Oil War: American Intervention in the Persian Gulf

Oil War: American Intervention in the Persian Gulf is a two-player board wargame designed by Jim Dunnigan, with graphic design by Redmond A. Simonsen, published by Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI) in 1975. The game simulates a hypothetical American military intervention into oil-producing countries of the Middle East, imagined as a response to the real 1973 oil crisis that had disrupted Western oil supplies and sharply raised prices. It was first released as a pull-out game inside Strategy and Tactics magazine issue 52 in October 1975, and was later reissued in folio and boxed set formats. As a speculative near-future conflict simulation rather than a recreation of an actual historical battle, Oil War reflects the mid-1970s wargame hobby's interest in using tabletop simulation to explore plausible geopolitical crises of its own era.