The Arab-Israeli Wars

One counter is a company. One hex is about a quarter of a kilometre. Everything you need to decide a shot is shown to you before you take it — this tutorial explains where to look.

How to begin

Choose a side on the opening screen — Command the Israelis or Command the Arab forces — then choose one of the twelve scenarios. Each card gives the date, the length in game turns, and which side is attacking. If a game is already in progress, a Resume saved game button appears beside the side buttons.

The Mitla Defile is the shortest scenario and the easiest to learn on. Sagger Country is the one that teaches you what missile teams do to armour that advances alone.

Controls

Click a counter

Select it. Clicking the same hex again cycles through a stack.

Point at an enemy hex

Read the fire solution on the slip, with every modifier itemised.

Click an enemy hex

Fire at it with the selected counter.

Click a shaded hex

Move there. Shading shows everywhere the counter can reach this phase.

Space

End the current phase.

F

Re-centre and refit the map.

Escape

Clear the selection and cancel a pending order.

Drag / wheel

Pan and zoom. On a touch screen, drag and pinch.

The orders panel changes with the phase: Bore-sight during your fire phase; Mount up, Dismount, Clear obstacle, and Overrun during your movement phase.

Turn order

A game turn is two player turns. Each player turn runs in three phases:

A counter may only fire defensively if it did not fire in its own fire phase and did not move. Holding a tank silent for a turn to cover a gap is a real decision, and it costs you the shot you could have taken.

Movement

Each counter has a movement allowance. Open desert costs 1 point per hex; rough ground, soft sand, wadis, groves, villages, and hills cost 2; a ridge costs 3. Moving along a road costs half a point. Wheeled counters cannot enter soft sand. Nothing crosses a canal except at a bridge. Three counters may stack in one hex.

A counter that has been suppressed moves at half allowance; one that has been dispersed does not move at all. Infantry that has not moved is dug in and defends better; the moment it moves, it loses that.

Minefields stop a counter dead and attack it as it enters. Engineers clear mines and roadblocks by spending a whole movement phase on the hex — it works on a die roll of 3 or better. Overrun lets armour with 4 movement points left attack an adjacent hex of soft targets during movement, and take the hex if it clears it; armour cannot be overrun. Carriers pick up infantry in the same hex and carry it — but a burning carrier takes its passengers with it.

Combat and scoring

Select a counter, point at an enemy hex, and read the slip:

Attack strength is the armour-piercing figure against armour, the high-explosive figure against everything else. It is halved beyond half the weapon's range and halved again if the counter has moved this turn or is firing defensively; doubled at point-blank range, tripled if infantry with shaped charges close on armour, and doubled into a hex the gun was bore-sighted on. Defence is multiplied by terrain and by being dug in.

Attack over defence gives the odds column. One die is rolled on the combat results table shown in the panel: a dash is no effect, S suppresses, D disperses, X destroys. A counter hit again while suppressed is dispersed; dispersed and hit again, it is gone. Recovery takes two of your turns: dispersed to suppressed, suppressed to fit.

Artillery fires indirectly at any range without seeing the target itself — but some counter of yours must have eyes on the hex. In the 1973 scenarios, electronic countermeasures jam roughly one fire mission in six.

Missile teams are the modern complication: they cannot fire inside two hexes, cannot fire in a turn they displaced, and any fire into their hex pins the gunner for the turn. Put high explosive on a missile hex before your armour crosses its front.

Winning

The attacking side has a point target, shown in the top strip beside the running score. Points come from objective hexes held at the end — the red-ringed hexes, each with its value printed on it — plus the point value of every enemy counter destroyed, plus anything run off the far map edge where a scenario allows it. Reach the target and the attack has succeeded; reach one and a half times it and the victory is decisive.

Losing

If the attacker finishes short of the target, the defence has held; short of 60 per cent of it, the defence has held decisively. Playing the defending side, that is your win condition — you do not have to destroy the attack, only to keep it below its number until the clock runs out. A scenario also ends early if one side is wiped out.

Saving and restarting

The game saves itself after every action. Close the tab and reopen the game, and Resume saved game brings you back to the same turn and phase, with the dice sequence intact. One game is kept at a time: starting a new scenario replaces it, and finishing a scenario clears it.

To restart, finish or abandon the current game and choose a scenario again from the opening screen. Scenario setup is generated fresh each time, so the same battle does not deploy identically twice.