

At first light, a China Coast Guard cutter collided with and boarded a Taiwan resupply vessel off the Pratas Islands, the lonely atoll Taiwan administers in the northern reaches of the South China Sea. Within hours, the China Coast Guard had declared a temporary customs inspection zone across the approaches and begun stopping commercial ships bound for Taiwan's ports, with People's Liberation Army warships ringing the atoll in support. The detained crew is still aboard. The vessels waiting to be inspected are stacking up by the hour.

The Pratas are not worth a war on their own. They are a coral atoll, a short runway, a modest garrison, and a long-running question about who really controls the seam between Taiwan and the South China Sea. What makes this dangerous is everything stacked on top of them: the largest military in the region testing how much it can take without firing a shot, a democracy that cannot be seen to fold, a superpower that has spent decades keeping its exact intentions deliberately vague, and a front-line ally whose bases and airspace would shape any wider fight. Every capital reads the same incident and sees a different crisis.

Nobody in this story set out to start a war. Beijing wants to change the facts around the atoll and the shipping approaches, and watch who flinches. Taipei wants its crew and its standing back without handing Beijing the escalation it may be hoping for. Washington wants to look reliable to every ally watching, without being dragged into a war it did not choose. Tokyo wants the crisis to end short of the fight that would reach its own islands first. The danger is not that someone chooses war. It is that four careful governments, each making a reasonable move, walk into one together.

This is a wargame, played in moves. Each round, your team decides what to do and what to say, knowing the other side is watching and will answer. A control cell adjudicates: it rules on what your move actually achieves, plays the press, the markets, and the rest of the world, and hands you the consequences. There is no script and no guaranteed ending. There is only the next seventy-two hours, the levers in your hands, and the hard work of getting what you need without losing control of what happens next.

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02 / WHAT PLAYERS PRACTICE

01Make decisions under uncertainty and time pressure while an adversary watches every move

02Signal resolve and intent clearly enough to deter, without triggering the war nobody wants

03Read the other side's moves for the difference between a probe, a bluff, and a real commitment

04Treat domestic pressure, allied credibility, and economic shock as one connected problem, not three separate ones

03 / THE ROLES · 4 TEAMS

Taiwan (Presidential Office)

The government of a front-line democracy whose vessel was just seized and whose outlying atoll is now ringed, forced to answer a calibrated provocation without handing the other side the war it may be hoping for.

People's Republic of China (Central Military Commission)

The leadership of the region's largest military, testing how far it can push at once: Taiwan's nerve, Washington's resolve, and Tokyo's willingness to be drawn in.

Japan (National Security Council) AI-PLAYED

The pivotal ally: a front-line state whose bases, airspace, and nearby islands would shape any wider fight, and whose level of involvement is the crisis's great variable. Played live by AI, its caution shifts with every move you make.

United States (Indo-Pacific Command)

Taiwan's most important backer and a global superpower: committed by law to help Taiwan defend itself, deliberately vague about how far it would go, and wary of being pulled into a war it did not choose.

04 / OPERATIONAL BRIEFING

GATED PREVIEW

Taiwan (Presidential Office)ROLE SHEET

You are Taiwan's crisis leadership, convened in emergency session after a China Coast Guard cutter rammed and boarded one of your resupply vessels off the Pratas Islands, the coast guard threw an inspection cordon across the approaches, and People's Liberation Army warships ringed the atoll behind it. Your public is angry and watching, the military across the strait dwarfs your own, and the support of the United States, deliberately kept ambiguous for decades, is something you must shore up rather than assume. You hold the levers of a state under pressure: military posture, the coast guard, diplomatic channels, what you tell your own people, and what you ask of Washington and Tokyo. Every one of them is also a signal the other side will read.

People's Republic of China (Central Military Commission)ROLE SHEET

You are the crisis cell of the People's Republic of China's Central Military Commission, directing the operation around the Pratas. The move is yours, and you have your reasons: the atoll sits on the seam you intend to control, a coast-guard-led inspection zone tests a tool that stays short of open war, and a firm hand plays well at home. But you did not set out to start a war. You set out to change the facts at sea and see who flinches. Your task is to hold what you have taken, keep the United States hesitant and Japan on the sidelines, and always leave yourself a way to step back if the price climbs higher than the prize.

Japan (National Security Council)ROLE SHEET

You are Japan's National Security Council, weighing how far to lean into a crisis unfolding just beyond your southwestern islands. You are not a bystander: United States forces operate from bases on your soil, your own waters and airspace sit astride any wider fight, and a blockade in these waters threatens the shipping your economy runs on. But the public has little appetite for a war over a distant atoll, and every step you take toward one side is read by the other. In this run, Japan is played live by the platform's AI, weighing each side's pressure, threats, and reassurances in real time, so the ally you are trying to bring along behaves a little differently in every game.

United States (Indo-Pacific Command)ROLE SHEET

You are the crisis staff supporting United States Indo-Pacific Command and the National Security Council. The United States has no mutual-defense treaty with Taiwan; it has a law that commits it to help Taiwan defend itself and a decades-old policy of keeping its exact intentions deliberately unclear. That ambiguity is now being tested in real time. You are weighing a dozen other global priorities, a public with little wish to fight over a distant atoll, and the knowledge that your credibility with every ally turns on what you do here. Back Taipei too hard and you risk a war with a nuclear-armed power. Back it too little and every ally you have will quietly recalculate what your word is worth. Your task is to find the line between deterrence and entrapment, in full view of an adversary testing exactly that line.

INJECT TIMELINE

ROUND 1PRESS WIRE · INTERNATIONAL

Collision Video Goes Viral as Beijing Calls It a Rescue

Phone and drone footage of the collision is everywhere by mid-morning: the coast guard cutter turning hard into the smaller resupply boat, crew scrambling at the rail. Chinese state media runs the same clip with a different caption, calling the boarding a lawful inspection and the landing a rescue of sailors who strayed into a restricted zone. Every capital now has an angry public and a story it did not write. Whatever you do next, you are doing it in front of an audience.

ROUND 2BACKCHANNEL · DENIABLE

A Quiet Offer With a Catch

A deniable message reaches Taipei through a third party: Beijing will release the crew, unharmed and soon, and ease the inspections, if Taiwan accepts a joint management arrangement for the waters around the Pratas while talks continue. It is a face-saving way out of the worst of the crisis. It is also a quiet admission that the approaches are now something to be shared rather than simply Taiwan's, which is exactly the change Beijing wanted all along.

ROUND 3CONTROL INJECT · MARKET FLASH

Insurers Blink and the Chip Lines Wobble

As the inspection zone drags into a second day, war-risk insurance for shipping near Taiwan spikes and several carriers reroute or simply stop. Within hours the markets do the math the capitals have been avoiding: a serious disruption to Taiwan's ports is a disruption to the world's most advanced chips, and the prices that move first are the ones nobody controls. The standoff has just started an economic clock that runs against all of you at once.

FULL SCENARIO · GATED PREVIEW

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Full role sheets, the escalating-inject timeline, the facilitator playbook, and the scoring rubric unlock the moment you request access.

Full role sheets for all four governments, including each side's private objectives
The complete move-and-counter-move structure across all three rounds
Confidential briefings per team, where each side knows things the others do not
Facilitator adjudication guide: how to rule on moves, signals, and escalation
After-action review framework for scoring resolve, restraint, and outcome

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