I am very skeptical about the utility of gaming COIN at an operational level for several reasons.

1. The complexity of the COIN environment makes model-building extremely difficult. It is also very hard to filter out pre-conceived notions and false assumptions brought to the table by modelers or participants.

2. The 'lessons' and 'principles' from previous COIN operations are rarely transferable - I believe that every COIN op is unique to a far greater extent than more conventional operations.

3. For high-fidelity you would need a very large number of participants, which can be unmanageable, or some very sophisiticated software capable of simulating the COIN environment for a small number of players. The latter does not exist.

4. COIN is slooooooooow. Things develop over months or years. The number one difficulty is figuring out whether you are being successful or not, and why. It requires patience, perseverence, and downright mulishness. You can't game that with people, and we don't have the software to realistically game it using computers.

Now, I think you can usefully game COIN at the tactical level, i.e., to practice specific tasks. But anything above that...well, I would be very suspicious of any 'insights gained' or 'lessons learned'. I think the participants would be better off spending the time readin books and studying history.