Armchair General Magazine

Passed Inspection: Fun, edge-of-the-seat operational air combat.

Failed Inspection: Weak campaign features. Minor interface issues.

With War Over the Mideast, John Tiller and HPS give wargamers a detailed, yet playable game of modern air combat.

In the years after the creation of the modern state of Israel, the Cold War sometimes turned very hot in the skies over the Middle East. In 1967 and 1973, the air conflicts were classic battles of quantity vs. quality. The Arab nations of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, were well equipped with vast multitudes of B-grade Soviet planes and air defenses. Israel was outnumbered and alone but had the advantages of superior training and Western equipment. Not since World War II had the world seen such massive air engagements as those fought above the Sinai and Golan.

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John Tiller and HPS take us onto this incendiary stage in Modern Air Power: War Over the Mideast. The second game in the Modern Air Power series, WOM covers much more history than its predecessor War Over Vietnam. The scenarios span more than 50 years starting with the 1956 Suez Crisis and finishing with the 2007 Israeli strike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria. The territory covered is also much larger, with maps that stretch from Syria and Western Iraq to Tunisia and Sicily.

Game play in War Over the Mideast is real-time. Scenarios typically last from one to five hours, and most can be played in one sitting. Units representing flights of up to four aircraft are depicted as icons that move across the map. Giving orders to your virtual pilots is done with a couple of clicks, and the player has a full menu of options to define complex paths and target strikes.

Each flight is assigned a mission type and given a matching default load-out by the scenario designer; thus, an F-4 flight loaded with air-to-air missiles is ready to clear the skies of enemy aircraft and is given an air-superiority mission. Another flight of A-4s with Shrike anti-radiation missiles is ready to take on enemy surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites and is given a suppression of enemy air-defense mission (SEAD). The game allows you to change the mission of flights during the game but not the load-out, so the player quickly learns to appreciate multirole workhorses like the F-4 Phantom, a great plane that can drop bombs on an enemy tank column, then stick around in an air-superiority role to keep enemy aircraft away from the next bombing wave. Israeli pilots didn’t nickname it kumass—the hammer—for nothing.

In the game, giving orders to air-superiority flights is pretty easy. The player scrambles aircraft by setting a path for their patrol area., Each flight can be given an auto-intercept and auto-fire order so they will automatically engage when enemy aircraft are close, or the player can direct the flights to their targets and give the order to fire missiles himself.

While controlling your fighters is easy, keeping the sky full of combat-ready air-superiority flights is not. The player must quickly scramble new flights to replace those returning to base for rearming and refueling. The most frantic fights occur during the ‘73 Yom Kippur War. Typically Israel defends with a handful of highly trained units against waves of Arab fighters and strike aircraft. Sometimes opposing forces are uncomfortably close to each other, and units can go from runway to dogfight within minutes.

Air-to-air combat in WOM is not tactical. Once missiles have been fired or aircraft are within gun range, there is little for the player to do. As in real life, better equipment and training are likely to win the day. The player only knows what happened when the butcher’s bill flashes on top of the screen, showing downed enemy and friendly aircraft.

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