Let's face it, few - if any - of you ever consider running out to buy the usual magazine game, with some exceptions thrown in for some of the recent XTR Monster issues. But the regular one-map, 200 counter, 12 page specials? Why bother. The subject matter is usually obscure, and the treatments range from opaque to inane to nevermind. Is this a hard-and-fast approach? No, it's a general view, with the rare exceptions proving the case. Just ask yourself, when was the last time you went to the store just to buy an issue of "S&T", or "Command", or even "Competitive Edge" (yes, it's still around, although it does appear to be hiding being some literary potted palm) because of the game? Well, time to don that jacket and gas up the car, because S&T #185 is not only the best issue game Decision has put out in recent memory - and for many of us that memory goes back many, many years - but it's also a good, old-fashioned wargame. Now, there are those who'd think that Joe Miranda's First Arab-Israeli War simply proves the 100 Monkeys in the Basement theory: he's done so many games that, sooner or later, he has to do one that's really good. Perhaps, but Black Joe is a far better designer than that, even if he does need a solid helping hand to point him in the direction of the consumers. And all of the little gadget-like touches Joe seems to apply, rather ubiquitously and with a distinct lack of discipline, in all of his games, come together here. A-I 48 is not only a good learning tool for the basics of the first of these wars, it is a fun game to play, with lots to do - and lots to overcome - for both players. The Joe Youst map is most attractive, running from Southern Lebanon to the Red Sea, and including a generous display of charts, tables and tracks with one most curious note: why is November followed by "May IV"? Oh well, I've seen worse … usually in one of my games. Beth Q's counters are nice, if not "great". Mine were "reverse-printed" - front info side on the "back" of the cardboard sheet, something that seems to upset some for reasons I can never fathom. We did have one question, though, that about the icon for the Israeli leaders. Is that Vince Lombardi? Or George Costanza? Has to be one of the two. The game comes in two versions: you can start with the announcement of Israeli independence (December '47) and the not-so-surreptitious build-up before the fun starts. Or just skip the mulling around, which is mostly fun for the Israeli player, and start with the actual birth of Israel, May '48. We - Mark Herman and I, Mark being most knowledgeable in this area - played the former. What we liked most about the game was that, while it was not overly complex … low moderate would be just about right … it managed to cover virtually all aspects of the '48 war, most quite well, some a bit tangentially. And, while Miranda's Byzantium had so little flavor, outside of its random events, that it could have been a range war in the Dakotas, A-I 48 was a tasty dish, indeed, starting with the initial phase of the rather full Sequence of Play, the ubiqutious Events Phase. As usual, Joe uses this phase to upload as much of the political situation as he can, without resorting to endless rules. Sometimes it simply doesn't work (cf., yet again, Byzantium); here it's smoother than a dish of hummus. This was a war in which politics, at all levels, was of prime importance, mostly for the Arabs, who seemed to be running a weekly contest on which Arab country could screw up better than the others. The word "cooperation" does not seem to have a military counterpart in Arabic, and the Events Table shows it. It says much - for the war, not for the people - that there is an event for Israeli Intelligence, but none for Arab Intelligence. And there is a 3x greater chance that Arab League Infighting will throw a monkey wrench into that player's plans than the Israelis; and while Infighting affects entire Arab armies, it covers only the few Irgun and Stern Group (now there's a nasty bunch of psychotics for you) units for the Israelis. After events unfold, it's off to the job at hand. It's Igo-Hugo, with a familiar sequence of Reinforcements, Reorganization (mostly of benefit to the Israelis who watch their army grow from militia groups to mechanized marvels), Move and Fight. However, in the midst of all this is a most interesting, and rather neat (except for the historical participants) Terrorism Phase, a sort of low-level Ethnic Cleansing. In order to insure that local towns would not be providing manpower for opposing armies, each side made it a policy to go in and "relocate" the population. This means that a town that has successfully been Terrorized cannot be used to raise troops. Terrorism quickly becomes a major tool in each player's arsenal.(Go, Stern Gang!) Movement Movement rules are the usual, although players will quickly realize that their "commando" units can be quite valuable in the mountainous regions, but combat sports two different CRTs, one for Raids and one for Assaults, the use of which, aside from available unit types, depends on how much harm you want to inflict on the participants. With most units being of two-step variety, total elimination can be most hard to come by, so there is a sort of grind-em-down approach to much of the operations. What really makes A-I 48 interesting - aside from some of the other tangential rules, such as air operations (remember "Cast a Giant Shadow", with Frank Sinatra, of all people, dropping seltzer bottles as bombs from a rickety open-cockpit biplane), to the non-presence of the Brits (they simply melt away), to truces, to amphibious operations, to a key rule on upgrading and reorganizing units that really put punch in the Israeli army - is the situation. Both sides start (in '47) with sprinklings of forces spread throughout Palestine, in a crazy-quilt pattern, with the center of Jerusalem occupied by the Jews and quite surrounded by Arabs. With the general object of the game to control as much of Israel as possible - the Victory Conditions, and the Victory Point rules, are, to some extent, rather overblown and overmuch, although they do try to reflect a wide variety of realities - it starts out as a mad scramble for both sides, with the Israelis, far better organized than the Arabs inside Palestine, rather more effective. By the time the Big Whistle blows, and the Arabs start to launch armies from Egypt, Syria, et al. - when they're not arguing amongst themselves - the game map tends to resemble the actual political map of Israel in May, 48, with the Israelis holding most of the coast and some of the northern interior, and the Arabs holding fast in the center and south … and especially around Jerusalem. It now becomes a race between Israeli build-up - most impressive - and Arab efforts at coordinating their various armies, usually most unimpressive. In the center of all of this sits Jerusalem, with the Jews occupying the New City, the Arabs everywhere around it, and Israeli columns from the Jaffa coast trying to break through. Those of you remember the famous Latrun convoys will be somewhat disappointed because of the one historical "flaw" the game exhibits. It is possible (by rule), if you so choose as Israeli player, to set up your "Arms Factory" inside Jerusalem, thus negating any need for a supply convoy. We spotted this right away, and also spotted the inherent efficacy of taking advantage of this move, as it gives the Israelis, who are more or less on exterior lines, a source of power inside the Arab interior lines. We decided it would be more accurate to forbid the placement of the Factory inside any Jerusalem hex, although Joe's official position is that, as we assumed, it IS a viable- albeit not recommended - tactic. For some reason, the various Arab-Israeli wars have fallen out of gamer favor since the days of SPI's Sinai, et al. The Gamers' Yom Kippur War did well enough, but not great, and GMT's Crisis: Sinai was a crisis mostly to GMT's bank account. Joe Miranda's look at the first of these wars, A-I '48, should go a long way towards reversing that trend. This is one, really good game. CAPSULE COMMENTS Graphic Presentation: Very good. Playability: No problems; and good solitaire. Replayability: Interesting situation, many possibilities Wristage: Not that much. Historicity: With some minor quibbles, most evocative. Creativity: High, some neat gaming solutions to some intriguing historical questions. Comparisons: Because of its political coverage, far better than the Sinai-type games of decades ago. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #26 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com