Middle East Combat "Expansion"

[ChromiumAgeCollector]

Has anyone ever played Middle East Combat from Magic and Tactics Unlimited?

It’s a an expansion where you use your A&A pieces with their map and modified rules.  I recently was able to score a used copy for 3 bucks, and I pimped it out using pieces from Historical Boardgaming.

The game is actually a lot of fun, and I’m thinking of making a side project out of updating the rules to be compatible with G42 2ed rules/units.  As well as scanning in the map, rules, and deployment cards so that anyone can get this as a print and play.

Below is a picture from my initial set up.

[knp7765]

So Germany starts out in control of Turkey?

[ChromiumAgeCollector]

Germany is Turkey.  That is to say, you use German pieces for the Turkish player.

Iran uses Japanese pieces.
USSR uses Russian pieces (duh)
Saudi/Egypt uses American pieces.
Iraq uses British pieces.

[knp7765]

Okay, I get it. This is a fight between Middle-Eastern states only, right?  The only “outside” power would be Russia and I would imagine because they are geographically close to the Middle-East.
Is this meant to sort of represent the many wars in that region that took place after WW2?  Is it right after WW2 or some time later?
If it’s later, are the planes jets?

[ChromiumAgeCollector]

You are correct about Russia.

The other world powers are not directly involved, but Russia hast to roll 2D6 every turn at the start of their turn.  This determines special events in the world that affect the war.  For example, one event is that the world powers meet with Russia and if Russia doesn’t attack that turn, they get 10 extra IPCs that turn.

This is a fictional conflict, but it is supposed to take place post WWII.  In fact, every country starts with long range aircraft and rockets (from the original A&A rules).

I have to say this “expansion” is a delight!  Currently I am working on seeing how compatible it is with the G42 rules.  Since the “copyright” on this is from 93, I’m pretty sure this is public domain now.  I’m heavily considering scanning in all of the components and making the files available on Boardgame Geek.

[knp7765]

Long ago when only Classic was available, I came up with this idea of expanding the game by taking each territory and breaking it down into a separate map for each land territory. The reason being is I thought it was ridiculous to have one single battle for places like Western Europe, Eastern United States, etc. Back then I did not take into account that each round represented several months in real time.
It turned out to be a much bigger task than I first thought and I ended up abandoning it. Also, I thought about it later and realized that would stretch out a single game to many days. I mean, imagine when you start a battle for any land territory on the Classic map and you are basically starting a sort of mini-game. It would take forever to get through one game.
I also needed to figure a way to break down the units to adjust for scale. In other words, 1 infantry unit on the big map would be equal to 10 or 20 infantry units on the smaller blow-up maps. Plus, I didn’t have any ideas on naval units.

[ChromiumAgeCollector]

Sounds like you would have enjoyed Advanced Squad Leader :)