The Christmas Offensive: Operation Badr Preparations - The Yom Kippur/Ramadan War

This year's CHRISTMAS OFFENSIVE MEGA GAME will fast forward 30 years from the Battle of Kursk into the modern day maelstrom of the 1973 Yom Kippur War [click], where some of the largest tank battles since Kursk occurred, and where the superpowers learned that they still had much to learn about modern, mobile warfare.

The Battle
I'm going to take a gamble that the commanding generals who will be playing (the usual suspects Dave, Ken, and Alex) will not have read this by Sunday, December 23rd! 

This battle will feature Phase III of the plan of Operation Badr, [click] the breakout from the bridgeheads along the Suez on October 14th, 1973. Historically this was attempted along 6 separate axes with the intent of capturing the Mitla and Gidi passes in the Sinai Peninsula and was urged forward more due to political considerations than anything else and against the urging of some of Egypt's top brass who were reluctant to leave the cover of their outstanding Surface to Air missile umbrella.

The Egyptian 2nd and 3rd Armies attempted the breakout with up to 1,000 tanks and strong artillery support fighting against roughly 700-750 Israeli tanks.  Our fight on Sunday will feature the attempted breakout of the northern, 2nd Army led by the crack Egyptian 15th Armored Brigade who attacked west along the Kantara-Baluza road.  Their mission was to seize the Tassa junction and then link up with the southern advancing 3rd Army.

We will be using Battlefront's FATE OF A NATION rules (FoW/TY) which will, I believe, offer the quickest resolution to the day's fighting.  The Egyptians stepped off onto the attack with their most elite armored formations leading the charge, and so this battle will be no different!  We will have an entire Egyptian armored brigade fighting against an ad-hoc Israeli force of armor and infantry.  Both sides will have air cover (fast movers!)

I have some special period rules to incorporate that I will discuss in a future post so as not to spoil the surprise.  The players should be pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised!

The Preparations
My desert board, which is on the underside of my European board, was in no shape for an impressive mega game so I set to work remedying that.  The board was covered in tiny cinders and talus then covered with so much glue it made the board warp!  My goal was for it to look like the Gale Crater on Mars...

The original board with cinders and talus glued atop.

A shot from the "Curiosity" Rover?

No - this is a shot from the Curiosity Rover.

Okay now this is a shot from my table (poorly) made to look like it was from Mars

I then applied my standard tinted latex acrylic paint that is colored to look like Tamiya Flat Earth.

Flat Earth going on!

Note all the "nooks and crannies" - my hope is these are really brought out in the dry brushing.

beautiful texture on the surface.

I think this will look sufficiently desert-y when it's all done.  More pictures to follow as the dry brushing goes on!

Currently the board is drying and once dry will receive a hearty dry brush of vallejo's Dark Sand, which is what I use for all my desert troops' bases.  (actually, it's more latex paint that's been colored to match VJ's Dark Sand.  Surprise!  A tiny jar of Tamiya costs almost 4 dollars.  I have enough latex paint to last through 16 new armies! 

Also, in true SOUND OFFICERS CALL fashion, the bases will match the playing surface!

Anyways that's all for now.  Tomorrow I really need to complete basing on the final Israeli infantry platoon, both sides' aircraft, as well as the Egyptian BTR-152 carriers.  I hope to do another blog-post tomorrow to discuss the forces as well as the pros and cons of huge forces on a smaller table.  Watch this space!  The battle begins on Sunday!  Tune in - it's gonna be a big one!