Team Yankee Preview: Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, The Polish Forces

By Mitch Reed

I was honored to help the team at Battlefront write the initial Polish list for Team Yankee. The new Polish lists in Warsaw Pact forces make the force (that I love to play) even better. While not blessed with tons of new kit, the update is one that fellow Polish players will really enjoy.

What is New

The biggest upgrade is with the main battle tank, now you can take the up-gunned and up-armored T-72B instead of the T-72M. The T-72B has better front (18 vice 15) and side (9 vice 8) armor and the main gun now punches at an AT of 22 instead of the previous 21. Another benefit is the ability to take the AT 21 Songster missile which allows you to engage a target at 48”. The T-72B does come at a cost and a company of 10 tanks now costs you 57 points, which is 20 points higher than a 10 tank company of T-72Ms.

While the spam T-55AM2 is back you also get the ability to take the stock T-55 which has a lower front armor rating (13 vice 14) and loses the laser rangefinder but retains all of the same stats as the T-55AM2. Sadly the T-55AM2 does not have the ability to shoot an ATGM, I asked Wayne Turner about this and he could not find any data to allow its use in the game. My research concurred with this finding, but it would have been nice to allow the T-55AM2 to pack a bigger punch.

The other new additions are the SU-22 Fitter fighter-bomber which can shoot the Kh-25 ATGM which can really smash armor with its AT27 rating and is a huge upgrade for all Warsaw Pact air.

Sorry for the crowd-sourced commanders, no PT-76 and Naval Infantry. Personally, I feel that they would not add very much and this new book gives you enough options to build your Polish force.

What is Back

Anyone who has played the Polish Motor Rifle lists knows that they are some of the best infantry in the Warsaw Pact arsenal. The infantry rides in BMP-1, BMP-2 or can be in wheeled transports like the BTR or the Polish/Czech unique OT-64. In the new book, the Poles get many of the same support options that they had in the previous book. Back is the amazing Dana SP gun, which I found is great to kill tanks and any dug-in forces. As we have seen recently, artillery if used effectively can wreck a tank unit, and this unit is great at making this happen.

Building a Polish Force
In the updated Soviet book, we saw some forces that look a lot like their NATO counterparts, smaller and very lethal. In my review of that book, I explained that playing with T-80 tanks and BMP-3s is a huge change for dedicated Soviet players. The Poles are meant to be played big and with an aggressive swarm mentality.

With the previous version of the force, I loved taking a full T-72M battalion and a full motor-rifle battalion and playing very aggressively. The T-72B changes that calculus. None of the infantry lists can take the T-72B and the only list that can field them in numbers is the dedicated T-72B battalion. However, you can take a motor rifle battalion and add a T-72B company, however you lose the targeting paralysis you want to put your enemy in because you lose so much mass from your force.

You have a few options, but it’s pricey by taking a T-72M formation and having your third platoon made up of T-72Bs, or take a T-72B “Black Box” unit with your motor rifle unit. At lower point games, neither is a really great option because the loss of mass may be an issue. My main point here is that you really need to incorporate the T-72B in your Polish list somehow, it is too good to pass up and it can compete with the new super tanks in the game. While you do pay more, and I think you need the Songster missile (+2 per company), which makes it that much pricier I think players should consider adding this new tank.

I feel the days of the T-55AM spam force may be over. While it presents a lot of targets, it cannot kill other tanks as well as it used to. However, you can now field a force of a ton of the older T-55s, and in a 100-point list, you can take about 70 of them. While that list presents a nightmare for a NATO player since it is impossible to kill that many tanks in a 6-8 turn game (they do not generate enough shots, few lists can), I do not think it is 100% sporting.

Another fact to consider is that with the really good new kit in the new Soviet books, such as the T-80, BMP-3, Tunguska, and TOS-1, is how good are the forces in Warsaw Pact as a stand-alone army? While you can take an allied formation to bolster your Polish force, I never found that practical and with a lower point game it becomes impossible.

I do feel that for very aggressive players who want to put a lot of forces on the table the Polish forces and the other two nations in the new Warsaw Pact book will see a lot of table time.