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