Friendly Enemies

 

Its a nice problem to have, but when a game is so engrossing, so exciting, I get distracted from taking enough pictures to blog the game properly. Which is a shame, cos Daniel's Fate of a Nation scenario was a doozy!

Peter and Daniel were playing the Jordanians:

I was playing the Israelis. We rolled for the scenario - the Israeli's would be the attacker. That suited me fine, because this scenario is a real challenge for the defender!

The attacker gets to lay the objectives down, then defender has to deploy first, and leave 40% of their force in reserve, so the attacker has it easy - put the bulk of your forces in the pocket closest to where you laid the objectives! These started the game thinly defended...

Plus the Israeli Air Force put in an early and devastating appearance, knocking out one of the dread Centurions on Turn 1!

Given this action pitted Centurions against Sho'ts - which let's face it is simply a Centurion with a proper engine - lethality was going to be high!

Short story short, my Centurions were nice and close to the deep objective which was initially lightly held, and under early and continuous bombardment by the Israeli 155s. Once the Jordanian reserves turned up that firefight started getting bloody for the Sho'ts, but a second, even more devastating airstrike evened things up a little....

By which time my venerable old Shermans had dragged their sorry asses sufficiently into the action to take the Centurions in the flank. 

A hasty infantry assault cleared away the surviving Jordanian riflemen to seize the objective and end the game!

A short game but riveting - interesting to pit Jordanian Cents against Israeli Sho'ts. The only difference of course being the training, motivation, and skill of the crews:

Does this Israeli victory mean that the man matters more than the machine? Only further games will tell...

Golan Clash!

 

Daniel suggested experimenting with using Clash of Steel rules in a Fate of a Nation setting. The only models we have for FOAN are 12mm 1:144 so somewhat heretical in two planes! The table was set to represent a plateau with road junction on the Golan Heights, circa 1973:

The randomly generated mission was Flanking Move. 

Normally in 15mm this can lead to somewhat cluttered deployment but in this scale all was well and we still had the feel of the wide open spaces of the Levant.

The random mission rules dictated Scattered Immediate reserves.

Daniel rolled to be the Israeli player, and Attacker, with a company each of Sho'ts and M51s with 105mm guns. He placed a platoon of each into reserve.

As the Syrians I had two companies of 10 x T-62s, leaving one in reserve...

And a company of 10 x T-54s:

Looking at the table from Daniel's deployment area, you can see he deployed aggressively, moving forward towards all three objectives, whereas, in the distance, you can see I was more circumspect:

Threatening the centre objective but keeping my T-54s in cover in the crop fields:

However Daniel soon started racking up the victory points (VPs) so I diverted my T-62s from the centre to Objective 3 by the oasis:

Initially I felt I had little to fear from the M51s, gaining 3 VPs for wiping out an entire platoon, but Daniel directed his reserve platoons, which arrived at the right spot for him, here and then things started to get tough!

But now it was my turn for my reserve company of T-62s to arrive - I couldn't decide between the Centre and left objective in the wadi:

Because, frankly, 10 T-54s couldn't seem to deal promptly with a mere 3 Sho'ts!

Shooting them in from long range with the reserve T-62s eventually did the trick...

But by this time, only now gaining my first undisputed objective, Daniel was way ahead of me on VPs! (I won't go into the actual numbers...)

Despite this, I really enjoyed the game and I have no doubt Daniel relished handing out a drubbing. Clash of Steel always gives a fast, fun game and the 'armour only' aspect seems to suit 20th Century Arab-Israeli Wars, which this smaller scale also suits. I think we shall be revisiting!

FOAN - The road to Damascus

Our Fate of a Nation games tend to stick to a routine reflecting the better known tank battles of the Arab Israeli Wars: The Valley of Tears, Chinese Farm, Quinetra or the Mitla Pass. So I was very grateful when Daniel came up with something completely different...

We set the table up as faithfully as possible to where the battle took place. We probably didn't show sufficient crops and orchards, but desert terrain changes radically from day to day according to rainfall...

Daniel as the Israeli player deployed first with a well balanced force, leaving the 40% reserves demanded by the Team Yankee Flanks Out! scenario spread amongst all arms.

Whereas I as the Iraqi player put as many tanks on table as I could manage!

My reasoning was that I would have to overwhelm the on table Israeli forces as quickly as possible before the Israeli Air Force could make its appearance on turn three.

If I waited for my reserves I would just be defeated in detail...

But if both my on table tank companies stormed forwards at once, all guns blazing, we might just reach the objective before the Israelis could get organised...

Turns out it didn't take long for them to get organised, and my on table T-54s were soon on the losing end of a crossfire...

The first Israeli airstrike didn't do too much harm - just one bail out...

But by the time the second one showed up my forces were already in disarray from being caught by Sho't  fire from the front and Isherman  fire from the flank...

My one consolation is that our T-54's trusty Dushka AAMGs had brought down one of the Skyhawks!

But now the Israeli reinforcements were arriving!

But so where mine, and the Motor Rifles were hastily despatched to cover the flank approach to the home objectives.

And the third, final tank company arrived - which was just as well since the original two were down to two survivors each!

I sent them deep flanking in a desperate push for the objective, trying to make use of the scant cover.

Meanwhile my Motor Rifles were receiving lots of unwanted attention from Arty and the flanking Israeli armour, whilst the Israel mech infantry made a lightening strike run for their near objective!

The third tank company managed to brew up two Shot's, but were nowhere near the objective when the mission time elapsed. At the cost of two Skyhawks and three Sho'ts, this was a convincing win for Daniel and the Israeli all arms approach!