An increasing number of international military manoeuvres are prepared by e-learning. Special attention is paid to introduce participants not only to material and procedures but also to build cross-cultural competencies and sensitize for issues locals may have. Obviously proper competence building is vital in this area.The preparatory e-learning is intended to get people from very different cultural and institutional backgrounds on one level of competence before they start the manoeuvre. The paper will outline experiences gained through the VIKING 2005 maneouvre. The scope of Viking 05 was to practice and exercise the procedures for operational/ tactical planning and execution of doctrines in order to improve the respective knowledge and competencies. An equally important part of the scope was to exercise and practice constructive co-operationand coordination between military units and civilian organisations. The paper will showcase the set-up of this mixed game-based / e-learning approach in terms of competency building.