So I’ll put up a few highlights of the 1973 Golan Heights game @damon and I played (system: The Arab-Israeli Wars).  In all, the game took 6 hours and 43 minutes.  It is posted in its entirety on Twitch for those that are interested.  Needless to say, an entire blow-by-blow battle report would be a little too large to post here, so I’ll post some highlights and if anyone has any questions, I will certainly do my best to answer

Full Twitch Stream: Damon v. Oriskany – Golan Heights 

So here is the full map again, only this time with Damon’s forty tanks of 77th Armored Battalion, 7th Brigade (Lt. Colonel A. Kahalani) deployed on the Tel Hermonit and Booster Ridge, extending north of Kuneitra along the Purple Line at daybreak, 7 October 1973. For my money, this is where scaled wargaming (regardless of the medium) really shines. With enough attention paid to scale, distances, real-life numbers, etc., you can build a board and set up a force, and get an instant “feel” of just how desperate a situation really was. This is forty “Sho’t Cal” Centurions (five tanks per platoon / counter = eight pieces), which sounds like a big force … and would be a big force on a six foot 15mm table … but then set it up on the actual battlefield that measured 6+ kilometers (250 meters per hex), and that blue line suddenly gets very very thin.

I suggest “open image in new tab” for full resolution.

Some of Damon’s Sho’t Cal Centurions on Booster Ridge, overlooking what history would soon call the Valley of Tears.

The total Syrian force. Two full brigades of Soviet-built tanks, 100 T-55s, 100 T-62s, plus support vehicles, a reinforced mech infantry battalion, engineers, Sagger antitank missiles, you name it. Historically the Syrians also had formidable artillery off-board, but this scenario out of the AIW book doesn’t include it so we’re leaving it out (I changed the map, that’s probably enough alteration to the published scenario already). Also the Israelis have 20 air strikes ready to go, but I get 2 VP for each air strike Damon feels forced to call in. A special rule allows for one platoon of standard Sho’t Centurions to enter the table (the four along the bottom) on a die roll at the beginning of each Israeli movement phase.

Turn one, and first blood is drawn! Under a massive pall of sand and dust, almost 300 Syrian AFVs roll toward the Purple Line (cease-fire line between Syria and Israeli-occupied Golan Heights). But at the range of 12 hexes (3000 meters), Damon’s Sho’t Cals have already opened fire and scored the first kills, as the Syrian armor pushes through the antitank ditch dug along the 1967 cease-fire line.