Scenario Planning & Wargaming
Rehearse the Decision
Before You Have to Make It.
Straife runs facilitated one- to two-day wargames for boards and executive committees — a live adversary, real decision points on a compressed clock, and an after-action report that converts the day into trigger indicators and pre-agreed responses. The gaps in your crisis response surface in the room, months before anything is at stake.
1–2 Day Workshop
After-Action Report
On-Site or Secure Remote
The Session
How a Wargame Runs
A Straife wargame is not a presentation with discussion time at the end. It is a structured exercise in which your executives make binding decisions against an opposing cell, and are held to the consequences.
01
Before
Pre-Read & Exposure Mapping
In the weeks before the session, Straife maps where the organization is actually exposed — revenue concentration, supply and logistics chokepoints, licenses and regulatory dependencies, counterparty and financing relationships, and people on the ground. Participants receive a short pre-read, so the session opens with the briefing already done.
02
The Room
Facilitated Tabletop & Role Assignment
The session opens with roles assigned: an executive cell holding the organization’s decisions, cells representing the governments, regulators, and counterparties whose behavior matters, and an adversary cell whose explicit job is to act against the organization’s interest with the tools a real actor would have. Straife facilitates and controls the injects.
03
Pressure
Decision Points Under Time Pressure
The scenario advances in moves. At each move the executive cell faces a small number of consequential decisions on a compressed clock, with incomplete information, and must commit before the next inject lands. The adversary cell responds to whatever they choose. This is where assumptions about authority, escalation, and who actually decides get tested.
04
After
After-Action Report
A written report delivered after the session: what the organization decided and why, where the decision chain broke down, the exposures the exercise revealed, a set of trigger indicators to watch, and pre-agreed responses tied to each trigger. The point of the exercise is having that argument in a room where nothing is yet at stake.
Scenario Families
What We Can Run
These are categories of exercise, not forecasts. Straife does not predict which event will occur or when. Each scenario is built around the organization’s own exposure map, so the pressure lands on the parts of the business that are genuinely vulnerable.
Illustrative Categories — Tailored to Client Exposure
Energy Corridor & Shipping-Lane Disruption
Interruption to a maritime chokepoint, pipeline route, or transit corridor the organization depends on — testing rerouting economics, contractual force majeure positions, insurance response, and how long operations hold before customers are affected.
Sanctions Escalation Against a Major Counterparty
A significant customer, supplier, lender, or joint-venture partner becomes subject to restrictive measures — testing wind-down capability, contractual exit rights, banking and payment continuity, and the internal escalation path from first signal to board decision.
Tariff & Trade-Regime Shifts
A material change to tariff schedules, rules of origin, export licensing, or market access — testing pricing and pass-through decisions, sourcing flexibility, footprint economics, and the credibility of the organization’s public position.
Contested Elections & Leadership Transitions
A disputed or destabilizing political transition in a market where the organization operates — testing continuity of licenses and permits, physical and personnel security, whether key relationships sit with individuals or with institutions, and communications discipline.
Forced Divestment or Asset Seizure
Pressure to exit a market on unfavorable terms, or expropriation of local assets — testing valuation and sale readiness under duress, treaty and arbitration options, stranded-cost exposure, and the sequencing of a withdrawal that protects people first.
The Participants
Who Should Be in the Room
The people who would decide in a real crisis are the people who should decide on the day. Straife typically works with a group of twelve to twenty, kept small enough that every participant has to speak.
The Board or a Board Committee
Directors see how the executive team behaves under pressure and how far delegated authority actually stretches before a decision needs to come to them.
The Chief Executive & Executive Committee
The people who will make the real call. The exercise is only diagnostic when they attend it themselves.
Strategy, Risk & Finance Leadership
The functions that own exposure, capital allocation, and the assumptions the strategy is built on — and that will carry the trigger indicators afterwards.
General Counsel & Compliance
Contractual exit rights, sanctions and licensing constraints, and disclosure obligations shape what is genuinely available as an option in the moment.
Operations, Supply Chain & Security
The people who know what can physically be rerouted, restarted, or evacuated — and on what timeline.
Communications & Government Affairs
External positioning is one of the variables under test. Getting it into the room changes the quality of the choices made.
The Natural Follow-On
The Trigger Indicators Become the Watchlist.
An after-action report ends with a set of indicators that would tell you a scenario is moving from hypothetical to live — and the response each one is meant to trigger. Under a monitoring retainer, Straife carries that exact list forward as your standing watchlist, so the pre-agreed response arrives with the alert — eighteen months after anyone last thought about the workshop.
Related Services
Build the Exposure Picture First
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A jurisdiction-level baseline of political, regulatory, and operating risk — often the input that gives a wargame scenario its specifics.
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Monitoring & Early Warning
Standing coverage of the trigger indicators produced by the exercise, with escalation to named decision-makers.
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Sanctions & Export Controls
Detailed exposure mapping where a sanctions-escalation scenario reveals real counterparty risk that needs working through.
ExploreGet Started
Put a date in the diary.
Tell us who would be in the room and where you believe you are most exposed. We will come back with a proposed scenario, a session agenda, and a scope.
All Geopolitical Services