EMCE: City Blackout

EMCE: City Blackout offers several advantages over typical tabletop discussion based exercises, including:

• Fast-Paced & Engaging – Every player has an active role and will be fully engaged in the game. Time-limited rounds and physical sand timers simulate real-world urgency, and create the need for teams to quickly make decisions and work together.
• Real-World Relevance – The game was designed to simulate interdependent failures, cascading effects, and resource fatigue. Players will have the opportunity to have robust conversations with their facilitator about how these challenges and decisions relate to their communities.
• HSEEP-Compatible – Use with post-game AAR/IP discussion
• Two-Level Design – The game includes EMCE: Firetruck, a guided tutorial to onboard new players before they play EMCE: City Blackout for the primary exercise. This style of learning game mechanics allows for a more complex game, which can be easily taught in a short period of time.
• Built for Teams – EMCE was designed for a wide range of players, including emergency managers, public officials, planners, students, and instructors. No matter what your role is, we know you will gain valuable insight from playing!

EMCE stands for Emergency Management Cascading Effects. CAPTRS is developing additional versions of the EMCE game, accounting for multiple threat scenarios. Current versions under development include: hurricane, blackout from a bad-actor threat, and a version of City Blackout for energy companies, which accounts for different roles and resources pertaining to collaboration between agencies and utility providers.

• EMCE: Firetruck tutorial game
• EMCE: City Blackout exercise game
• Game Maps & Cascade Boards (customisable upon request)
• Event Cards simulating location-based crises (customisable upon request and expansion packs planned for future)
• Game pieces, including Solving Tokens, Power Tokens, & Timer Resources
• Facilitator Guidebook with scenarios, instructions, and facilitation tips
• CAPTRS EMCE Insight App for data capture and visualization for use in Hotwash discussion and After-Action Reports
• Player Reference Cards for play support

This game is intended for groups of 6 players. Players are actively moving pieces and engaged in gameplay decision making. The game may be played by multiple groups of players simultaneously, but will require a facilitator for each group, and ideally a data recorder for each group. The size of the gameboard allows for around 6 optional observers as well as active players. If additional game boards are needed for multiple groups playing simultaneously, that will be an additional cost.

Gameplay, including the tutorial game, lasts approximately 1 hour. We recommend allowing an additional 30 minutes for in-game discussion, post game Hotwash discussion and review of gameplay data.

The game may be replayed to give players the chance to apply learnings from their first gameplay experience. Cascading Effects and Event Cards will remain the same, so the surprise element will be diminished. Expansion packs for event cards are planned for the future to allow for more replayability. Additional versions of the game with different threats and cascading effects are also planned for the future.

Yes! There are many situations in the game that contribute to the overall Crisis Level. As you resolve the situations, your score goes up to a maximum potential score of 509. Your team is trying to resolve as many of the situations as possible to support your community. Resolving a situation may restore power to an area, clear roads, support the vulnerable population, or one of the many other challenges your community would face in a winter storm.

The facilitator should spend time going through the facilitation guide and tutorial video in advance of the exercise to become comfortable with the game and rules. Players do not need to review anything in advance of play. The tutorial game will teach them all they need to know and reference cards will be provided for them to refer to during game play.

The data recorder will be responsible for recording gameplay data in a custom-built online application. During rounds, the data recorder will ask players about their mitigation attempts and record their attempts and results. This allows the team to capture real-time data on decision-making, crisis resolution, and team effectiveness. The system is set up to guide the recorder through an easy process of data collection, without the recorder having to be familiar with any rules of the game.

The EMCE Insight Portal provides summary reports, light analytics, discussion points and text-entry opportunities for the facilitator to reinforce game learnings. Using the gameplay data captured by the data recorder, the Insight Portal will give the facilitator rich discussion points and visualization tools to use in a debrief. This information will assist in Hotwash discussions or an After Action Report.

Yes, we can work with you to customize the Game Map as well as event cards. All customization requests are subject to additional fees. Additional change requests to game mechanics, scenarios or other elements must be approved by the CAPTRS team and go through a proposal process, as they require additional game design and graphic design.

The base game price is $2,500. Any requests for customization or facilitation will increase the cost. Contact Us to request a game! Expansion packs will be available in the future to customers who have purchased the game at an additional lower cost.