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

As mentioned in an earlier post, in the new Fate of a Nation rules, it isn't always clear which units were used in which conflict (or if they were used in both). A lot of that detail was originally included in the unedited unit flavor text (where available), but due to space constraints some of it was lost.

In this installment we'll look at the Egyptian forces available in the new Fate of a Nation rules, and which units were available for which war. Again, I'd like to emphasize that segregating the forces into 1967 or 1973 organizations is purely optional! When actually playing the game, feel free to mix and match as much as you'd like as the book is written to be used that way. This chart merely gives the player an option to focus if that is how you'd like to play the game.

In the 1967 War, the Egyptian Positions were in many cases more static and lacked the advanced man-portable anti-tank rockets like the AT-3 "Sagger". In 1973, the Egyptians were focused on attack, and both their infantry and armored formations were organized with assault on the Bar-Lev line and establishing a foothold in the Sinai as their top priority.

Hopefully this chart will be helpful. There are a few more entertaining, though rare, Egyptian units like the heavily modified T-34/100 which aren't in the book that I hope to see as "unofficial" cards some day. As before, I'm hoping to get some painting and modeling information up in the future as well.  Enjoy!

Edit June 25, 2018:  Removed BTR-60 from 1967 options. Egypt may have had some in country, but they were a very early model and not deployed. Standard model not imported until ~1970 along with Syria.

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

First I'll apologize for my forced absence. Things have been more than a little crazy in my world and while I've been working on miniatures a bit, the craft room has been a little quiet these days. That being said, unless you've been under a rock you will have seen the release of the new Fate of a Nation set of rules from Battlefront/Osprey. I'm credited as having contributed "additional writing" in this particular book, and this time around it amounted to writing and updating a lot of the historical background as well as the unit flavor text.

As Battlefront was trying to create a fairly unified set of rules that would be compatible with 'Nam - in effect creating "Early War" Team Yankee - no distinction was made between kit or formations which were used only in 1967 or 1973. The goal was to create one game, not two. That being said, where information was readily available I tried to highlight equipment or formations which were used exclusively in either the Six Day War or the Yom Kippur/October War as I know many players would like to focus their force (or at least differentiate camouflage schemes).

Unfortunately you have only so much space with which to work in a book of this type and some editing occurred along the way. So I've been going back through my notes to make as definitive as possible a list of what was used in each conflict. Starting with the Israelis, I've compiled it into an Excel file which I will update as I get more information.

As you can see, most of the Israeli infantry equipment was shared between the wars as the IDF budget was focused elsewhere (tanks, aircraft, etc.). Remember, this is just a guide at this point, I'll be continually trying to update and validate the list going forward. I'm also hoping to get some decent painting and marking guides available as well - so continue to watch this space!

Updating Your Spandrels!

One of the original releases for Team Yankee was the Soviet "Spandrel" or 9P148 Konkurs. It serves as a light anti-tank asset for your Warsaw Pact forces, and is typically fielded in groups of two or three - you get three in the AT Platoon box set (TSBX11). Because of its light armor and inability to fire on the move, the Spandrel is generally best used in ambush or from prepared positions with some cover. As a part of my overall East German force, I decided I needed a unit of these cute little armored cars.

The Perils of Kickstarter - Over Promising - Under Delivering

Crowdfunding and Kickstarter has been a cornerstone of game development for several years now, and I last touched on some trends about two years ago in a blog post. Only a few days after that post, one of the miniature games I'd supported, All Quiet on the Martian Front (AQMF), abruptly shut down and its owners declared bankruptcy. While that particular property was eventually purchased and its new owners are trying to make a go of it, what looked initially to be a game with a broad player base now appears to firmly be a niche property. AQMF isn't alone in encountering difficulties in fulfilling their campaign obligations, as now the Robotech Kickstarter, which had been struggling to produce "Wave 2" for over a year, has finally thrown in the towel in a major way.

As of yesterday, Palladium announced that not only will "Wave 2" not be produced, but that the company's 30 year old license to produce Robotech games (role playing and otherwise) has expired and will not be renewed. This means that they'll effectively be having a firesale for existing product and not making any additional product. You can read the details of the announcement in the link above, but ultimately the failure of both the AQMF and Robotech Kickstarter campaigns come down to poor planning, poor management, and a "wave" strategy which can be Kickstarter speak for "Ponzi scheme" in many instances.

T-72 Adventures in Photography

I'm still playing around with the settings and lenses I have available for my Nikon because I wanted to go for more depth of field in the photos. I think I'm making some progress here:

I'll continue to experiment and will post the final "recipe" once I get everything ironed out...

East German T-72 Company - DONE!

My NVA (East German) T-72 company is finally painted, weathered, and the lot. I even worked out getting some decent photos taken of them, though I still need to work with the light levels a bit to get all of the details to pop. Going back over the photos, I likely have one or two details to add back in (haven't hollowed out all of my gun tubes yet), but that's minor compared to what it's taken to get here from where the started out.

Red tanks on the prowl

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.