Release Your Inner Air Force General

If Fernand Braudel was correct (and if I understood him correctly), civilizations lay across the Earth almost as tectonic plates.  Where two or more different civilizations converge, tension between these civilizations can emerge, with war being one of the most noticeable.  It can be of small wonder then that the Mideast, with its convergence of European, African, and Asian influences, is a source of continuous tension and conflict.

The introductory scenario gives a good feel for the game.

As of this writing three weeks of hostilities is possibly coming to an end in Gaza, and an examination of a recent wargame that covers the subject of war in the Mideast (in some fashion) seems germane.  War Over The Mideast is the second in a new series of games from HPS covering Modern Air Power.  It concerns itself primarily with the two major players in the Mideast, Israel and Arabs; however other sides do sometimes appear in scenarios, including the US Navy, the British, and the French.  This series was designed as a simulation for testing and playing with the concept of air power.  It includes a multitude of scenarios starting with 1956 and goes through the conflict in Lebanon which broke out in 2007.  Even more encouraging is the fact that it comes with an Air Tasking Order Editor (ATO Editor), an Order of Battle Editor, a Parameter Data Editor, and a Scenario Editor.  With all of these tools, the player can craft custom scenarios and campaigns with almost limitless possibilities. 

War Over The Mideast falls into that gaming category of “easy to learn, difficult to master”.  The scenarios included with it cover a wide range of leapfrogging technology.  I found it interesting that playing a scenario from 1956 didn’t feel much different than playing a scenario from 1981 in terms of game mechanics.  Certainly the technology was different, but from the standpoint of gameplay, planes are routed to an objective, combat may or may not occur, and then they return to base.  Much of the game is spent accelerating time (up to 10x) as the planes approach their objective(s), then slowing down (to a pause at 0x) to take the action off of what is effectively auto-pilot.

A1956 scenario against Egypt.

A dogfight is about to unfold.

RTFM

Installing the game also installs eight separate .pdf manuals.  Each of the manuals provides documentation to a certain aspect of the game, including tutorial, editor, help, and gameplay.  Reading the manuals is must.  There is a tutorial, but it comes in the form of a manual.  Unfortunately, the manuals can only take the player so far.  The documentation is plentiful, but the fact is, wargamers unfamiliar with the nuances of air war may have to reinvent the wheel in terms of coming to an understanding of tactics, strategy, and doctrine.  Each of the scenarios in the game generally sets the player up with some recommended courses of action, but these are a bit deceptive in the sense that someone who has mastered a skill makes his action look easy – orchestrating these actions without guidance can be done, but it is challenging.

Borrowing a quote from the introduction perhaps expresses it best:

Think of air operations like a symphony, written by a master composer and performed by a professional orchestra under the leadership of an experienced conductor. Each air platform is optimized primarily for one role and some aircraft are capable enough to switch between roles (assuming the aircrew is trained in each role and has the flexibility to fly whichever mission is required that day).

It’s important to note the description of each platform is optimized for a role to be lead by an experienced conductor. Players who are not experienced with the nuances of air combat may face a fairly steep learning curve when they pull off the training wheels. 

Ground Control To Major Tom

Savvy gamers have come to know HPS’ games well.  Anyone who has seen one or played one knows that the production values of graphics and sound are spartan, to put it generously.  In the case of War Over The Mideast, this bare-bones approach isn’t so noticeable. 

The map covers whatever pertinent area in the scenario may be, and this can stretch from Tunisia to Northwest Iran - effectively the greater Mideast as we know it.  Overlaying the map are faintly ghosted outlines of air traffic control areas, which lend authenticity to it.  The only physical features are land and water.  As the player explores the map with his planes, various relevant objectives, such as airports, air defense units, and planes may appear, but the map itself is mostly barren, giving the player the sense that the airspace is occupied only by what he can see in the air or what’s relevant on the ground.

Planes are represented as top-down silhouettes, and their mission/role is expressed in a colored box around it.  Sound in the form of a musical score is mercifully absent.  Instead the player is treated to what seem to be recordings of air chatter in what is presumably Hebrew or Arabic.  The sound of a jet engine zinging across the sky breaks the chatter when elevation is changed. 

The map has four levels of zoom.  Moving out to a bird’s eye view, the map is almost impracticably small, while the maximum zoom isn’t close enough to distinguish units that are flying in extremely tight formation (refueling, for instance).  Players will likely find that the two middle zoom settings are the most useful.

Things are starting to get a bit crowded even at this level of zoom.

The combination of radio chatter, a bland map, and the absence of a musical score comes together in a very sterile environment.  As a wargamer most familiar with ground games, the lack of terrain features is noted but not missed.  I’ve read comments about air war and how the pilots who fly in them sometimes seem disconnected from the havoc they wreck on the ground.  That is precisely the mood set by War Over The Mideast: there is almost a complete sense of detachment from the game.  The units are tasked with a mission, they may or may not succeed, but the nature of the game comes across as quite dry.  Calm, cool, and collected is the best way to describe it.  Winning or losing a scenario, the game takes a “just the facts ma’am” approach.

Learning To Win

Gameplay consists primarily with giving planes a direction to fly, specifying what they should do when they get there (attack, patrol, escort et al), and then eventually returning to base.  The AI generally makes good choices as to how to attack a target; rendezvousing with a tanker will result in automatically refueling a plane – all of this incorporates the assumption that the pilot is trained and knows his job.  There are various levels of training built into a unit’s quality, and some will perform better than others. 

Issuing orders to attack.

The enemy AI does its job reasonably well.  AAA will do its best to take out the player’s planes, interception sorties may be launched according to the capabilities at hand.  The abstract nature of the game makes it fairly easy to abstract combat results, with the results appearing at the top of the screen. 

If all of this sounds easy, it is…in theory.  The trick is to figure out how to make it work in practice.  For instance, in one of the later scenarios the player takes on the role of orchestrating a 1983 UN task force that is bombing PLO positions in Lebanon.  At your disposal are three carriers and their associated planes.  The instructions are to seek out and destroy enemy bunkers and to fly in supplies to Beirut.  The challenge for someone like me, who has little understanding of the mechanics of air warfare, is what to do with the myriad of planes available to me.  I figure I should probably launch some F-14s to set up air superiority, then maybe launch an E-2 because it looks kinda like an AWAC and might give me a radar picture as to what’s around me outside of what the carriers can see.

A whole carrier of planes...what to do? 

So it is that players who understand the role and use of various aircraft through the years will probably take to War Over The Mideast like a duck to water.  Gamers more accustomed to pushing Panzers and Shermans around a map may struggle a bit before they get up to speed.  I have enjoyed playing War Over The Mideast but the challenge of the game has come in the form of not only learning how to win in a situation, but in some cases just to learn the basics of the tools. 

The mission briefing for Operation Opera.

War Over The Mideast can be played either as a single-player game or as multiplayer over a LAN or the internet.  The player can chose to play either the Israeli or Arab side in all scenarios, but the real replay may come from the game editors.  Players should be able to craft innumerable scenarios with it, upload them to places like The Wargamer’s Games Depot http://www.wargamer.com/gamesdepot/, and share them with fellow gamers. 

Summary

I can recall my first game of Steel Panthers when I actually lost my first scenario as the Germans invading Poland in 1939.  I quickly rethought my approach, and won the next game. The point is, as wargamers, we aren’t born with the ability to win every game we play a proiri.  For those gamers who aren’t familiar with aerial conflict, War Over The Mideast will present a learning curve, but one that will have rewards that will pay off the investment.  It may take some trial and error to figure out but for those who are persistent there is some real fun to be found. 

Players seeking a visceral flight-sim experience won’t find it in War Over The Mideast.  There are some great flight sims out there, but this isn’t a flight sim.  It is instead an aerial combat simulation incorporating multiple platforms, technologies, doctrines, and nations.  The wargaming hobby doesn’t have many games for folks who enjoy aerial wargaming at a strategic level.  War Over The Mideast fills that niche perfectly.  Given its various editors, almost any type of aerial combat can be created and played.  If you’re familiar with aerial strategies, War Over The Mideast is probably going to be an easy game to pick up.  Wargamers who aren’t familiar with aerial conflict have some reading and learning to do.  It’s not difficult ground to make up but it may take some effort to master.

I would recommend War Over The Mideast to gamers who enjoy aerial warfare or are looking for something new and different.  In some ways it reminds me of Jane’s Fleet Command in terms of scale and immersion.  The editor is robust enough to keep the guys who enjoy creating custom scenarios and campaigns busy for a long time to come.  The game’s documentation strongly suggests that more games are coming in the Modern Air Power series, so if the first game in the series, War Over Vietnam, or this second one, War Over The Mideast aren’t exactly what the doctor ordered, it’s a good bet that another theater will soon emerge.  On the other hand, I can’t see waiting.  If aerial conflict sounds like it’s interesting, I recommend taking the plunge. 

Minimum System Requirements

• 1 GHz Pentium CPU
• 256 MB RAM
• 300 MB Hard Drive
• Microsoft Windows 98/2K/XP/Vista operating system
• Microsoft DirectX 9.0+