Bucha, Ukraine - 27 Feb 2022 - 15mm

Good afternoon, all.

So we’re back for the conclusion of the small introductory scenario we game last weekend between myself and @damon – getting Avalon Hill’s Arab-Israeli Wars off the ground.

We were playing Situation B-1 (Bir Gifgafa, November 2, 1956), recreating one of the closing actions of the 1956 Sinai War.

In this situation, a battalion of Israeli armor (M1/M4 and M50 Shermans, together with French-built AMX-13 light tanks) of Ben Uri’s 7th Armoured Brigade, was trying to push through the Bir Gifgafa road center in the north-central Sinai Peninsula.  The Israeli invasion of the Sinai had started about four days ago, and the objective was now to push to the Suez Canal and seize the whole Sinai Peninsula.  Israeli motivation for this action had been continued PLA terrorist, rocket, and artillery attacks out of this area into the Negev settlements and inciting unrest in Gaza, all with the Egyptian army and government (President Gamal Abd-el Nasser) conveniently looking the other way.

Meanwhile, Nasser had also nationalized the Suez Canal, triggering a military response in the form of British and French air and naval units, to include British Royal Marines and French Paratroopers in the canal zone itself (Operation Musketeer).  To what degree IDF ground units and these British and French expeditionary insertions were supposed to be coordinating remains a bone of debate.

In any event, Damon’s orders here were clear.  His Israelis, with their harder-hitting and longer-ranged guns, were supposed to smash my Egyptian 1st Armoured Brigade (remnants, rear guard) and get as many of his units off the west end of the board by the end of Turn 8.

In short, this is a classic breakthrough scenario.  Smash the enemy lien of resistance, push past it as fast as you can.  Your battle is only a small part of a larger operational picture in which speed and exploiting enemy disarray is paramount.

For my part, I have no hope of actually stopping the Israeli attack.  I can slow it down, bleed it a little, and perhaps pin down some of the Israeli units so they don’t get off the board in time.

So far I’m not doing too bad.  I have denied battle as long as I could, finally counterattacking Israeli vanguard which became a little too outstretched for all its elements to support each other.  It cost me a company and a half of T-35/85s, but I also claimed a full company of Israeli light armor.  That’s not a bad trade when you have the Egyptians up against Israeli tanks.

Now Damon’s column is starting to compress a little, but it’s taken enough time to allow me to scrape together my battered 1st Brigade and launch another overrun on these two AMX-13 platoons trying to get off the extreme southwest corner of the board.  Damon tried to go for maximum dispersals on his opportunity fire (i.e., forego shooting for kills, and instead try to pin down more enemy units, an an attempt to break up the overrun and survive the attack).

The odds were against it, and the dice came down with the odds.  He dispersed two platoons of T-34s, but those three platoons of SU-100s took care of the remaining AMX-13s.

But now the Israeli Shermans (slow as they are) are finally trundling up to the scene, too far away to overrun me right now (this screen shot shows them at the END of their movement), but I will definitely have problems from here on out.

Okay, those Shermans have blown those two platoons of T-34/85s into the middle of next week, and using the Split Move and Fire rule (available to Israelis but not to Egyptians, at least in 1956) they have started to scoot off the table and thus earn more victory points for Colonel Damon.  😀

My SU-100s had one shot at opportunity fire, failing to kill two platoons of M1/M4 Shermans to the south and one platoon of M50s to the north, but pinning them all down.  By the way, I chose to include fire on this trying to get by me to the north because I have 30 more T-34/85s trying to close up from the east.  If by some chance those Shermans don’t rally next turn, these new tanks might get a shot on them.

In the end, those two platoons to the south managed to rally and get off the board, the platoon to the north failed but I didn’t get another shot at them.  So it’s not destroyed, but it’s still on the table so counts as 1 Egyptian victory point.

The final score, as shown below …  16 to 16.  A dead tie.

I’m not gonna lie, for the Egyptians at Bir Gifgafa, that’s a damned good result.

To his credit, this was Damon’s first try at the game, we invented new rules for platoon facing and flank fire on the spot, and he was playing a guy who’s bee running the scenario for 20 years.

Although I have never tied with the Egyptians before … I use this scenario as a literal “training tool” to introduce new players to Arab-Israeli Wars, it’s challenging enough to test new players and teach the the basics of the system, but honestly the Israelis are almost fated to win, even after my scenario updates / modifications.

IN SUMMARY: This idea of wargaming via web conference is simply awesome.  I earnestly hope to do this over and over again, @brucelea and @damon have both vowed they want to try more games.

We’re trying this out with Darkstar with a new player on December 1.

Talk has been mentioned of doing this with World War 2.5 or Valor & Victory.

Honestly the sky’s the limit.  As fast as I can draw new maps, we can run more games.

So if this kind of thing interests you, ping me a PM and we can add you to the schedule / running order.