Jeeps & More Bulk Up Flames Of War’s Fate Of A Nation
December 5, 2014 by brennon
Flames of War are adding a whole bunch of new miniatures for Fate of a Nation this month giving you a more modern conflict to fight out that feels like its echoing nowadays on the news anyway...
First up is Fate of a Nation itself and here's a run down of exactly what it is...
"Fate of a Nation is the latest intelligence briefing for Flames Of War covering the Six-Day War between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. This war saw the first large-scale tank battles with modern tanks, pitting British and American designs against those of the Soviet Union.Israeli players have a full range of units including tank and mechanised infantry companies, long-range patrol forces, paratroopers, and infantry companies. To face these the United Arab Republic (Egyptian) players have tank battalions, fortified infantry battalions, and as a digital release, mechanised infantry battalions. Jordanian players have the choice of an armoured squadron, a fortified infantry company, and a mechanised infantry company as a digital release. Syrian players also have a digital release for the defenders of the Golan Heights."
...and it's quite the interesting conflict worth exploring on the tabletop with the coming of new aircraft which you saw yesterday.
Above are some of the new Half-tracks and Jeeps that you can use for your forces on the tabletop starting with (in order) an Anti-tank Jeep, M3 90mm DEFA, M3 A Sayeret, and the M38A1 Jeep.
It's certainly not an area of warfare that's generally looked at in wargaming but as I mentioned before it's interesting not only for the forces involved but also the more modern additions too. Could we potentially see Flames of War go even further past the likes of Vietnam and into the full on modern military period?
What do you think?
Those are rather neat.
Particularly interested in @brennon ‘s last sentence, where he says: “Could we potentially see Flames of War go even further past the likes of Vietnam and into the full on modern military period?” I’m actually in the midst of an Arab-Israeli War campaign right now, run in Avalon Hill’s 1977 “The Arab-Israeli Wars.” In all honesty 1967 Six-Day War isn’t very interesting from a gaming perspective, too one-sided. BUT . . . most of the pieces FoW has come out with so far could easily run in games set in the much more bitterly-fought, complex, and challenging 1973 Yom Kippur… Read more »
@oriskany “1967 Six-Day War isn’t very interesting from a gaming perspective, too one-sided.” I always thought it was weird that they decided to do this war for just that reason. I also find the tone of some of the writing a little bit too cheery for my liking. It may not be very different from the way they write about WWII, but being further away in time I personally find it less of an issue. I think another difference is that while they brush over some of the nasty details of WWII for obvious and understandable reasons (they’re trying to… Read more »
Totally guessing here, @angelicdespot , but my guess as to why they rolled out the 67 war is because if memory serves they had just rolled out the Vietnam Tour of Duty. So they had just rolled out a lot of vehicles and such (Centurions with 105 L7 guns), M113s, Hueys . . . which fit in great with 1967 Six Day War. Again, just a guess. I never actually read the writing for Flames of War on Arab-Israeli conflict. I’ve got a lot of writing under my belt on the Arab Israelis conflict, especially the 1973 war, particularly in… Read more »
Actually, that makes a great deal of sense. Why not take the opportunity to find another use for the Vietnam figures?
I wasn’t wanting to start a debate on the politics of it but yes, a lot of the writing, and the general tone I get from reading about the FoW ‘Fate of a Nation’ (even the name of the game) seems subconsciously, if not deliberately, ‘Israel-o-phile’.
Oh, no debate here. 🙂 I completely agree. Politics / religion aside, the simple military capabilities, doctrine, training, all the kinds of things that actually effect a wargame. It gets so bad that we have to “Kentucky windage” some of the scenario designs back to restore some balance in favor of Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Iraqi, or even PLA armies (Lebanon ’82 games). Again, just to get a fun game . . . politics notwithstanding.
That Avalon Hill game was really good if I remember rightly
They are nice mini’s but would stick with 3 or 6mm for modern
@torros – Avalon Hill’s “Arab-Israeli Wars” is kind of a glass half-full/half-empty thing. On the positive side, it was the third game in the classic PanzerBlitz / Panzer Leader series, and so FINALLY fixed so many of the mechanics problems these games had. On the negative side, many of the scenarios that came with the game are just ridiculously unbalanced. I really don’t know who they had play testing those things. There are a few diamonds in the rough, of course. Our current project has been slogging along for about a year now, playing several times through each of the… Read more »
I’d love to see a FoW Cold War gone hot supplement. The war that thankfully never happened would be a very interesting place to play.
Gotta agree with @torros. For anything 1900- forward, miniatures can be very problematic because they’re usually too big to accurately represent actual ranges, movement rates, etc. WW2 is tough enough, one reason I’m a little leery of Bolt Action and the like. But If you’re running games in the 1960s, 70s, and possibly 80s+ . . . the smaller the miniature, the better. GHQ ran with 1/285 (6mm) vehicles for 40 years and is still going strong. Of course, larger minis can still work if you’re not playing “true line of sight” scale (i.e., if the miniatures are “representing” unit… Read more »