WARGAMING: Some AIW Links For Tony!

Hi and Good Morning to Tony and the Gang,

Well, this is going to be short post... Tony Mark has been talking about runnng a 1973 Yom Kippur War Golan Heights scenario and I've been thinking about his game. I wanted to post a few links for him since I have had a long interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

He's not sure which rule set he wants to use, but he's leaning towards Modern Spearhead (MSH) and is also considering Flames of War - Moderns (FOW-Moderns). Tony has already decided when he wants his scenario... late war on the Golan Front, so several days into the war after the inital excitement and scares... when the Israelis go from desperation mode to the competence that they're known for. Tony wants to run a scenario with Ugdah Peled, a task force, advancing into Syria to take them out of the war.

The big story up North happens a bit earlier with Kahalani, Tsvika and the courageous stand that those heroes made against such overwhelming odds... on line with any great stand from history... Rourke's Drift comes to mind. But Tony is going to stage a game somewhat later... which isn't a bad idea at all. The Syrians, for all that they were defeated, can fight the hard fight and, like the Egyptians, had had years to prepare their defences for the eventuality that Israel might advance into Syria one day. But... they weren't good enough and the Israelis had limited attainable objectives.

All the Israelis wanted to do was advance within artillery range of Damascus and shell the capital until the Syrian regime gave up... Add secondary objectives of pummeling Syria on the strategic level with air and sea power plus the advancing ground forces clearing out the creme of Syria's air defence batteries and you have the 1973 late war Israeli war goals. And that's pretty much what happened, Israel pummeled Syria's strategic infrastructure until they were on a stone-age level of technology... oil tanks buring, power plants in ruins, headquarters turned into rubble, etc., etc. The USAF calls that "nexus-centric warfare" these days. It didn't take long for Syria to pressure Egypt to join the war, which had disasterous results for them... a sort of long line of dominos that started toppling in Syria and fell in rows all the way down to Egypt. The war in the North was vicious, but short.

Tony has a number of options, set fighting against dug-in Syrian forces trying to hold a line... the classic ambush box that the Israelis humiliated the Iraqi expeditionary contingent with, the hard fought battles with the Jordanian king sent as a token to help his "Arab allies" (Who had tried to invade him just a few years earlier in 1971 - the Syrians OR called him friendly things like "the Whore of Babylon" - the Egyptians), or even the mop up of retreating Syrian units that occurred in several places. Lots of scenarios are possible for Tony.

Here are a few links for you Tony:

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First of all, after doing tons of research for ages, I put together a discussion group for the Arab-Israeli Wars (AIW) because it's always better to have two (or more) minds on a problem than one. It's a great group and has been around for ages (since 2003):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AIW-Wargaming/

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Another major resource is IDF Modeling, which is run by several gentlemen, but most notably some fellows from Oz if I remember correctly. It's full of vehicle and aircraft photos to help you paint your models/miniatures and all sorts of other useful reference materials.

http://idfmodelling.free.fr/

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Israeli-Weapons.com is also very useful... historical monographs, photos, equipment entries and tons of videos. I've contributed to the site by editing some of the monographs on occasion. It's a great site that has been up for a long time.

http://www.israeli-weapons.com/

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A friend of mine in the UK, a Kiwi married to a Sabra girl, put up this site: "Balagan," which means a number of things, but "a big mess" is one of the most common meaning used in Modern Israel. Steven Thomas is a mensch and I've corresponded with him a number of times over the years. His site is royal:

http://www.balagan.org.uk/

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Keith McNelly, also a friend Down Under, runs one of the other huge AIW resources. He has been using MSH to run AIW battles for ages. He has all sorts of useful information on his site here:

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/mcnelly/msh/aiw/aiw_index.htm

All of the photos that I've used on this post came courtesy of Keith.

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For microarmor enthusiasts, I can recommend none other than Bob MacKenzie... if you want it, he's got it.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bob_mackenzie/

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I also have a huge AIW library, Tony, and am willing to loan you anything that I have.

Have a great Saturday!

Shabbat Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
Yom HaShaoh or "Holocaust Remembrance Day" is coming up on 25 April 2006 and I've been thinking about that... a pretty heavy topic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Hashoah