MCS Group Joins ATO Magazine to Produce STATES OF CONFLICT

ATO Announcement:

In keeping with our goal of presenting our readers with a variety of designers and writers and their take on war, I’m please to announce that we’ve asked the MCS Group to take on creating the second ATO Campaign Study, called States of Conflict that explores the immediate and long term future of the Middle East.

The game inside is scaled at 10k per hex (linear side to side, approximately 65 square kilometers per hex). Units are brigades or divisions (the maneuver element of the given combatant).

The design will use a modified version of the Advanced Millennium Wars system by Joseph Miranda, Michael Anderson, and J. Bernhard Compton, incorporating subsystems for asymmetric situations, non-state actors, and political constraints.

There will be multiple scenarios, ranging from historical events to hypothetical post-nuclear event stabilization, taking up some 2 full-sized maps and 3 counter sheets.

Planned articles for the study portion itself include:
Introduction by Dr. Sallama Shaker, former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Egypt
Military Capacity: Israel and Surrounds by Dr. Richard Andres, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force
Violent Non-State Actors and Legitimacy of Governance in the Middle East, an Empirical Approach by J. Bernhard Compton, Foundation for American Defense Studies, Modern Conflict Studies Group
Political and Military History of the Arab-Israeli Struggle by Shawn Williamson, Claremont Graduate University
A Formal Modeling Approach to Understanding the Circumstances of Middle East Conflict by Travis Coen, Claremont Graduate University
Game Related Replay and Game Analysis by Conducted by Foundation for American Defense Studies
Strategies for Success: Useful Approaches to the Military Situation by Michael Anderson, Modern Conflict Studies Group

Currently MCS Group has completed a play-test map and is preparing the OB. They should begin play-testing the initial rules version by January.