Flashpoint Middle East

I’ve been a long time Axis and Allies player but I’ve been craving a modern take on this otherwise fine series of games. Something similar to Fortress America but maybe a bit more grounded in reality. So I’ve decided to design my own game. But I won’t be working completely from scratch.

Years ago I acquired an AA expansion game titled “Middle East Combat” http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17151. This game featured a new map of the Middle East with the Red Pact of Iran and USSR taking on the Triad: Saudi-Egypt, Iran & Turkey. Special rules covered insurrections, oil fields, cruise missiles, laser guided bombs, chemical weapons and host of other considerations. The game played quite well and was a blast but its looking a bit dated now. I thought I’d spruce up the design and add my own elements along the way.

I started this thread in order to air my ideas out and receive criticism, feedback, suggestions and wisdom so that I can make the best design possible. Over the next few posts I’ll be introducing some concepts and ideas I have for the design. This will include the units in the game and the map.

Thanks in advance for your support.

The first thing I decided I needed was a name for my project. As you have not doubt surmised (from the title of this thread) for now I’ve settled with: FLASHPOINT MIDDLE EAST. I think it’s kind of catchy and it isn’t likely to be confused with other games (although there was that Flashpoint: Golan war game by Victory Games).

If anyone has other suggestions for a title I’d love to hear them.

Here is the basic outline of the game: The game takes place in the near future (well say 2015-2020). Political pressure and unrest at home has forced the USA to remove itself from the Middle East theatre (perhaps the United States is embroiled in some kind of conflict with China) although they still support Egypt, Israel & Saudi Arabia (which isn’t really represented directly in this game. Players can assume that America’s support has enabled these countries to achieve the military muscle that they demonstrate on the board). Russia, after decades of turmoil has stabilized itself internally and now looks to involve itself in the world stage again. Russia has shown a renewed interest in the Middle East and has backed Iraq (perhaps filling a void left by a departing America). Russia has also paved inroads with several bordering countries surrounding the middle east including: Yemen, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan. These are countries that were once holdings of the USSR during the cold war and have recently “come back into the fold” so to speak. Opposing these two nations are the countries of Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt (Saudi Arabia and Egypt are played as one nation).

The stage is set for these two opposing factions to wage war against one another all across the Middle East. Iraq is strong economically and militarily but is surrounded on three sides by enemies. Russia has a powerful military, is relatively safe from invasion and may choose when and where to attack. But Russia must act quickly before Iraq is overwhelmed. Iran and Turkey are both have to worry about an invasion from Russia while Saudi Arabia-Egypt must balance attacking Iraq with supporting her allies to the north. Each nation has the opportunity to invade any of the neutral regions on the map (which defend themselves with their own forces) but if that invasion fails the neutral country will automatically ally itself with the opposing faction. Nuetral nations offer the chance to claim additional resources as well as victory cities and oil fields.

There are two means of achieving victory. An economic victory occurs when one side controls a set number of oil field regions (the number will depend on the final disposition of the map). A political victory occurs when a set number of victory cities are controlled by one side (again, this is dependant on the map).

The game will play out in the same manner as Axis and Allies. That is to say: Develop Tech, Purchase New Units, Combat Move, Non-Combat Move, Place New Units, and Collect Income. Combat will be resolved in the familiar manner and the units will have similar capabilities.

Anyone have anything to add so far?

Here’s what I’ve done with my map so far:

As you can see I still have a lot of work to do. I have some interesting design challenges ahead of me. For example:

1. How big do I big should I make the regions? Some spaces are necessarily small (Israel, Kuwait). While others are rather large (Saudi Arabia, Iran). The larger regions will be broken up into several smaller spaces. Exactly how big these spaces should be and what their composition should be is proving to be vexing. Make them too small and there’s too much territory on the board. If I make them much larger than the smallest regions then that messes up with game balance and raises other issues. Should I attempt to chop up the larger countries according to political districts or just slice them up evenly?

2. What should I name the regions? Some of the regions will be named for the country they represent (Israel, Kuwait) while other regions will only be a small part of a larger nation. Should I use district names or geographical names? You can already see a little of that if you look at Egypt. The area east if the Suez canal I named Sinai (geographic region) while if you look up near Russia I’ve got an abstract “Southern States” which is simply an amalgamation of several smaller countries rolled into one.

3. Should I have blow up boxes off to the side for the smaller regions? 2nd edition Axis and Allies did this and many players never used them (some did though). AA Revised had those numbered cards with small numbered chits to achieve the same thing (in a more generic way). What area peoples thoughts on this?

4. Should I put the game charts, build area, turn sequence the above mentioned holding boxes and/or any other information directly onto the board? If so where? The southern part of the board (Sudan, Egypt and the bottom right portion of the Arabian Sea) looks like a good spot.

5. Should I put neutral region unit strengths directly on the board? The advantage everyone can see what they have to deal with without looking up a separate chart. The disadvantage is that it may clutter up the board. What about set-up information? Personally I tend to frown on this kind of this put right onto the board but what do others think?

6. How many victory cities should I put on the board and what criteria should I use to select them? Each country should have at least two to start with (all of the capitals will be victory cities). Should some regions have two or more victory cities (making them that much more important than other regions).

7. Same as above for oil fields.

8 ) Should I put geographical features on the map? Things like mountains, deserts and rivers could be added. If these things were added, should they affect game play or be there for appearances purposes only? If I add Mountains ranges and rivers, should I put them IN regions or put them bordering regions?

Any comments or suggestions would be helpful.

I didn’t want to put the game too far ahead into the future because I don’t want to include things like hovercraft and other more advanced tech. I want to use pretty much current modern day tech. In order for my story and timeline to work some extremely drastic events need to take place that affect the US and remove them from the picture.

I did orginally think of doing the game where there are no teams to begin with and everyone just rolls along fullfilling their own agenda (ala risk) and making their own alliances. But I like the idea of two sides. Besides the basic set-up is provides a really interesting dynamic (with Iraq in the middle and Russia on the outside and the other three nations in-between).

Iran is not so much allied with Saudi Arabia as it is also opposed to Iraq (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).

I don’t want to expand the map too much. I had orginally wanted to extend northwards to include more of Russia and the Ukraine, but I think I like the tightness of it now. Eventually I want to do a global game.

As for Turkmenistan, I wanted to have a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Iran.

Here’s the lateset progress of the map. I pretty happy with the results so far. I’ve just been fiddling with the appearance of the text.

Lateset version:

The initial text were simply working labels. The spelling was fixed as I went along (not saying there aren’t anymore spelling errors in there somewhere).

The names of of Nations are in red with the regions within that nation labelled in black. Some nations comprise only one region (like Israel) while other nations only have one region represented on the map (like Romania and the Ukraine). The Crimean Peninsula is part of the Ukraine. I suppose I could label the region “Crimea (Ukraine)” or something as such.

I could have expanded the map northwards to include more of the Ukraine and Romania but then I risk losing a focus on the area where I want the fighting to occur. The same problem exists to the east with Afghanistan and Pakistan being only partially represented. Also, Sudan and Eithiopia are significantly curtailed. The cut off line has to be drawn somewhere.

The text is not going to be difficult to read once the map is blown up to its proper proportions.

Progress continues. Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia remain. Then the real fun of assigning IPC values and determining victory cities begins.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are partially represented on the map. I’m going to assume for the purposes of my scenario that they are too distracted by India to get too involved in the Middle East.

The USA is indirectly represented in the game by their backing of Saudi Arabia. For all intents and purposes Saudi Arabia is the USA in this game. Once again, the US is largely concerned with events unfolding elsewhere in the world.

As far as Iraq is concerned, Russia is supposed to be backing Iraq heavily. With US resolve and morale weakened to the point that they pretty much abandon Iraq and the middle east (stretching it. I know), Russia steps into the power vacuum and re-arms the Iraqi forces.

I did consider making this an everyone sticks all game and it will still be very possible as a variant in the future. However, in my experience what tends to happen if you don’t have teams is that someone always gets shafted facing two or three opponents. Also, individual players encourages a turtling strategy. No one wants to make bold, aggresive moves for fear of being ganged up on or weaken themselves and leave themsleves vulnerable to others. In addition there always seems to be that one player who manages to avoid any major fighting in the early and middle part of the game. At the end, after everyone has been weakened due to fighting eath other, the player who has been avoiding conflict and building his/her forces steps in and dominates. There is also a potential for king making in free for all games. king making is when a player can’t really win a game but he/she can decide who can. You kno - “Well, you’ve annoyed me the whole game so I’m throwing everything I have at you even though it will mean utter defeat for me also, I know you won’t win!”. Finally, free for all games are much more difficult to playtest and achieve a real game balance.

Team vs team, scenario type games are just easier to design in the beggining. So that’s what I’m starting out with.

You are correct about the focus on ground combat though. I am thinking about incorporating some victory point or IPC type areas at sea (offshore oil fields, shipping routes etc…).

Oh here’s the latest version of the map by the way:

At first the rules for combat are just going to be the standard Axis and Allies rules with some new units thrown in. I do have ideas and plans to make my own set of rules, but that going to wait until later.

I intend to use the following units

Infantry C3 A1 D2 M1
Mobile Inf C4 A1 D1 M2
Artillery C4 A2 D2 M1 (infantry support)
Mobile Art. C5 A2 D2 M2 (infantry support)
Tank C5 A3 D3 M2
Heavy Tank C6 A4 D3 M2

Helicopter C8 A2 D3 M4 (tank hunter)
Fighter C10 A3 D4 M6
Bomber C15 A4 D1 M8
Missile C5 A4 D0 M8 (one use)
Cargo Plane C10 A0 D1 M8 (transport 1 inf or 1 other unit during non-combat)

Submarine C8 A2 D2 M2 (first strike, submerge)
Destroyer C8 A2 D2 M2 (sonar)
Cruiser C12 A2 D2 M2 (bombard)
Battleship C22 A4 D4 M2 (bombard, 2 hits)
Carrier C15 A1 D3 M2 (transport 2 non-bomber air units, 2 hits)
Transport C8 A0 D1 M2 (transport 1 Inf + 1 other unit)

I wanted each turn to represent about 1 week of fighting however, this is one of those fudge factors that comes up in gaming. In reality there would little to no time for construction of major combat units in the modern war I’m trying to simulate. When you consider the entire war could be over in a matter of weeks, how can a nation possibly build entire infantry or tank divisions, squadrons of aircraft and/or fleets of warships? If you really want to do it realistically each nation should start with an order of battle and then each turn would receive set reinforcements as reserve formations are prepared (something like Axis & Allies D-day). After the first few turns all the forces would be in play with little or nothing following.

The problem is the collecting and spending of IPC’s is such an elegant and interesting mechanic, I don’t want to lose it. So I’ll just call it a flexible reserve activation method.

More to come.

@CWO:

I guess another way to help explain it (at least as far as equipment is concerned) might be to assume that some of it is being purchased from foreign sources (outside the Middle East theatre in which the game is set) and that it’s being shipped to the buyers out of existing inventories (rather than being built on demand, which in a short regional war would take too long for complex modern weapons).  The existing inventories could consist either of weapons built specifically for export by countries (like North Korea) which sell a lot of military equipment to foreign nations, or they could be surplus older material no longer needed by the country of origin (like those surplus World War I destroyers which the U.S. transferred to Great Britain early in World War II).

That is certainly part of what is going on behind the curtains when nations spend IPC’s in my game however, it still doesn’t explain why your IPC total increases when you conquer enemy territory. With the basic A&A model you are capturing enemy resources and industrial areas (which is represented by the IPC total) and converting those resources into cash which you use to buy units. In the conflict I’m postulating here there would certainly be little or no time for Iraq to conquer an Iranian industrial area, re-tool it to manufacture Iraqi vehicles and arms and deploy those units in the field. Modern warfare moves too fast for that (given that I’m aiming for weekly turns).

One of the work arounds I was considering (other than ignoring the issue since the basic flow of A&A works well) is to have multiple rounds of combat and non-combat moves before a build new units round (for example: everyone performs three sets of combat and non-combat moves then everyone builds). My only concern here is that if someone breaks through a defensive line then they can push on and capture loads of enemy territory before any new units can be built to stop them (this could be desireable however).

@Emperor_Taiki:

Well IPCs can represent the nation ability to mobilze its nation.

See post above.

@Emperor_Taiki:

Nice to see new units.

The missile unit looks really powerful, i would say too powerful with a range of eight!. I would accauly incldued two missile units in the game. One short range that can fire 2 space away, and another that is medium range that can fire from six spaces away but costs 10. I think you should also be able too load these missiles up on certain ships, subs, and aircraft aswell so that they can be fired from their.

You did see that the missiles are expendable. As in when you fire them they are gone. They only get one shot then removed from play. Note this is one combat roll only. Not one entire combat. So they get one good shot in the first round of combat and that’s it. Also they can be used for Strategic Bombing. Also note that they are susceptible to AA fire.

@Emperor_Taiki:

Also, for your land units, I think its just going to add confusion too the board if you have two varaints of the same unit, while not adding a whole lot of strategy and fun since they the new units are not that different from the old ones.

Well, I did want to go for additional detail in this game. The main difference is that the mechanized units have an additional movement point which is a huge advantage to be able to keep up with the armour. If a nation is on the defensive and need to maximize combat power they can save a bit of money by purchasing the non-mechanized units. A mobile/mechanized unit represents serious support in terms of armoured vehicles and logistics. I assume that standard, non-mechanized units also utilize motorized transport (in the form of trucks or other such vehicles) its just that they are not as capable or as reliable as the mechanized form of the unit and hence they are not afforded the additional movement point. In addition, mobile Infantry take up more room on transports (ie: a transport can carry 1 non-mobile infantry + 1 other unit) and cannot be used for airborne operations (inserted via transport planes).

@Emperor_Taiki:

I think some more exciting options for land warfare would be units like special forces or marines. Special forces could have some sort of support bonus or they could allow you to train forces in countries that are not your own, or they could have some ability to attack cities or oil fields. They could have an ability simialr to subs, accept that they “submerge” on land.

Special forces and marines while interesting introduce another two types of infantry which would be a pain in the neck to get pieces for. I might consider marines, but I’d rather leave special forces to some kind of tech advantage or an action card or something. Also, if these unit types are introduced then it brings up the whole “why isn’t there a dedicated paratrooper unit?” debate.

@Emperor_Taiki:

Also I would rename heavy Armor advacned armor, since how big a tank is in modern warfare does not correspond to how powerful it is as much as it did in World War 2. Or you coudl call the heavy tank a Main Battle Tank.

The Heavy Tank is actually called advanced tank but I shortened the name so that it would fit into a chart I’m making (same for the cargo plane which is actually a transport aircraft). The normal tank unit represents older, less capable models held in inventory and the Advnaced Armour is a cutting edge MBT.

@Emperor_Taiki:

Also, almost all infantry today are motorized or mechanized, so the mobile infantry peice should be the main unit in an army, when you are figureing out the setup. I also feel  infantry unit should be renamed light infantry, and it should be able to be transported in helecopters and 2 should fit in a cargo plane. Cargo planes should also be renamed transport aircraft, to give the game a more military and official feal.

addressed above.

@Emperor_Taiki:

Also, helocopters should get some kind of bonus when fighting tanks, like you said they are tank hunters.

Helicopters have the “Tank Hunter” special ability. Each Helicopter unit present in battle reduces the combat value of enemy tanks by 1 (either attack or defend value). This makes regular tanks defend at only 1 against helicopters! I didn’t want to allow Helicopters to transport infantry because Apache’s cannot morph into Chinooks. Also, that would make them really powerful and the cost would have to go up considerably (although it would be cool to mount air mobile helicopter borne operations).

@Emperor_Taiki:

For the navy, you should scracth the battleship, since that is not used asmore. Instead call it a Frigate, and make it orienated to fighting off aircraft and cruise missle, also lower its cost. Accaully all the naval unit should have lower cost, otherwise cruise missles are going to be deveistating against them, although cruise missles should remaine more effective against naval units than land units.

The battleship represents either and old WWII battleship which has been modernized (Iowa class) or the heavy Soviet battle cruiser designs (Kirov class). There were only to be few of these units on the board at start and I didn’t really expect anyone to buy them. I could just amp their cost up to prevent anyone from purchasing them (or just outlaw buying them). I think I’ll change the two smaller naval vessels to Frigate and Cruiser (Frigates are smaller and less capable vessels than destroyers or cruisers). The Frigate will be the sub hunter and Cruisers will be the anti-air unit. I’m considering making each naval unit count as an AA gun and the cruisers count as AA guns hitting on 2 or less. This way you’ll have to saturate a naval force with numerous missiles and aircraft to get enough through to do damage. I’ll think on it more.

@Emperor_Taiki:

Also, why havnt you included Surface-to-Air missile sites, otherwisw their wont be anything to fill the role of the AA gun

AA guns are in the game (named Anti-Air missiles). They just didn’t get listed. They will not be capable of rocket attacks (that’s what the cruise missiles are for).

I didn’t list the factories either. I’m considering adding a heavy factory to the unit mix. A heavy factory can be represented by having two factory pieces present in the space (for lack of a bigger heavier factory piece) and it will allow you to build twice the IPC value in pieces there.

Keep the feedback coming.