Team Yankee

By Jim Naughton

WILL THE REAL MILAN 2 PLEASE STAND UP?

A regrettable Team Yankee tendency to hand-wave the difficulty of introducing new systems in the middle of a come-as-you-are war has been reinforced by NATO FORCES, the latest offering in the World War III-Team Yankee universe.  The source of this is apparently customer pressure to jump into ‘90s technology to counter the appearance of Soviet ERA.  Where once tanks immune to defensive fire were the sole province of NATO players, now the Soviets had them too.

So Battlefront has introduced several upgraded missiles as retrofits to the existing lists.  The problem is that some of these missiles were the output of several years of research only made possible by the compromise of Soviet KONTAKT-1 technology following the end of the Cold War.  Others would require retrofit of surviving combat vehicles with new launchers, and the last would require missiles to be sent back to the United States to return a couple of months later – missiles that already were in critically short supply.

I want to clarify what actually existed in 1985, and show how unlikely these changes were.  Players with a historical bent can choose to have ‘mutual and balanced forces’ based on actual 1985 technology.

By Robert Kelly

Wow.  All I can say is that almost anything Canadian that one could have wished for in the new Nato Forces book that was not in the first book is in the new edition. Christmas will be early this year as Santa’s elves in New Zealand read everyone’s wish lists and granted most of those wishes.

Canadian Airborne Regiment, Cougar, Grizzly, Leopard 2, Iltis, Tow Under Armour (TUA), ERYX, long-barreled M109s, Twin Huey and the Coyote. About the only things missing are the Leopard C2 (with and without Mexas armour), the L5 pack howitzer and the Chinook helicopter.

For extra flavour the book allows you the option of fighting with lists for 4 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (CMBG) in Germany or forces in Canada (Force Mobile Command) defending against a Red Dawn scenario with an invasion of Canada starting on the west coast in British Columbia.

By Jim Naughton

THERE’S THE HIGHLAND DUTCH, AND THE LOWLAND DUTCH…The Dutch in NATO FORCES

For no specific reason, I was reminded of an old Pennsylvania drinking song when I first read the Dutch section of the NATO FORCES book. I was disappointed (but not surprised) when I saw the new book, which takes fantasy to a new level, postulating things that didn’t happen until the ‘90s (five to fifteen years after the Team Yankee notional date of 1985). And most couldn’t happen in 1985 even if Andropov sent Reagan a memo in January 1985, saying “War in August, you-all come.”

For example, Dutch Leopard 2A5. The Dutch get this beast at a slight discount compared to the West Germans. You could hypothesize that the clever West Germans could slap some prototype applique on their limited production of Leopard 2A4s and produce perhaps a company of ‘advanced’ tanks in 1985. But give them to the Dutch? Leopard 2 production was no more than five tanks a week for the life of the production run.

By Matty MacKenzie

It’s the dawn of a new era in warfare, weapon development, tactics, and clandestine operations are all the rage in the 1980’s. The Cold War is in full swing, the Russians have pushed into Europe.

Their first step is moving deeper into Europe via Eastern Germany. Encountering heavy resistance and Canadian forces, who are ready to push back against the onslaught of T-72 tanks, this is where the new NATO book from Battlefront’s Team Yankee picks up.

The book opens with a nicely laid-out index, that I believe has gotten better over the years and through the course of several games produced by Battlefront. Team Yankee NATO Forces gives each country an equal shake in this publication.

What you will find inside is a little over 150 pages of NATO formations from Canada, France, Netherlands, ANZAC forces, and finally, Belgians. Each one of them receives about thirty pages apiece for you to go through and pick from should you wish to field formations from the new NATO countries available.

By. Paolo Paglianti

Almost one year ago, our friend Thrun Last contacted Livio Tonazzo and me: they were organizing the European Team Yankee tournament. Two days of games battling with Leopards, T72s and Harriers – how we could say no? Challenge accepted!

The first step was to choose the weekend. Cornaredo, my hometown, is a perfect spot for international tournaments as it is between Milan and Malpensa Airport: very easy to get here from every corner of Europe, with lots of cheap flights from major cities.

For the same reason, the new “Milan Fair” is very close to Cornaredo, and I needed to find a gap in the almost endless series of shows and fashion weeks, to avoid the spike in hotel costs. The 27-28th of May was one of the few weekends without huge shows and was an immediate choice. Also, May is typically warm but not damned hot, so players could come with partners and families.

By Tom Gall

The weekend of June 10-11th 2023 features the Team Yankee Masters Tournament at Family Time Games in Indianapolis Indiana. This is a special “by invitation” event where in order to qualify you must rank within the top 16 places on BattleRankings.net. It’s a fun affair that Battlefront has sponsored since its inception.

By Michael Rafferty

AdeptiCon is back! After a triumphant return last year, the premier wargaming convention is back in Schaumburg, Illinois.

AdeptiCon continues to grow year after year, with new events and larger existing events. Wizards of the Coast will be in attendance this year with their new game Onslaught. No longer contained by only the Marriott Renaissance, the Hyatt Regency will again host several events. Historical events like Bolt Action and Flames of War will be there again, but we welcome A Song of Ice and Fire and Lord of the Rings to the growing AdeptiCon presence at the Hyatt.

But you didn’t come here to read about how we’re growing. You want to know what’s going to be run at the con! Battlefront will be hosting a one-day Mid-War National tournament. This will be a four-round event at 100 points held on Thursday.

By Howard West

The original Team Yankee Analytics was published on January 22nd, 2021 Team Yankee Analytics V2 was published on August 13, 2021, and Team Yankee Analytics V3 was published on July 2022.

The base premise behind these articles was to answer the question: can a person who plays a miniatures war game use some basic data collection to keep track of their performance in tournament play, over a specific period to improve tournament results based on previous tournament games?

By Jim Naughton

Introduction

In Part One we looked at the catalog of PACT air defense systems in Team Yankee.  Now we’ll discuss how ADA works, look at the threat, and determine what ADA units meet the threat.

By Jim Naughton

Introduction

A frequently asked question on Team Yankee (TY) forums is what ADA systems are best.  This article tries to answer that question for the Warsaw Pact.

The release of World War III: Warsaw PACT https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=7455 added the M53/59 Praga anti-aircraft vehicle to the Czech army and corrected the omission of SA-8 Gecko from Volksarmee.