Heights of Courage: The Battle for the Golan Heights

Heights of Courage: The Battle for the Golan Heights, October 1973, is a game covering the Golan Heights portion during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

In October, 1973, Syria and her allies lead a surprise attack to recapture the Golan Heights in conjunction with an Egyptian assault across the Suez Canal into the Sinai.

For a little over two weeks, massed Syrian armor tried to swamp the Israeli defenders who were buying time to allow mobilized reserves to arrive. They succeeded and managed to turn the tide launching their own offensive toward Damascus.

Heights of Courage is the 16th game in the award winning Standard Combat Series. It complements the 1995 CSR award winning game Yom Kippur (which covers the fighting in the Sinai). It uses the same 8 page standard series rulebook applicable to all the other games.

Because both sides have offensive and defensive phases of the battle to enjoy, victory is determined by comparing the best Syrian performance in their early offensive to the Israeli offensive results at the end of the game. This forces both sides to fight tooth and nail on both the offense and defense with enormous time pressure on perform rapidly.

The game captures all the sizzle of the fast-paced armored battle with enough steak to give the game the appropriate level of depth. For example, it uses an innovative two tempo operational speed, to both players as the battle goes beyond the endurance of the forces involved. Each player can select to go “fast” in order to fight more or “slow” in order to get more replacements.