West of Suez

Made it to the club today for the first time in a long while, for another game of Seven Days to the River Rhine with James "Oriskany Jim" Johnson as GM. This one is set during the Yom Kippur War, which interests me because I'm Jewish and my dad lived in Israel for three years during the War of Attrition.

The scenario is a meeting engagement based on the crossing of the Suez Canal. I played on the Israeli side, with Tom as my partner, against two (ultimately three) Egyptian players. The Israelis are said to have compared this battle with Vietnam, possibly because they were unused to fighting amid greenery (The Egyptians, like Israel, were trying to "turn the desert green" here with irrigation.

I suspect it was more because the close terrain made it feel like Hue.

Incomplete field of battle, from Israeli corner.

Close-up on Israeli deployment zone; the Canal is
somewhere off to the left.

Israeli deployment.

Egyptian table corner...

... and deployment.

The Israelis had five M48A5s ("Magach") with 105mm guns, a platoon of paratroops in M113s ("Nagmash"), and four jeeps - two command, one scout, and one with TOW missile. In reserve were four M48A2s with 90mm guns, and we were allowed four aircraft sorties with the choice of napalm against infantry, or CBUs against armor.

Didn't get the total, but we were outnumbered by T55s, wheeled BTR-60s, two Josef Stalin heavy tanks, two ZSU23 "Shilka" antiaircraft vehicles, and three off-table artillery fire missions.

Infantry on both sides could fight tanks, with either bazookas or anti-tank guided missiles.

My first game, if nothing else, had taught me to husband my activation chips, so I was happy to give the other side the initiative, and throughout the game we mostly did single activations before "turning over" to the enemy.

Turn one was primarily movement. The Egyptians moved two BTRs and a T55 down the road towards my partner, who killed one transport and a tank, and put suppression markers on the infantry. I moved several of my tanks up the road and we both moved our M113 towards the center. The Egyptians spread out and headed straight for us. Nonetheless, with first blood I felt pretty confident at the end of the turn. This was misplaced!

The forces at upper left will be in range to hurt me next turn.
The BTR, T55 and squad at center are about to get blown up.

Poor shot - LOS to the Egyptians.

End result.

In turn two, things turned ugly.

On my side, I creep an M48 up the road,
and a recon jeep a little too close
to the enemy.

Egyptian infantry turned up...

My reaction failed...

And bang went my tank. Though I also brought up 
some of my own paras in support.

On the Egyptian right are a pair of unlucky
M48s and an infantry squad about to have
an artillery barrage dropped on it.

The infantry survived, but their APCs
went bang.

Closeup on the M48s.

In retaliation, we tried our first airstrike - the mass of Egyptian armor on the bridge was tempting, and anti-tank salvos have a radius of 3" - but the putative Skyhawk was shot out of the air by the ZSU23s. I misheard, thought I'd hit, and was busy measuring out where the T55s would die when I was disabused of my complacency and warned that I was attempting (and had just lost) a second strike. Jim and our opponents kindly let me take it back. Jim suggested further strikes should not be attempted until the ZSUs were dead.

My attempt to move more of my tanks up the left-hand road ended in a tremendous clusterf*** as the Infantry and another artillery strike shot them up:

With infantry, tanks, artillery and APCs
all joining in, Jim declared this
"a nasty little shootout." It was actually pretty big.

One opponent to another: "You're wiping out all my targets!"

Let's just say that the Israelis were badly hemmed in to start. So I drove my following tanks - M48A2s - through the hedge into the desert. Notice all the missing hedges?

Hint: Do not roll 1s when you need a 2+
to get through a hedge. I did this FOUR TIMES.

At least I killed that pesky infantry squad.

But the Stalin had fine LOS.

Turn three started with the JSIIIs missing; I used a reaction to spin one of their targets about and drive like hell for blocking terrain up the hill behind - mistakenly turning 180 degrees rather than the rules-as-written ninety. My partner lost another M48 on the right. The final Egyptian barrage dropped on the central building again, causing the infantry more pain - but remember that infantry can't be directly killed, only suppressed, and the elite paras have to take six suppressions before being knocked out, rather than the Egyptians' five. It didn't help that vehicles were blowing up all around them, causing further suppression tests, and both sides ultimately lost two squads apiece, which was far more than my first game where the tanks took the bulk of the casualties. Infantry played a major part here.

Having been cautious with our activation chips, the Israelis ended the turn with two left after the Egyptians expended theirs entirely - even though they'd started with more than us.

Payback time. We spent those chips on two more airstrikes - and this time the AAA couldn't react.

CBUs on the ISIIIs.

And napalm on the building. Thanks to a 6" radius,
while the strike failed to hurt the infantry in the building,
it DID hit and kill both vehicles behind. The BTR
exploded, placing a suppression chip on the otherwise
unharmed infantry squad at the back of the building!

And here we stopped, because Jim hadn't been tracking victory points (no objectives this game except to drive each other to breaking point). The Israelis had lost badly, losing 31 points out of 50 to 20/66 for the Egyptians. Without those two fantastically effective airstrikes, it would have been even worse, but I was happy. And I feel more comfortable playing, as well. It takes me quite a while to learn any ruleset, and it doesn't help that I ask incessant questions and suffer analysis paralysis. Jim's cogent point was one most players seem to forget - If you don't want to move your units to a point where the enemy can react and shoot them, you can always do a morale check to remove one suppression token (roll a 6 and you remove them all).

A good game with good players and GM. Jim mentioned that this was only his sixth time running Seven Days, but he did an excellent job and, as any GM should, knew the rules backwards and forwards. My apologies for constant interruptions to ask questions answered long before, Jim...

Three of us even spent an hour or more after cleaning up talking (most of it by me) about assorted historical topics. Another social-cue thing I need to be cautious of. Most of us are going to Recon next month in Kissimmee, Florida - it'll be my first time.

A few more closeups of Jim's paint-jobs and minis: Plastic Soldier Company Arabs, Old Glory tanks plus a few 3D prints, and Old Glory or Axis and Allies for the Israelis:

Thanks for reading!

Slapping on the first paint...

Just Skeleton Bone primer and one coat of Greedy Gold
so far...

Two things I need to consider for next time:

• Using gold spray for undercoat rather than painting it on over another undercoat - especially if I'm to have kids doing this. (or silver for Necrons, green for orcs, etc)
• Using my desk and desk-light rather than my (admittedly larger) dining table with overhead light. Couldn't see too well.

I'm planning to follow the Warhammer Facebook channel's procedure, at least so far as I can with basic Army Painter colors. I've got their Speedpaints for the non-metallics and am looking forward to trying them, but those to be used in any library program will be Citadel Base paints. Shouldn't look too different in the end, though.

AOS construction

Obtained some glue, brushes, and more paint, so ready to build and undercoat the Storm of Sigmar set.

Building the AOS minis was messier than I remembered. Construction has always been my favorite part of the "hobby," but Games Workshop has sharply reduced the customizability of their models. These are monopose, so it took a little work to make sure they were assembled correctly. They are also designed in such a way that you almost have to puzzle them together - for example one of these figures has the back and one leg matching up with the other leg and one arm!

Next step is basecoating (with Army Painter Skeleton spray), but I've just remembered my bottle of regular Skeleton-colored paint is at work, so won't be able to touch up right away. It's dark out anyway...

More Deliveries

Life is still crazy, and I will be taking a break this week for self-care. Which may or may not include some gaming stuff for relaxation; as you're about to see, it will require further purchases.

I picked up the 1st edition Warhammer: Age of Sigmar box.

It was actually cheaper than the original price, and came with free shipping, so I jumped on it.

To my surprise, however - having bought the similarly-sized 40K starter that came out about the same time - it did not contain push-fit figures, nor "one-rule-at-a-time" scenarios, nor painting tips. It'll be a bit more work.

I haven't built anything plastic that wasn't push-fit in years. That's kinda the point of the Wofun Paperboys, after all.

I only cut out one before realizing I'd need
to sort them...

The rest of the contents.

The rulebook is not as beginner-friendly as the 40K starter; it contains the full rules of the game as they were at the time, and the included scenarios do not take you "step-by-step." Probably no point, as none of the included figures have shooting weapons or magic; simple heroic abilities are provided for commander figures. The scenarios do start out with smaller units and simple objectives, and are on larger tables than the 22x22inch paper "boards" provided these days. They are progressive, so that by the end you are using all four units, and a simple campaign bonus is included - if one side wins a Major Victory, they roll on a bonus table and may use that bonus once during the next game.

My next purchase from my Friendly Local Game Store (I recently discovered one about six miles from work) will be plastic glue, and some paint - most likely Army Painter, as I am assured they are of similar quality to Citadel but half the price. I am tempted by their version of Contrast, but the (excellent) painting guide I've found online specifically for these figures is pre-Contrast - the usual base-shade-highlight combo.

Colors required:

Khornate Chaos

• Black
• Brass
• Red
• Skin

Stormcast Eternals

• Blue
• Gold
• White

Both

• Tan undercoat spray (which I need for the Warhammer Alliance stuff anyway)
• Metal
• Brown
• Pink

My other delivery was my long-awaited copy of X-treme Dungeon Mastery, second edition, which finished its Kickstarter shortly after I started this blog. 

Though I've had the e-book and e-audio version for a while now, my hard copy and custom character drawing by Schlock Mercenary cartoonist Howard Tayler was in the very last shipment - probably because my character request was more complex than most:

What I was hoping for was a city-guard recruiting poster for my "Queen's Own Troubleshooters" campaign at work. Not a bad result. This will go inside the cover of my campaign binder - if I ever get the campaign back off the ground, which at present doesn't look likely anytime soon.

Finally, Lexi got another couple boxes to play with:

At least someone's happy!