Marder 2s and chasing the Team Yankee meta

By Tom Gall

The new hotness up on the frozen north for is the West German Marder 2. Tournament after tournament, forces built around this unit have placed really well. A unit alone doesn’t make a winning list, dice must still be rolled and the player needs to practice good tactics, yet the Marder 2 lists have performed very well.

Stats

Let’s look at the vehicle stats, frontal of 6, side of 4, sporting either a 35mm or 50mm gun yielding either an AT of 11 or 13 with Thermal Imaging, a Milan mount, Advanced Stabilizer, and Chobham armor. Let’s look at these special abilities one by one.

The Milan mount allows a unit with has a Milan team to fire their Milan from the mount on the vehicle when transported. Vehicle gets blow up? No problem, as long as the Milan team survives, they pick up the pieces, ammo, and carry on, ready to fire their Milan which moments ago was attached to a smoking Marder 2.

The Thermal Imaging gets rid of the +1 penalty for shooting at night. Simply West Germans are great at night fighting. If you are playing with West Germans, give serious consideration to always rolling on the time of day table, you likely have an advantage.

The 35mm and 50mm main gun on the Marder 2 have a rate of fire of 3 both moving and stationary. Outstanding! Double-checking the Team Yankee Field Manual for errata…. nothing! RoF 3 on the move it is! Even better both of these guns have Laser ranger finders to eliminate the +1 to hit for shooting over 16″ and Advanced stabilizers that allow a tactical move of 14″ and still be able to shoot the main gun.

Last but not least is Chobham armor giving an all-around 16 when being shot at by HEAT. There are a fair amount of weapon systems with HEAT that are invalidated by this armor.

Russian Spigots are AT19, HEAT. Many RPG weapons will struggle against an armor value of 16 if not completely fail. The Milan is at 21 HEAT. You still need to roll a 5 to tie, but this is in the realm of the possible. To somewhat reliably get past Chobham, you’re going to need tanks, which in the Team Yankee meta, isn’t something you see many players field.

The Formation

The Marder two Panzergrenadier Kompanie is a “new” favorite formation. With two black boxes of Marder 2 Panzergrenadier Zugs and including the HQ, you can field eight Marder 2s, add in a further gray box you can realize a further 3 more Marder 2s with their infantry. The infantry Zug is but three MG3 teams and 2 Milan teams, but with a to-hit on value of 4, they can stick around and an additional Carl Gustav team can be added for a single point.

That works out to be 28 points for 8 Marder 2 across two platoons plus the formation HQ, with the upgrade taking the 35mm gun to a 50mm gun (+1 point per unit for all the Marder 2s in that unit). The formation can add a further Marder 2 platoon, a Jaguar 1, two Luchs Späh, M113 Panzermorser, an M109A3G Batterie and a Gepard Flakpanzer Batterie. That’s a lot of punch.

Depending on the points level players will add in a second nation formation to end up with a rounded list. Syrians, British, and French to name a few all work well. With the nationals being 70 points this year, that gives players a choice, are the West Germans their primary formation and thus drawing from their support, or is another nation the primary and thus drawing from theirs. Either way seems to work really well.

Game Play

Team Yankee has a history of punishing players for fielding high point value units. Given the number of missiles, aircraft, helicopters, it’s a rare game where MBTs don’t have numerous threats on the table to counter their effectiveness. As such over the years the meta has been punishing those who field tank formations in favor of those utilizing other tools. Units that are able to maneuver in the field and are generally harder to hit, perform better for NATO players. Likewise, for WARPAC powers, the key isn’t hoards of tanks, it’s BTR-60, BMP, and other swarms that push overwhelming momentum surging forward.

Enter the Marder 2, it fights perfectly in this kind of meta where cheap, mobile forces have been doing well. Add in the Chobham armor and RoF3 main gun on the run that is hit on a 4+ and you can understand why it begins to hit above the rest.

The unit moves quickly, 14″ and the main gun can happily blaze away without penalty. A rate of fire of 3 on the move lets it get into position and deal with enemies where other nations have to sit still in order to get a good rate of fire. This encourages and rewards an aggressive playstyle to get across the board fast, mix in effective use of cover as you’re moving and your opponent is going to be digging for 5s just to land a hit. Mix in the effective use of smoke and the Marder 2s could be within the minimum range of Milans or other missile systems. Given the Chobham armor, who cares about RPGs, assault without fear.

Counter

How do you counter the vehicle then? If I haven’t inspired you to put some Marder 2’s on your shopping list already, there are options:

1. Field MBTs – crazy but effective
2. Look for units that don’t have HEAT and thus avoid triggering the Chobham armor
3. More missiles, M0RE!!!
4. Loaded dice? Kidding!

Of these, option 2 is the most viable and most nations have something to consider. For the Russians BMP-2s for instance have an AT10 FP5 gun, lowly T-55s with AT18 FP2 don’t have HEAT and are cheap! You might have to roll 6s but they’re cheap, CHEAP!

The British Warrior AT10 FP5+, Scimitars AT10 FP5+, Chieftain Marksman, and Fox all can be viable when dealing with Marder2s, Milans are great, just try not to be pinned down.

Australian Leopard 1s is another interesting formation to counter a “swarm” of Marder 2s. While a lesser tank the AT19 FP2+ gun has a RoF of 2 on the move which is essential given the to hit value of 4+ of the Marder 2.

American M-60s are akin to the T-55, cheapish with a very capable gun. HMMWVs with TOWs or TOWs are a good and cheap option. The combined Arms Light Company is worth a look. Bradleys? The Bushmaster has just AT8 but of course the TOW2 would be very effective with AT23.

No matter what force you field against them, you’ll need lots of shots down field or a great deal of luck in order to hit and hopefully take them out quickly.

Conclusion

Metas come and go, what were great lists in Team Yankee when the game first came out aren’t necessarily great choices today especially in competitive play. The Marder 2 seems to be a major player for the time being and I’ve no doubt we’ll see them fielded at various national events. Will they win the day or will an effective counter be found? If you’re like me, you’re crunching list options already.