9-122. War-gaming is a disciplined process, with rules and steps that attempt to visualize the flow of the operation, given the force’s strengths and dispositions, the enemy’s capabilities, and possible COAs; the impact and requirements of civilians in the area of operations; and other aspects of the situation. The simplest form of war-gaming is the manual method, often using a tabletop approach with blowups of matrixes and templates. The most sophisticated form of war-gaming is computer-aided modeling and simulation. Regardless of the form used, each critical event within a proposed COA should be war-gamed using the action, reaction, and counteraction methods of friendly and enemy forces interaction. This basic war-gaming method (modified to fit the specific mission and environment) applies to offensive, defensive, and stability or defense support of civil authorities operations. When conducting COA analysis, commanders and staffs perform the process actions and produce the outputs shown in figure 9-6.