Our Game Group’s First Foray into Team Yankee

By Chris Masucci

Looking to jump into a new game and a new time period is a tempting prospect for many gamers. With my local gaming group mostly focused on Bolt Action/Konflikt 47, a few of us recently made the decision to expand our gaming horizons and add a new game to our collection.

Team Yankee seemed like enough of change from our weird war 2 platoon scale endeavors. Jumping into a different time period and with a more zoomed out scope with company scale engagements brings with it the focus on armored warfare and large scale troop movements in a more epic feeling 15mm. With a new project at our heels, our game group quickly divided up what product we could get and all began to choose factions. Not wanting to go for any obvious choices, I decided to build a 1970’s era Egyptian tank company with a bit of support from a motor rifle platoon or two.

With most other players going for Soviets, USA and the West Germans, I started with some T62 tanks but quickly started to cannibalize my local shop’s collection of Flames of War minis to build out a few platoons of T34 tanks, SU100 assault guns, and even some Sherman 75mm gun tanks. All of these are horribly outdated for 1980s warfare, however, each of these venerable vehicle patters was used by Egypt after purchasing them from the various world powers after World War II.

Finally, I added some more cold war era vehicles such as T55’s, a few more T62’s and a motor rifle platoon outfitted with RPG’s and BMP1 transports. The basis behind the army was to have the motorized infantry take an objective while a wave of outdated tanks attempts to flank the enemy and cause havoc.

As the day of our group’s demo game arrived we decided on a 2 objective game in which NATO would act as the defenders while the Soviet and Egyptian attackers would need to capture at least one objective by turn 6.

Since we had a large number of players on the table all forces deployed statically 12” off of the long table edges. Once all forces were deployed on the table, NATO took the initiative with multiple main battle tanks in the form of Abrams and Leopard II tanks advancing through nearby fields, lighter Leopard I tanks moved behind the larger tanks with one squadron rushing the soviet lines.

Once in position, the tanks opened fire and multiple soviet lighter vehicles erupted in flames. The Soviets responded by moving forward with a mass amount of T62’s, T64’s and T34’s. These mostly poorly trained tank crews were successful in destroying a number of Leopard I tanks, however, the armor of the larger NATO tanks proved to be impervious from soviet armor from the front. SU-100 assault guns provided further fire support as NATO readied their helicopters.

Turn two saw the chaos on the battlefield increase as NATO’s cobra helicopters began to pop up from behind village buildings and rain fire down upon the advancing Soviet support. The larger NATO tanks also continued to fire upon the larger of the soviet tanks, inflicting casualties but the horde proved to be too numerous.

The Soviets again advanced, with brutal efficiency this time, BMP-2 rocket systems shot down both NATO choppers and all but a few of the Leopard I tanks were destroyed by combined Soviet fire. The BMP mounted infantry moved into the village and the mass of T34 tanks began to flank the West Germans, the light armor on the sides of the Leopard II tanks proving to be their weakness as multiple T34/85 tanks scored penetrating side hits.

The battle raged on as both sides had their battle lines blend. Abrams from the US division made short work of the Soviet left flank, with a platoon of T55’s being destroyed to a man by the superior US armor.

On the right flank, the West Germans were beginning to be pushed back, the small amount of Leopard II tanks continued to knock out Soviet T62’s but the flanking T34/85’s were beginning to eliminate Leopards with a mass flanking actions.

Soon the West German flank had collapsed with a few remaining T34’s and T62’s left to push for the village objective, the US Abrams had nothing left standing in their way after taking some fire from the BMP rifle platoon and needed to blitz through the village to defend their objectives.

The Soviets tried to make a counter push with the remains of the Egyptian tanks going head to head with the few remaining Abrams. Come turn six and the US division had secured the left point with all Egyptian and Russian resistance destroyed or pinned down, it all came down to the right village point, a few T34’s and T62 tanks attempted to push the US forces out but both sides fought the last turn to a stalemate with a single Abrams contesting the point. NATO had won a hard-fought victory.

In closing, our first outing with Team Yankee was an interesting affair, with a lot of messed up rules and tons of house ruling to better accommodate our local game group’s preferences, it was still an enjoyable experience. Out biggest limitation, for the time being, is lack of model variety, most of us were only able to collect some tanks and vehicles. I brought a single infantry platoon but without other infantry to fight, they couldn’t accomplish much.

We have another Team Yankee event planned and I already want to add a Soviet detachment to my army to get things like Hind helicopters on the board. For now, our scrappy tank battle was an interesting affair, and definitely something I am looking to build upon going forward.