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 - 1967, 1973, or Both - Jordanian Forces

So the first three installments of this series detailing the various force in the new Fate of a Nation game have caused quite a bit of discussion, and I already have some additional reference data coming my way. That means that there may be some future edits to the Israeli, Egyptian, and Syrian force tables for the 1967 and 1973 wars. That being said, I wanted to get something up for the Jordanians, even if it was an early draft to see if I can get some additional references to come out of the woodwork.

Jordan has always been in a fairly unenviable position in the Arab world. They've continued to look West for aid and support, even as many of their neighbors looked to the Soviet Bloc. This preference can be seen in a lot of their equipment, and in their relations with their neighbors during the inter-war years. As such, most of Jordan's equipment firmly dates to the 1967 Six Day War, as they were most integral to that conflict. Jordan only reluctantly came to Syria's aid late in the Yom Kippur War, and only with one or two Armored Brigades.

Unfortunately as the table above shows, details about the force organization of the forces Jordan sent to Syria in the 1973 War are sketchy. I have at least one photo of a Jordanian Centurion during that conflict, so I'm 100% comfortable saying that the 105mm armed version was definitely there. There are wide reports of Jordanian artillery being involved in attacks as well. I'll continue to dig and hopefully clear some of the "yellow" out of the chart over the next few weeks!

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.