Iraqis and Syrians in Team Yankee: Oil War

By Dennis Campbell AKA Matt Varnish

Hello everyone,

Let’s talk about Iraq and Syria in Team Yankee. While we will not discuss politics at all in this article, when you think of Villains of the late 20th century, the regimes of Iraq and Syria certainly are at the top of the list.

So why play them?  For me, I tend to run ‘the bad guys’ stemming from my little brother always wanting ‘the good guys’ as toys (he wanted GI Joes, so I played Cobra, he wanted Rebels, so my figurines were Imperial for Star Wars, etc) and since then, my tendency to play bad guys translated to other games such as Warhammer and 40k, and now to Team Yankee. I am currently re-painting my old Soviet force into Syrians, and as you can see, I even have the terrain ready to go:

In Team Yankee, the Iraqi list serves as the underpinnings of the Syrian list as well, as they had similar equipment lists coming from Warsaw Pact stocks.  Iraq, however, also made purchases from France which is why we see a strange mix of cheap second tier Soviet equipment, and better French gear. This mix is the main reason to play this list.   You can see this best in the Force Organization:

 

 

Two Helo units that can be either Hind’s or Gazelles, good artillery choices (Autoloading french howitzers) Rolands, and the 6-wheeled VCR/TH.    Note also, NATO support, since in the WWIII scenario, the Soviets are coming through Iran, and NATO would reluctantly be with Iraq in terms of shooting Iranians / Soviets as they invade Iraq.  So you can run A-10s or Harriers and can rock a NATO Formation as well.  Yes, I was tempted to run allied Gepards, but that moment passed!

Tanks.  There are 3 types of Tank Formations, and all 3 share identical Formation charts, let’s take a look at an example and see what options there are:

At first glance, everything looks familiar to a Warsaw Pact player:  2 mandatory, 3rd optional tank company, and some formation assets.   Hang on though, unlike other nations, we see VERY LITTLE formation assets here.  Take either wheeled or mech infantry, and 1 unit of either type of ZSU AA guns, and that’s all.

Your third tank unit cannot be a mix of another type, which is something I liked in the Soviet and East German lists.    Also of note, the minimum number of tanks is 5 per unit.  I think the East German uber-company of 10 T-55AM2s at seven points will never be repeated, and it certainly isn’t here.

The T-72M is the same Czech export model from the other non-soviet lists, the T-62 available here are the pre-1970s upgraded ones, and the T-55s are really T-54ARs, again from Czechoslovakia, with no goodies, and you have to pay to even have the bazooka skirts you get ‘for free’ in the other books. In fact, let’s examine the T-55:

Comparing to the T-55AM2, it has less armour, less AT on the main gun, less Skill, less Morale, and no Laser Rangefinder, meaning on the move, you are hitting at a -2 at targets at long range, and you pay for the Bazooka skirts!    You lose the points-friendly minimum three-tank units of the East German list too.   So these are not going to be lighting it up on the top-tourney tables.   At least the  T-72Ms are the same as their East German counterparts (perhaps as they were Republican Guard units?)

This book is also the premiere of the  T-62M (Soviet modernized version, full stats and org at the end of Oil War book), but for the Iraqi and Syrian forces, we get the older model, the T-62:

As we can see the T-62 fits right in-between the T-55 and T-72M, and 10x T-62s run you only 15pts.    Basically, we get an AT-19 gun on a T-55 chassis for only 4pts more than 10x T-55s.  I think you will see a lot more T-62s than T-55s unless the player already owns lots from FAON / NAM (like me)

Weirdly, Battlefront has a T-62 with Bazooka Skirts shown here and elsewhere in the book.  Despite there being absolutely no option anywhere to include Bazooka skirts…

Let’s now take a look at the Infantry available to us, we have two flavours, Wheeled and Tracked mechanized, and much like other Warsaw Pact nations, the wheeled variety gets ATGM ground mounts and the tracked get TOWs on their vehicles.    Wheeled Infantry can swap BTR-60s for OT-64s (again, they bought lots from Czechoslovakia) or pay to upgrade them all to AMX-10Ps, and if you do so, you can swap out the ground-mount ATGMs for Milans,  Wheeled Mech infantry is also the only spot outside of Support to get Spandrels.

 

 

As is becoming a theme, these infantry formations lose a lot of the usual Formation Assets found in other books, and they lose the integral RPG-18 and Underslung Grenade Launchers in every stand of AK-74s.  This means FP 6+ only for the assault rifles, and the only AT are the RPG-7 stands.  What is strange is, the Polish list had the UGL’s giving the rifles 5+ Firepower but no RPG-18s, and the Czechs had the RPG-18s but no UGLs, at least giving them some AT punch.  We get the worst of both worlds, for the same price as the Czechs, and no option for BMP-2s anywhere:

 

Support Options

I am going to gloss over the usual Soviet equipment options and focus on the French equipment, as I think this is why you would want to use this list, but first, let’s talk about another new unit to Team Yankee, the ZSU-57.    This, like the T-62, comes to Team Yankee via Fate of a Nation, and for non-AA roles is very good for its meager points:

AT-9 weapons, 24-inch range, Firepower 4+, these will shred non-MBT vehicles.   Note with Manual Tracking and lacking Radar, these are not the greatest for shooting down aircraft (especially fixed wing) but they are cheap, and importantly, are Formation Assets for your tank formations.

As such, I have four of these for one tank formation, four Shilkas for my other tank formation.  The other Soviet AA are the usual suspects of SA-8 Gecko’s, SA-9 Gaskins, SA-13 Gophers.    We also see Rolands make their way out of France, and are similarly priced to Geckos, have less FP but are Armoured with FA5.

For anti-tank, we can have one unit of Spandrels (unless running wheeled Infantry) or one unit of VCR-THs, by Panhard.   ‘Vehicule Combat, Roues (wheeled)’ ‘Tourelle HOT’ is a wheeled, HOT missile turret vehicle with AT-23.   These ought to be in every single list, as the only other AT23 assets are aircraft, and they have the ‘Hammerhead’ rule, so they stay Gone-to-Ground when firing if Concealed.   They also look like angry minibusses:

 

Artillery options are, again, all the Soviet options (no DANAs though) plus the AMX-Auf1 howitzers, also making their debut outside France:

Standard equipment stats, especially Autoloader (+1 to hit models under template) but are crippled by the terrible Skill of 5+.  Observer BTR-60 OP is a must until the new rules in October 2019 hopefully make artillery decent again.

Air is in a weird spot because you do not get any strike aircraft of your own, and instead, get USMC naval air (Harriers) or precision strikes from the USAF from an A-10.   Its a shame there isn’t something else, as I have 4x MiG-23 models, I might just run them as Harriers (the bombs are similar, no high-AT precision missiles)

However, we get two units of Helos, either Mi-24 Hinds or the SA-340 Gazelle. The Gazelle gets Hunter-Killer, so can remain gone to ground after shooting if behind concealment and sports the longer ranged AT-23 missile.  The Hinds have Passengers: 2 but there are no options for the Air Assault units.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What about playing as Syrians?

This blurb says it all, Syrians are Iraqis with the noted exceptions.  NOTE:  You can still use Gazelles since they were sold to Syria in 1982, so there is that.

Apart from one picture of Syrian T-55s, already seen in Fate of a Nation, there is no other highlight of the Syrians at all. Here I think is where the book fails, (unless adding Syrians was a last-second decision) there are no painting guides at all, no objectives, no dice, no decal packs, no tokens for the Syrians.  I think there are Syrian objective and token sets from Fate of a Nation though, but no Painting Guide kind of hurts, as this is the reason I am even doing Syrians: they have COOL paint jobs. 

I’ll have to make my own Painting Guide, but I’ll save that for a separate article. Here are a few pics of what I have so far.

In terms of the actual list?  I think the novelty of taking good french equipment with cheap second tier Soviet will wear off quickly once you realize how bad 5+ skill is, coupled with the limited formation assets, and that other lists are better from a tournament point of view.

Because the Tank formations are fragile in terms of numbers of units in them, maxing out on Formation Assets means I am putting my BMP infantry in the Tank Formations to beef them out.    Otherwise, a few T-55 or T-62 losses (and losses will occur swiftly!) could knock the formation out of Good Spirits in short order.

Here is a sample 93pt list I’ve been painting towards which reflects this (keep in mind I went Syrians, so no French stuff)

T-72 Bn Hq    3pts
T-72M x5 13pts
T-72M x5 13pts
ZSU-57 x4 2pts
BMP Infantry 14pts

T-55 Bn Hq 1pt
T-55 x6 6pts
T-55 x6 6pts
T-55 x6 6pts
BMP Infantry 14pts

Mi-24 x4 10pts
Spandrel x3 2pts
BRDM x4 2pts

Not ideal, but I had these models at hand at the time of the game.   The BMP Infantry are 12 vehicles / 9 RPG stands each, so quite a few models on the table, and I lost because the tanks and AA were all destroyed, breaking my formations vs the Dastardly Canadians.  If I could have mixed tanks within a formation, I would have organized things differently (like I have in a very similar Czech list) but I think once I paint my Shilkas, I need that extra unit in the Tank Formation, probably at the cost of the BRDMs, who knows.

 

 

Look forward to the Syrian Painting Guide, coming soon.

Matt Varnish, AKA Dennis Campbell, plays Team Yankee, Flames of War, and Black Powder in the frozen wastes of Canadia. Check out my youtube channel for hundreds of :