PGH vs VA Team Yankee Team Challenge

By Howard West

Creative Pursuit Games (CPG) located in Leesburg; VA hosted the PGH vs VA Team Yankee Team Challenge. The Team Challenge event was held on April 17th and 18th, 2021. CPG has been hosting small gaming tournaments during COVID based on the state of Virginia’s COVID-19 guidelines that are in place at the time of the event. Dane and his wife Kaitlin are great hosts and have a very nice and welcoming store.

The concept of the PGH vs VA challenge was developed shortly after the Team Yankee RED BLIZZARD tournament  that was held in January 2021.

The question that Dane had after RED BLIZZARD, was what can we do to have a different kind of tournament? We kicked around the idea of a RED vs BLUE tournament but realized you might end up limiting the number of players due to the Armies or Army that they own locally. Besides RED BLIZZARD was a RED vs BLUE tournament. We came up with the idea of having a team from Pittsburgh, PA, travel to CPG and take on a team from Virginia.

Jon Holland(Captain VA Team, Dane Van Orden(CPG Store Owner and Howard West(Captain PGH Team) exchanged many e-mails to come up the missions and points to be used for each round. The missions for the first 3 rounds, where chosen since they did not have any deep reserves and for rounds 1 & 2 we had missions that did not have any reserves in that mission. Dane usually supplies the missions for the Team Yankee tournaments, so this would not be unique for this tournament. A 2nd deciding criteria for the selection of the missions for the first 3 rounds where ones that had not been used in tournaments recently at CPG.  Missions for the 4th round would be done by players at their assigned tables. The Team Yankee missions pack would be used for all four rounds. Once we had the base framework agreed upon we then went out and recruited players for each team ending up with seven players on each team. The number of players chosen was based on the then current COVID-19 guidelines for VA when we stared defining the tournament. On April 10th, 2021 both Captains exchanged the lists that their teams would be using the following weekend.

Information Provided by the Tournament Organizer(TO)

4 rounds

GAME #1: “Border Skirmish” (105 Points)10:30am – 1:00pm
MISSION: “Free for All.” Attacker determined by roll-off at each table.

GAME #2: “World War III”(120 Points) 2:00pm – 5:00pm
MISSION: “Rearguard.” Members of Game #1 winning team Attack / members of Game #1 losing team Defend.

GAME #3: “Desperate Counterattack”(120 Points) 5:30pm – 8:00pm
MISSION: “Breakthrough.” Members of Game #1 winning team Defend / members of Game #1 losing team Attack.

Saturday Evening Dinner at one of the local restaurants at the shopping plaza that CPG was located.

GAME #4: “The Final Battle”(105 Points) 9:00am – 11:30am Swiss Pairing matchups.
MISSION: Individual Game Missions determined by “Battle Plans.”

The Team winner would be determined by the total points scored for each side for all four rounds. Individual scores will be captured for each round and a final 1-14 set of scores will be set to Battle Rankings.

Matchups and Table Assignments.

For this tournament we did a series of blind matchups for the first 3 rounds.  The team captains each had seven index cards one for each of their players with their names on one side of the index card. The following is how the blind matchups took place for rounds 1-3. The team captains each rolled a die and the captain with the highest die roll became Captain #1 and then places one of their players index card face up with the players name exposed. Captain#2 then places two index cards with the players name face down. Then Captain #1 picks one of the face down cards and that is the first matchup and they are assigned to a table. The 2nd face down card is immediately turned face up and Captain#1 the puts down two cards face down and then Captain #2 Picks one of the face down cards and the 2nd matchup is completed and they are immediately assigned a table. This continues until all seven players have had matchups created for them. The game strategy behind this is trying to get the best possible matchups for each of your payers for the first 3 rounds. Since the Captains had all of their opponents lists for one week, both Captains had some sort of document of preferred or non preferred matchups. As team Captain for the PGH Team, we did a flurry of e-mails with the team and some of the players expressed an interest in playing against certain armies’. From that first set of e-mails, I had 3 potential matchups for each of the armies at 105 and 120 points. Once I completed my matchup sheet I sent it out for the team to review and made a few tweaks to the final matchup sheet. Once one of the cards was tuned face up, I then tried using 2 pre determined choices that we would like for that matchup with that specific player. Looking back on my match-up sheet we had about 60% hit rate in the matchups’ that we wanted. Sometimes based on what you had remaining in your cards, you could not get the matchups you wanted.

Team Pittsburgh’s Armies aka “The Pittsburgh All Americans”

So the team decided we would bring seven American armies, 2 US Marine Infantry Companies, 1 Marine Tank Company, 1 M-113 CAV Troop, 1 M-60 Company and 2 Bradley Companies. The “All Americans” label came from one of our team member, Robs suggestion. Rob is a combat veteran of the US 82 Airborne Division.

For the 120 point list I added a West German M-113 company consisting of: Company HQ,  2 M-113 Platoons, Gepard Battery, M-109 Battery and a Jaguar 2 Platoon. I thought this would provide a nice base of firepower to cover my Bradley Company. For 120 points I removed one of the MLRS models, and removed the US M-109, Stingers, M-113 Infantry Platoon

Game#1 The Mission was FREE FOR ALL.

Bradley Company vs Soviet T-80 Battalion

My opponent Mitch a frequent author for NO DICE NO GLORY was playing a Soviet T-80 company. The Soviet T-80 list is not your typical WARPAC spam or horde army but a small compact force. He had two small T-80 companies and one mega BMP-3 Company. I knew that I needed to slow down his T-80s with Minelets from my MLRS and M-109 batteries and then get some lucky Tow-2 kill shots. I could not let him get his T-80s in close on me. Mitch pushed hard on my right flank with his T-80s and on my left flank he pushed his mega BMP-3 company towards that objective. Mitch attacked and I deployed my scatterable mines on my half of turn 1 onto his T-80s.

We ended up with a 3-3, my scatterable mines did their job and caused him to divert his approach and we got a few lucky Tow-2 and minefield kills on his T-80s.  Mitch made a lot of skill saves getting out of the scatterable minefields and he made more saves vs my Tow-2s. On my left flank vs his BMP-3s it was a shooting gallery, both sides caused a lot of causalities to each other but not enough for either side to get an objective.

Game#2 the Mission was FIGHTING WITHDRAWL

My opponent Jon was playing a US M-113 Armored Cavalry Troop and a Light Cavalry Troop. In support he added a Bradley and M-113 Infantry Platoons.  Again Jon has built a list with lots of Tow-2’s to dodge. This is the third time that I have played Jon in less than a year and the two previous times our games were usually quite bloody with neither side being bashful. I defended in this matchup vs Jon unlike our previous two games where I was the attacker.

I setup my West German M-113 company on my right flank and most of my Bradley company on my left flank. I placed my HUMV scouts and Tow-2 platoon in West German deployment area.  I placed my Gepard’s into ambush, with the idea of springing the ambush near some of Jon’s light vehicles and taking advantage of the number of shots they have. As the game progressed Jon’s Tow-2s and Abrams did a lot of damage to me, but the shear number of shots that I could put out each turn just wore his army down.  We ended with a 6-3 win for Bradley Company and West German M-113 Company.

Bradley Company and West German M-113 Company vs M-113 Armored Cav Troop and US Light Cav Troop(Pic from my Left Flank)

Bradley Company and West German M-113 Company vs M-113 Armored Cav Troop and US Light Cav Troop(Pic from my Right Flank)

Game#3 the Mission was BREAKTHROUGH

My opponent Dane a was playing a Soviet T-80 company. His list was similar to Mitch’s but had a mega BMP-2 Company and a Soviet Air Assault Company in support. I deployed my scatterable minefields onto one of his T-80 companies, the 2nd one he had in reserve with his BMP-2s. On my right flank I pushed some of my Bradley transports and scouts on my right flank and thru his BRDM screen and onto a hill and then shot down into his support troops. On my next move they where going to start moving to the center of the board and track down his T-80 company but both of his reserve units came on in the same turn and the hunter became the hunted. We spent rest of the game exchanging shots and units on this flank.  As time ran out for that mission we ended with a 3-3.(Sorry no pics for this game)

Game#4 the Mission was CONTACT

My opponent Patrick was playing his West Germans with two formations, a Leo-1 Company and a Marder Company and each with a Gepard platoon. I have played Patrick before in January 2021 at RED BLIZZARD and has been doing extremely well in past tournaments with his West Germans. His list is pretty much the same as when we played before. I attacked on Turn-1 and Patrick did a great job at hiding his force to limit my shots to a few of his Luchs. After 2.5 hours we ended up with a 3-3, and a lot of scrap metal littering some un named battlefield in West Germany.

Additional Pictures

Final Results

After four rounds of Team Yankee V2, the team from VA defeated the team from PGH, PA and was awarded the one of a kind prestigious Team Yankee 2021 Challenge Cup.

Final Individual Results