FOW during the Six Day War

With the upcoming release of the new Flames of War Vietnam range, I've decided to release a little preview of something I've been working on. Flames of War lists and rules for the Six Day War in 1967. I think that the Flames of War ruleset lends itself well to representing the combat of the Arab Israeli Conflicts from the 40's on into the 70's. I chose to first work on the Six Day War simply because of the range of equipment used by all the forces involved, from AMX-13s, Shermans, Centurions and Pattons for the Israelis. To SU-100's, T-34/85's, STuGs, Panzer IV's, M4A2 /FL-10's, IS-III's and T-54/55's for Egyptian and Syria as well as Centurions, M47 and M48 Pattons with M-113 APC for the Jordanians. Most of these miniatures are available from Battlefront already and other manufactures can fill the gaps.

The lists for Israel and Egypt are almost complete, I'm still playtesting them to see if my points will work and to make certain they play like their historical counterparts operated, but so far I'm pleased.
I may adjust the points when I see the cost for tanks in the new FOW Vietnam book. Using the older FOW cost for the M48 Patton as a baseline I quickly realized a 1500 point game would have only half a dozen Israeli Tanks versus hardly ten or so Egyptian tanks, that wouldn't work so I went with a far lower points cost for tanks in my lists.

I also would like to recommend you check out NDC Wargames who have lists for the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Looking over their list helped me fill out the arsenal listings, even though the War in 73 had a great deal of new equipment for both sides that was unavailable in 1967.

Here are a couple of teaser images.

The lists names are still working titles. I will keep everyone up-to date on the progression of this project. But for now check out some early shots of my miniatures for the game.

A column of Egyptian T-34/85's.

I'm excited to get the new Vietnam T-34/85's, with AA Dshk MG.

Scanning for the enemy.

The enemy an IDF M51 Sherman, by Quality Castings.

Two M50 Shermans with 75mm guns, also Quality Castings.

A 75mm gun like the Panther Tanks, make these Shermans deadly.

 The following is a comparison between a modified Battlefront Sherman and the M50 and M51 Shermans by Quality Castings Miniatures. I am a huge fan of BF miniatures but they don't make any Israeli Shermans either with the long 75mm M50 or the long 105mm M51 Sherman. So I ordered some Quality Casting Miniatures as well as QRF (quick reaction force) M50 Shermans in order to see which was better.  The Quality Castings Shermans are only a little smaller that battlefronts and besides the mantlet on the M51 are relatively good quality, overall I was pleased. The QRF M50 Sherman was less impressive, the turret alone ruined it for me, the turret was so smashed down and short that it was almost half as high as that of the BF Sherman. Also the cupola was just awful.  I took a saw to it and an old BF Sherman I had, to make an early M50 Sherman without the HVSS suspension by adding the QRF gun and mantlet and rear of the turret to the BF Sherman.

This is only the beginning as I have order an entire Sherman Company for Quality Castings and am waiting on the new BF T-54s, T-34/85s, PT-76s and ZSU-57s.

The far left miniature is a modified BF Sherman, center is a Quality Castings M50 Sherman, and on the right is a Quality Castings M51 Sherman.

Thc closest is a BF Sherman, center is QC M50 Sherman, and the far tank is a QC M51 Sherman.

FOW Tournament at The Foundry (FOW)

So this last weekend I visited my home to spend some time with the family, the fact that they live under an hour from Huntsville, AL where The Foundry is located is coincidental. Oh yeah, and there happened to be a tournament there on the 16th of February, the day I would be in town, how convenient.

It was a 1500 point Mid War Tournament, so I decided to pull out the old Finns that haven't seen the light of day in over a year. I choose the Jaakari Company which is by far my favorite list for mid war Finns. After settling on a list I realized that I didn't have any aircraft to represent the Fokker CX since Battlefront doesn't make the plane I could have proxied it, but where is the fun in that. A quick internet search later and I had found a great company called Armaments in Miniature (AIM) that makes 1/100th scale aircraft and had my Fokker CX on the way, I prefer the 1/100th scale to match up with the 15mm miniatures, but I do understand why BF went with 1/144th. So here is my army.

My Jaakari Company.

The boys on the move.

Fokker CX by AIM.

A little run down of my army, I had two understrength Jaakari Platoons, one had Lauri Torni as its commander. A Heavy Mortar platoon and two Pak40's with additional close defense rifle teams rounded out my unarmored support. I also took two dreaded KV-1e's and three infantry killing T-28's with air support, it was a perfect 1500 points.

After play testing this list with Rob at Auburn, I made a few changes to my earlier setup. Robert would be at the tournament and was running  a Soviet list with three KV-85's so I dropped my initial Pak38's and picked up the Pak40's for the lose of a T-28.

The Foundry had a great setup the day of the Tournament which was called "Frontal Assault" and had a map based organization. The players were split into two teams, Allied and Axis so no blue on blue games and tried to take control of the map. Also the Tournament was sponsored by WWPD who provided support.

Alright, on the the fighting. I don't remember the missions for each game but I fought tank companies each time and was the defender.
My first game as against Conner, if that is wrong I'm sorry but I'm awful with names, and his Soviet Tankovy. He had a couple of eight tank T-34 platoons some SU-85s and a mass of tank riders.

Conner's Soviet Tankovy

The first table.

A Jaakari Platoon holding one of the objectives.

The Soviet armor prepares to advance.

Staring down the T-34's.

A general advance.

A bloody assault, but Laur Torni and his boys pull it off.

 Conner said he was a new player but he played the Soviets very well, he played them aggressively. They were conscript so he couldn't shoot it out with my Pak's and KV's so he did what he had to, he charged, and very nearly carried the objective on the right. However Lauri Torni and his Jaakari held out and while that was happening the KV's and Paks killed the other Tankovy and SU-85s on the other side of the board. I risked an assault aginst his Battalion Commander and another T-34 with my AT gun commander  and two close defense rifle teams, four hits in defensive fire killed them all and my two Paks ran. Leaving me with a 5-2 win. A great game and lots of fun, the last assault went back and forth with each of us passing five or so moral checks.

The next game was against Rick and his Honey Stuart Company, I didn't feel good about facing off against something like five platoons of Stuarts and 17 pounders. Luckily we were placed on a  dense city board with a river in the middle.

That is a lot of Honey's.

But that is not Honey territory.

Jaakari on the objective.

Stuarts on the move.

His fearless vet artillery, wishing for better line of sight.

Stuart going for the objective, they find the T-28's already there.

The KV's come to help out.

A Pak40 ambush and then they were jumped by recon.

Light tanks burn everywhere.

His 17 pounders burned a KV on the last turn.

 Rick was a great player and fun to play against, even though this board was tough on him. He played aggressively instead of hanging back to save points, and had he managed to kill the KV's he would have taken the game. However his air never ranged in on the KV's near the buildings and his 17 pounders couldn't get any shots till it was to late. I won 6-1 when his company broke. Another fun game that I hope Rick enjoyed even though most things went against him.

Next up was an army I really didn't want to face off against. A US tank company with Shermans, Stuarts and M10's. If his M10 took out my KV's the rest of his armor would run wild against me.
The player was Michael and as you can see in one of the pictures, he wore a US helmet the whole game, nice.

A nice snow board, but the snow doesn't slow you down.

Helmet.

The US armor moves around for flanking attack.

TD's burn!

Advance!

The Finns having their way.

The T-28's came on from the rear of the US force.

Let me start out by saying this game was odd. Michael didn't roll poorly of make bad decisions, but everything went wrong for him in this game. To start with he moved his recon up in front of the KV's to bait them into shooting so the TD's could pop at close range and kill them. I took the bait and fired the KV's and moved up a Jaakari platoon to kill the Recon.  I then was able to see his truck mounted engineers with my mortar spotter, the mortar barrage hit all but one of the trucks. He failed every save, granted he needed fives. He then popped the TD's and took eight shots for fives, he hit twice, I saved and tied, and he failed firepower. Next turn I shot the TD's with KV's and assaulted with the Jaakari, dead M10's. He moved his tanks towards the objective. My air bailed two Shermans and he MG'ed the Jaakari and killed a team. I brought out my Pak40 ambush and killed the Shermans, and my air bailed two Stuarts. My T-28s came on from reserve and assaulted the last to engineers and killed them. Turn five saw him pass his company moral, and my T-28's and KV's kill his last Stuart platoon, and on cue his CIC, the last team failed his company check on turn six. A 6-1 for me.

Michael lost a platoon every turn of the game, almost every shot I took hit, every assault went through and that was it, I lost one rifle team. As I said an odd game, it was like a convergence of events made this game go perfect for me, none of my shots were more difficult than a four to hit, all my assaults were against bailed vehicles and even when I failed firepower tests something else killed the team. Of course luck always balances things, I had five firepower rolls with bombs in this game to kill, I rolled a one each and every time. Michael was a great opponent even with the way the game went.

So that was it, I took best Axis General and won the drawing for a subscription to the After Hours podcast. My 5-2, 6-1, 6-1 record was beaten by... you guessed it my buddy Robert. His Soviets pitched a perfect game and he took best overall general. A great time, all of my games were against new opponents and the whole experience was excellent. Thanks to The Foundry, WWPD and escpecially to Jeff aka. SonBae for getting everything together.

Winter Cats (FOW)

Today is a quick update.
I've been repainting some of my German AFVs in winter camo to go with my winter infantry.
I wanted to make them look as if they had been quickly whitewashed by their crews and been in combat ever since. Here is an example.

So I've finished up a few Tiger I's and I have a few Jagdpanzer IV/70s and Flamm Hetzers in progress.