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One feature of Campaign Series: Middle East 1948-1985 which excited me to see was the inclusion of a scenario called The Crossroads. It covers very much the same territory which I was after with my attempt to redirect Command Ops to explore part of the Six-Day War. Unlike that game engine, Campaign Series features transient road blocks, minefields, and wreckage-induced detours on its maps. Maybe this would be the chance to finally get my fix!

This my seventeenth in a series of posts on the Six-Day War. See the previous post from the series, the new master post, or go all the way back to the original master post.

– The fight opens with Israeli columns approaching Jenin

Unfortunately for my own, special purposes, this scenario did not accomplish exactly what I hoped it would. If you read my earlier post about this battle you get some idea of what I am after. The fighting near Qabitiya over June 5th and 6th was a situation that seems almost too wild to be true. A handful of recon elements race behind enemy lines. There they encounter, and then stop, an enemy armored column but get themselves isolated in the process. Night falls and the plucky attackers-now-defenders hold out against the odds. Still standing strong come morning light, the full force of Israel’s armored columns come to the rescue. If it hadn’t actually happened, you probably wouldn’t create it as a plausible scenario.

Furthermore, in the world of attack values, movement points, and die roll combat tables, you would have a whole lot of trouble simulating it. I can’t imagine recon jeeps and light armor racing through enemy held territory and expecting to survive. Unarmored vehicles become instant cannon fodder when they enter the range of main battle tank guns. Furthermore, the air support, which for Israel was the key for holding back Jordanian armor, just doesn’t have the punch in most tactical games.. or at least it rarely decisive factor that is often described to be. I’d have to imagine the fight in the vicinity of CS:ME‘s crossroads would be very short lived, in game.

– As the second day dawns, I find myself very far from the historical situation

Of course, I didn’t even get close so my speculation must remain just that.

In the above screenshots you can see that it starts off accurately enough. The Israeli force converges on Jenin, anticipating that it will be well defended. As the commander, I know that I must find a way around to the rear. Even if I wasn’t aware of that strategy, the handful of victory locations behind the city should serve to clue me in.

As it turned out, the rear approach proved to be more than I could pull off. If you look at the second, immediately preceding screenshot, you’ll see my battle evolved very differently from the historical contest at the crossroads. The picture (with the game’s fog-of-war on, obscuring the position of the enemy) shows the situation near dawn on the second day. My right-hand column is finally approaching the crossroads, having fought their way along the back roads for more than half of the scenario. Yet I am still a good ways off from my goal and, in the end, I’ll not make it.

To help me guess what I might have been able to differently, I took a peek at the Jordanian setup at scenario start. I don’t see how I could have followed the historical path. The distance between the Israeli initial lines and the Qabatiya Crossroad is contested all along any reasonable route. As I said, the lightly-armored mobile elements tend to be dispatched quickly by just about anything that shoots at them. I don’t expect that running the gauntlet could ever work and fighting my way through with infantry, besides being ahistorical, simply takes too long.

In the end, my game involved my overrunning the Jenin defensive positions from the front rather than isolating them by the rear. That resulted is a massive tank battle just south of the city in the scenario’s final moments. Whatever victory point gains I made through taking and holding objectives were more than counter-balanced by the massive losses I took throughout. Sometimes I speculate on why historical outcomes can seem so elusive and I’ll just say (without elaboration) that the usual suspects are likely in play again here.

– A randomly-generated encounter produces some expected, albeit one-sided, results

Speaking of historical versus not…

I didn’t notice it before, but there is a menu choice when starting a scenario for Campaign Series: Middle East 1948-1985. I realized it was there, for the first time, just this week. In addition to playing the historical engagements, it is possible to “Generate Battle,” thus creating a random encounter on a representative map with year-appropriate forces. It is nice to have choices.

Using the internet to help knock some cobwebs out of my brain, I now know that Divided Ground‘s predecessor, Rising Sun, had such a random-scenario function (as did East Front II and West Front before it). Reviews upon DG‘s release were disappointed in the feature’s absence when it missed that final iteration of the Talonsoft engine. Recalling that Campaign Series: Middle East‘s codebase is from the East/West Front, it is not a surprising feature to find here – I just wasn’t looking for it.

Looking at it now, I decided to give it a quick spin around the block. The above, third screenshot shows a meeting engagement where I am playing as Israel. You might recall a post from 2020 where I mused about expectations regarding Arab versus Israeli armor encounters. History books (not to mention that time spent reading The Arab-Israeli Wars design notes) show me that the Israelis often commanded the battlefield decisively, even against the raw numbers that might suggest otherwise. Main battle tank gun technical specs may have been similar, but Israel displayed advantages from factors like doctrine and training that caused them to have greater accuracy and greater distances.

My random play has me quickly dispatching the enemy armored units as they come into range, much as I would expect. It was an easy major victory. The genuine advantages to Israel in this situation seems to be aided by a slightly-confused Arab AI. The computer plays a little too predictably, attempting to seize and hold the victory locations even after I have set them up as killing zones for my tanks. I can’t say how useful or not the random generator is based upon one scenario though. It may well be that it is most suited to play against another human.

Some timely (from my standpoint) chatter suggests that the in-the-works update may also feature a points-based system for building random-scenario armies. All good news and another way to get more mileage from this game.

Return to the (second) master post for the Six Day War or continue on to the next article.