After reading the whole thing through, the bottom line appears to be that doing serious damage, if not destroying, Iran's nuclear program infrastructure is technically and tactically feasible for Israel in the opinion of Larry Bond and his collaborators. In particular, Iran has very little military capability to stop an attack.
On the other hand, Israel needs to persuade at least one of the three powers controlling the air space on the way to Iraq to allow the air strikes to go forward because Iran's program is too extensive for a single air raid to do significant damage. So while the Israelis could certainly fly though the first time without permission, they'd need so many follow-up strikes that flying through without clearance isn't practical. Those three powers are the US (for Iraq air space) Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Bond's judgment is that Israel doesn't have the necessary level of support in any of the three. It's about getting that support and keeping it long enough to matter thant most of the game revolves. And here Iran does have come cards (literally) to play.
I'm definitely needing a partner to try this out. Any takers?
Yeah, I'd like to give this one a try. Any chance the rules are posted somewhere?
ReplyDeleteNot yet.
ReplyDeleteHow much of the 110 page rulebook is actual rules you need to learn (as opposed to background text, designer notes, tables and charts, etc)? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteThere are three books.
ReplyDeleteThe Game Rules book is 42 pages, all needed for play. includes some charts and tables that are repeated on a seperate card.
The Target Folders book is 36 pages, but you'll only need the pages for the targets actually attacked.
The Briefing Package book is also 42 pages, and this is all background material, designer's notes and the like.
Thanks, so complex, but not as dauntingly complex as it sounded. I used to have one of the basic Harpoon box sets. This runs off the same "engine" correct?
ReplyDeleteYes. I'll have a better feel once I've had a chance to play it but it looks like it may not be as complexa s regular Harpoon.
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm a techno-goof I accidentally "rejected" isntead of "published" this comment from Jeff Dougherty. My sincere apologies. Fortunately my e-mail saved the content. here's what he said:
ReplyDelete--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Dougherty has left a new comment on your post "Persian Incursion bottom line":
Hi Seth,
First off, we're working on getting some of the rules posted online as soon as possible. I'll notify you when that happens, should be in the next couple days. Won't be the whole thing, but hopefully enough for your readers to get the idea.
Second, in response to Andrew's question: Persian Incursion's tactical game runs off a simplified version of the Harpoon 4.1 rules. Most of the simplification is because we're dealing with a very limited set of targets and platforms, so we were able to simplify DP down to damage "boxes" for one example, and create a table with the chance to hit for all SAM systems against all targets instead of having to calculate things like AtA rating and EW manually. Hopefully, this will let the game have the rigor of Harpoon, but a shorter resolution time.
Seth, when you get to play please let us know how it goes. Game on!
-Jeff Dougherty
Co-Designer, Persian Incursion