Historicon 2019 Team Yankee tournament

Hey gang, Matt Varnish here, and I drove down from Canada with my buddies Scott and Rob Kelly and we entered the Team Yankee Nationals. I brought the Syrians, Scott brought West Germans and Rob took his Canadians. I ended up playing four great people: Robb Carper, Nick Reid, Frank Paixao and Mason Partak I took a metric ton of pics, here we go, first off with Armies on Parade (before the event started).

My Syrians. T-72 Tank Coy with BMPs, T-55 Tank Coy with BMPs, ZSU’s, Hails, BRDMs and Spandrels in support. The white Mercedes is the infantry bn commanders car 🙂

Rob’s Canadians. I like the UN M113 and brat-wagon whose callsign was Niner Grub in Lahr, West Germany. Somehow despite not being on official Cdn records, that brat-wagon always was in perfect maintenance….

There were a lot of US players, naturally…

M60’s with a wrecked Huey as the objective, love it.

That’s eight more Gepards than I like to see.

Joe’s winterized West Germans. Having lived there, I can attest they would not need this camo scheme very much.

The winter dress is great though.

From Winter to Desert: Scott’s Desert Westies

US / French alliance, with challenge coins to match

Brits and West Germans

Lots of MERDC, but notice the patterns are on point

Ultimately, I needed a double-decker tray like this for my overcrowded Syrians, but I ended up buying a larger board from John P Gepard (Tom Mullane)

Canadian/British alliance. They come for our maple smoked bacon and good coffee, we go for their…. tea???

Stunning french army (John Sulek?)

Every tank had custom decals, including bridge weights and serial numbers…

And when I said each tank, I meant each tank team…

My Syrians need these ‘advisors’ and ‘Terps…

Lastly, Bill White’s Iraqi coalition troops won Best Painted (2nd year running, last year his US won). Every vehicle has tonnes of detail.

Airbrushed canopy glass. I was able to find a set of these Iraqi/Syrian/Egyptian decals, so mine will look similar. Just 2 stars per flag rather than 3. Syrians are 2/3rds as good, list-wise.

My T-72s getting wrecked by Robb’s T-64s and Hinds…

Nick Reid’s incredible infantry bases….look at that phone booth.

and a knocked over mailbox. He repainted it to be Bundespost colours…

Park bench with graffiti…

We felt my desert-loving Syrians would fail Morale tests for the winter weather…

I had no answers to those 4x IPM1s…

The minefields stymied my advance…

Other games

Gerry and George… no-one liked George’s TOWs.

Tim vs Dave G…

Not sure that light blue has worked on desert camo since Caunter in 1941…

Robb’s Hinds, at it again.

Bill’s Iraqis vs Bryan.

Chris Fretts vs Carl Bellati, battling for the McDonalds.

Only You can Prevent Forest Fires.

This looks glorious, my huge push into Mason’s flank.

My entire T-55 coy plus some T-72s will surely be victorious…

…until two Tornados show up and kill a dozen tanks in one pass, then another Tornado blows in on the next turn and finishes the job. I would at least close in with my Syrian RPG teams and finish off his tanks (foreground). Losing all those tanks forced a morale test on that formation, which lead to a Draw.

Congrats: Chris Jackson took First Place, Andrew Hopson second, and James Copeland 3rd. Max Beck got Best Sportsman and as mentioned earlier, Bill White took home Best Painted.

I had a great time, didn’t have to face any DBs for once, the perfect way to finish out my Team Yankee v 1.0 career. Looking forward to 2.0 later this year.

As usual, video footage here: https://youtu.be/SbvK_l8sqlM