AAR: 1967, Sword of Israel, scenario # 12: Umm Katef: The Artillery Fight

[JayTownsend]

1967, Sword of Israel, scenario # 12: Umm Katef: The Artillery Fight

With the event going on lately in Gaza, I felt in the mood to pull out 1967 and play a quick scenario from it and found a really unique one that caught my eye. With that said, there are many from there that I want to play!

Brief note, after confirming with the designer, the Egyptian setup is on map 68, not 67. The Israelis Morale of 9/8 is correct but since all the units are reduce their morale is 8.

The Egyptians have many scenario special rule limitations on this scenario and it’s a night scenario. The Egyptians can only fire units stacked with a leader counters and they only have four leaders. I moved my Israeli Paratroopers in three groups, up the middle, the right flank and the left flank making it very difficult for the Egyptians to defend. The key to this whole battle is the four Leader counters of Egypt which I made the mistake of placing two, right up front, which both got assaulted the next turn and the Israelis have a much higher Initiative. The Israelis had a field day destroying Egyptian Artillery, Rocket Trucks and Heavy Mortar units in the dark. If quit play after turn 16, as the Israel units had already destroyed 13 Egyptian artillery units of different types, two leaders and third one was demoralized giving the Egyptian little chance to recover. The Israelis lost 2 steps of PARAs and were not in real danger of losing anymore. The game ended with a Major Israelis victory!

Note, next time I play this, I’ll have to put my Egyptian leaders behind a few units to have more chances to fire on the Israelis and then this could have been a closer match. Either way, it was really a fun scenario to play and try and figure out!