Painting Guide for Fate of a Nation

The various forces included in Fate of a Nation provide a fairly wide array of camouflage and painting options for the player. The main rulebook itself includes a painting guide, but this appears to have been copied wholesale over from the original release of Fate of a Nation and therefore applies more to the 1967 conflict than the 1973 conflict. A study of some of the available references for the various forces that saw action during these two conflicts demonstrates that there are many more options than are discussed in the rulebook.

Back in February I detailed a decent "one book" reference covering Middle East conflicts, AK Interactive's Middle East Wars 1948-1973. This book has a wealth of color drawings which appear to be reasonably accurate based on the original photographs of the subjects I've seen. SabIngaMartin Publications also has a very detailed series of books dealing mostly with Israeli topics, but there are some good references on Arab armor (especially T54/55 and T-62) as well.

Fate of a Nation Force Table Updates

Just a heads up - I've updated the Egyptian and Syrian tables for Fate of a Nation. Based on better data, it appears that the BTR-60 was not used by either nation during the 1967 war. Egypt may have had an early version of the vehicle, but regardless it wasn't deployed in 1967. There is hard evidence of both Egypt and Syria receiving the standard BTR-60 model as represented by the stats in the book in 1970 and both nations deployed the AFV during the 1973 war.

I'll continue to polish the force organization tables as I get more data. I've even put in a call to some of my friends in Israel to see if I can lay my hands on some additional data.

Fate of a Nation - 1967, 1973, or Both - Syrian Forces

Like the Egyptians, the Syrian experience in the Yom Kippur / October War was drastically different than the earlier Six Day War. In 1973, the Syrians were on the offensive and managed to recapture a fair portion of the Golan Heights threatening northern Israel itself before the Israelis counter-attacked and force the Syrians out yet again. As such the equipment used and available in 1967 and 1973 differs slightly when playing the newest version of Fate of a Nation.

I've gone through the new book and worked to identify which formations and equipment would have been available during each war. Bear in mind, however, that the new game is not only meant to be played with what ever mix of equipment you choose, but it is also points compatible with the new 'Nam game, so you can mix and match (Israeli vs. NVA anyone?). Therefore any segregation of forces based on Six Day War or Yom Kippur War is purely optional!

As you can see from the chart above, given their position in the Soviet orbit during the time period, Egypt and Syria shared a great deal of equipment. There are, however, a few units unique to each nation based on what they were able to obtain in the early post-colonial era.

Hopefully this chart will be helpful as you build your forces from Fate of a Nation.  I'll be adding Jordanian forces in the future as well as some modeling and painting guides.  Watch this space!

Edit June 25, 2018 - Removed BTR-60 as a 1967 option - Syria does not appear to have purchased the AFV until 1970 based on better references than were originally available.

Book Review: AK Interactive's Middle East Wars 1948-1973

In anticipation of the upcoming Fate of a Nation release for Team Yankee / Flames of War, I've been planning out my armies and looking for additional good references to get them all painted up and ready to go. AK Interactive has released a book covering the Middle East Wars from 1948 to 1973, and it is a rare gem. Packed with color photos and illustrations throughout, the book covers the major conflicts in the region in good detail, and at a price of €20,95, or about $25 U.S., it's a pretty good deal as well.

The book opens with an introduction giving a little of the history of the region and its conflicts from the Israeli War of Independence through the Yom Kippur War, and then moves on to discussing vehicles on a nation by nation, rather than a conflict by conflict, basis. The opening chapter is a bit light, but covers British and French vehicles used in the Suez Crisis of 1956. There is a very large chapter covering Egyptian vehicles in all their dizzying variety. Jordan, unfortunately, does not receive nearly the same level of attention and is lumped into a chapter with Algeria. The chapter covering Syrian vehicles is extremely detailed, and the variety of camouflage schemes used is amazing. This section closes with a chapter covering Israeli vehicles which are no fewer in number, but generally have less variety in paint schemes.

A couple of images from the Egyptian section

The book then goes on to discuss Arab vehicles captured by the IDF - largely in the 1967 War which were employed against their former owners in the 1973 War. This section is very useful because it shows many of the vehicles in their original Arab camouflage schemes. The book closes with a couple of chapters detailing surviving vehicles - many of which are at the Israeli Armored Museum at Latrun.

Overall the book is a treasure trove of images that anyone building a force for the upcoming Fate of a Nation release could use as inspiration. There are a couple of errors I've noted, most of which I think could be translation issues (referring to Sherman HVSS and VVSS suspensions as Horizontal "Volt" and Vertical "Volt" rather than Volute), but there are extremely minor and don't detract from the work as a whole. Overall I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in this period either from a modeling or wargaming perspective.