Team Yankee has been one of the games which has fallen by the wayside as late, as Impetus or Bolt Action took the lead.
Instead of playing in the Bolt Action club day, McZ and Tank wanted to get back to the awesomeness that is 6mm Team Yankee. And when Tank was unable to make it, I didn't want to leave McZ without an opponent, so I gladly grabbed my big box o' freedom (my US forces) and we set about relearning the TY rules!
Game One: Hasty Attack, with the Russians as the aggressor.
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| My US Force. Nine M1 Abrams, 4 VADs, 2 ITOW, Cobras and M109s with Copperheads |
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| McZ's Mighty Russian horde- T-72s, Hinds, recce, infantry, artillery..... eek! |
Being a Hasty Attack, my US forces would only start half on table. Opting to put the M109s and VADs, as well as my poxy little ITOWs on table, with my Abrams to come on from reserve.
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| Defensive positions! The M109s with VADS ahead of them |
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| McZ's BMP horde advances! |
The first few turns were relatively quiet, the soviets advanced en-mass, and the M109's began raining down laser guided 155mm rounds onto the soviets.
Copperheads are fun. Even when you can't roll a 2+ firepower!
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| Hinds attack! |
The Hinds arrived to strafe the artillery, only to find the VADS get
so many dice (28 in fact!)
- they both promptly dissolved under the weight of 20mm cannon shells.
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| BMPs under fire |
The Soviet infantry continued to advance on the flank, finally dismounting out of their transports to assault the poor widdle ITOWs
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| The T-72s move full speed up the road! |
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| Sir.... you might want to look behind you..... |
The US helos arrived and promptly began gunning down the infantry on the runway
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| Rockets, chainguns and TOWs for the BMPs! Presents for everyone! |
But on the right flank, the 9 Abrams were duking it out with two companies of T-72 tanks.
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| This is after the first few have been knocked out |
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| This is verging on a Napoleonic firing line! |
The Abrams
eventually cut through the T-72s, breaking the Soviets. So the net result was a US win, for the loss of the ITOW platoon, and an Abrams platoon.
McZ rightly pointed out that our next game should just be the same scenario, with his force totally replenished, and mine with the permanent losses....
Game Two: No Retreat, with Russians as the aggressor
So, we learned a lot from Game One. Copperheads are cool, and don't fly hinds into VADS. McZ's Russians would not fall so easily in the next game....
Looking at the lists in the book, we noted that the tanks were awesomely cool, but we weren't sure about the infantry. Naturally, we decided to test that out, with the Soviet tanks attacking an M113 company!
My US company included 3 platoons of infantry in M113, 3 ITOW platoons, 2 M1 Abrams, a full battery of M109s with Copperheads, 2 Cobras and 2 A-10 Warthogs.
McZ had a mostly unchanged list, except dropping the infantry in favour of more AA, an airlanding troop and swapping a full battery of Hail launchers instead of the 2S-1s.
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| The M109 battery, with VADS ahead of it guarding the first objective |
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| A full US Mech Platoon with 4 dragons guarding the town (and burning Abrams objective) |
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| The lead Soviet formation advancing up the runway following their recce |
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| Hinds, Gophers and more T-72s! |
After figuring our way through a few deployment questions (what counts as a platoon and how to deploy stuff), it was game time!
The Soviets advanced, threatening everything everywhere, with Hinds destroying one of the picket ITOWs.
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| And then they went hunting Cobras (unsuccessfully) |
The ITOWs were causing McZ no end of annoyance as their gone to ground and concealed nature made them damn hard to hit- so much so that McZ resorted to rushing them with T-72s to get within the minimum range of the TOW missile!
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| Pictured: Problems for the ITOWs |
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| Pictured: well within minimum range! |
The ITOW launchers were all destroyed, but managed to tie up the Soviets long enough to let the A-10s (AT 27 Mavericks? Yes please), Cobras, M109s and Abrams clean up the Soviet units.
Highlight for me was getting a sneaky flank kill on a T-72 with a Dragon from my infantry, and my last Cobra sitting above the Hail battery chewing through them with it's nose cannon.
But again, many, many lessons learned. Things like... preplanning artillery targets is in the rules, as is not having to spot specific teams (poor ITOWs won't last as long next time!). We also need to get a handle on how smoke works, because I think that will be a game changer for how we make the attack!
Overall
Team Yankee is a fun game. It plays in places a little like FOW lite, and for me that is not a bad thing at all. I like it for 6mm, I think the scale would annoy me for 15mm, but in 6mm it feels "right".
There are definite challenges for the attacker, especially in keeping your AA bubble up with your forces. The range on the TOW and Maverick missiles was such that I was always firing from extreme range, a long way away from McZ's AA assets. That said, it kept me from attacking what I really wanted to, instead leaving me to snipe things from afar.
The game does need new lists (especially for the Russians!), but we know they are on the way (Germans shortly, followed by British and hopefully more Russians- please BF!).
We are already planning the next game, it is time for the US to be doing the attacking, lets see how that goes!
Pooch
