Wednesday 12 August 2015

Battle Report - Flames of War - Fate of a Nation

So on Tuesday Stan came over for a few games and we decided to give Fate of a Nation another try. Since it has been awhile since the campaign ended, I thought it would be good to get this stuff out for a game again.

I took my Jordanians with 8 M48 Pattons, and a platoon of infantry with M113 transports, and Stan had the Israelis 2 Sho't and 5 I-Shermans I believe.

I don't have that much desert terrain really so I left it kind of sparse. The fields and tree base are being used to represent soft sand, so I think very difficult for tanks and infantry can't dig in.

Game 1:
Free for All

For the first game we decided to go for a simple battle and went with Free for All. This is a straight up mission with everything on the table and 2 objectives on each side. But due to how few teams we had it is pretty unlikely that the objectives will ever become important.


I think I got the first turn in this one. So I took advantage of that and got my tanks into decent positions and took some shots, killing a couple of Shermans. No effect on the Sho'ts which was to become common. I elected to move my infantry up at the double to threaten the objective and try to lure Stan into shooting them. Not a bad first go.


In response the Shot's killed 2 Pattons, and the I-Shermans made a mess of the infantry transports. Still that meant no more dead tanks so I was feeling pretty good about it, just need a few lucky hits on the Sho'ts.


This was sadly the peak of my success. The Sho'ts continued to dominate my Pattons on the far flank eventually killing them. On the near side the I-Shermans finished out the infantry platoon while some bad luck caused me to not get any more kills. This forced a company morale roll which I failed and lost the game.

There was a bit of a fun moment with my infantry platoon leader and the Super Bazooka team failed a morale test, and the Jordanian Qadri rule came into affect leaving the Bazooka to fight on. Actually now that I think on it that rule should also have applied to my Company Morale test, so my platoon of tanks could have fought on without their commander. Oh well.

Game 2:
Forced Withdrawal

In game 2 we decided to go for a defensive battle, since the Jordanians always defend, this would mean the Israelis would have to advance a bit and hopefully make things a bit more balanced. Given how few platoons we had, any mission involving reserves (or heaven forbid delayed reserves) was un-palatable, so that left us with Forced Withdrawal. I was pretty confident that it wouldn't last long enough for any withdrawing to come into the picture but that is hardly the point.


This time I took the other side and put one platoon of tanks concealed behind the town, 2 commander hiding out in the back out of range, and some infantry dug in around the objective that can't be removed. My other platoon of tanks is being held in ambush.


On turn one the I-Shermans advance and fired on the Infantry with some effect, and the Sho'ts started a long range gun duel with the tanks behind the town.


On my turn I pulled my ambush behind the small town on the road, and moved them up to flank the I-Shermans, while the Pattons continued their gun duel. I was hoping for a quick decisive result in my favor with the I-Shermans, and got 2 kills which is not bad, but the third passed his morale test.


On their turn the I-Shermans moved into close range and had a good fight back killing 2 pattons (the third ran). Meanwhile the Sho'ts continued to put a pounding on my other Pattons, so things are not looking good.


The Pattons and sho'ts continued to pound on each other, eventually leaving my commanders dead, and the platoon crippled but hanging on. In the mean time thou the I-Shermans were now left to collect my infantry which they were able to accomplish surprisingly easily.

This left my force broken once again. I think my huge issue in these games was having an odd number of platoons, especially with the infantry being so weak. But I don't have a much better option at the moment, the real solution would be to play more point and add some more stuff.

You may be wondering why I continued to batter with the Sho'ts over 2 entire games, wouldn't it be better to leave them? Well because the Isrealis only have 2 combat platoon I am pretty much forced to kill them at some point, so I felt it was better to try it with as many tanks as possible. They don't have that much of a better armor really it was partly a matter of bad luck, and partly that they are slightly superior in every category which adds up. In retrospect it may have been better to put my ambush down there and try to flank them, but they also have stabilizers and this makes them even equally superior in a close in fight, and I was worried about loosing that other objective. Perhaps the opposite tack could ahve worked, with all my stuff focusing on the I-Shermans first, but I just didn't try that.

Thanks;
Mike

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great games Mike...lots of fun

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  2. It looks like a lot of fun.

    I think the Jordanians get the worst of it in Fate of a Nation. They are not super good and there are not lots of them. We should try and do an historically based scenario some time and see how the balance is with that.

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  3. I don't think they are bad at all with the new supplement, it's just that this particular points level is a bit tough as you end up with a small odd number of platoons, and the infantry is just hanging out there waiting to be killed so that is a really bad choice in this period. At 1500 points I could have 2 more platoons of 3, and the Israelis would not really be able to match that numbers. I think that would be allot more interesting.

    On the other hand they made T55s so crazy cheap that it is not even easy to make it to that many points, you need 31 of them plus some more stuff.

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  4. How many points of Jordanians do you have?

    I can manage 1500 points of Israelis but I don't really like the list because it has a lot Shermans in it (which are cool but die really easily). It might be fun to do a mechanized list on a table with more urban terrain (though that would mean painting 15mm infantry which is something I am not all that excited about at the moment)

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  5. This is all I have pretty much. I have the infantry to do 2 platoons of mech infantry and I think maybe I have a command for that but then tat is all. So I would need to buy more stuff, but I am not sure we will be playing it that much, and it's kind of on to the next big thing now hah. I have started working on some somali pirates at least so there is that.

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  6. I was just hoping for an incentive to finish up the Israeli stuff that I never put together.

    I started putting together the M48s this weekend but I couldn't decide if I wanted the 90mm version or the 105mm one. I think that given the way the mounting is with the canvas they could have easily had the guns mounted with magnets -- I might actually try and do that myself since I am not likely to be actually painting them in the near future!

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  7. It would be nice to get a few more tanks thou. Maybe I will try and pick some up at Fall-In or something like that.

    Magnets is not a bad idea at all, should be plenty of space on these big guys to get a big enough one in there. Are the barrels that different that you need to swap them thou?

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  8. The 105 is much bigger and has a big muzzle brake, if they were similar I wouldn't really care. I am not even sure how many the Israelis had that weren't upgunned by 1967.

    In any case, I should concentrate on finishing off my 28mm Germans!!!

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  9. Once you get enough done we can try a small game against my US paras to at least get a game in with them. Good excuse for me to paint my Pershing!

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  10. That sounds like a plan -- your Pershing will be no match for my 3 Halftracks (I do have an AT gun and panzerfausts as well)

    I have block colours on all of the first batch now so I just need to do some detail and shading

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