Team Yankee

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.

By Tom Burgess

Motivation to finish models when you are facing a huge backlog of miniatures can be daunting. It has been for me over the years and I had to come up with a system to keep ahead of all the new stuff I was buying. I do buy a lot of kit from Battlefront each year.

Even before the COVID impact on 2020, I resolved to complete 365 teams from my huge backlog of Flames of War, Team Yankee, and ‘Nam boxes. As a means to motivate myself to chew through that backlog, years ago I started keeping a log and posting it on the WWPD and then the No Dice No Glory forums when I finished models. It always felt good to post pictures of what I had completed and to mark them done on my tracking spreadsheet.

By Howard West

I started playing in 2016 and attended my first tournaments in 2017. I had been playing for several years earlier and have been playing other miniatures games since the mid-seventies.

My first Team Yankee army was British and really enjoyed playing that army and decided to take it to two tournaments. In these tournaments, I faced five NATO opponents and one Warsaw PAC opponent. I played against two West German, two British, one American, and one Soviet opponent. At those two tournaments, the mix of armies entered was about 60-70% NATO vs the Warsaw Pact. Also at that time, the Oil Wars and Free Nations books had not been released.

Soon after playing in those two tournaments, one of the gamers at our local store put his partially painted Soviets up for sale and I scooped them up for a great price and had the basis for a decent starting Soviet Army. Fifty tournament games later I’m writing this article.

By Tom Burgess

Though I already have plenty of BRDM-2s, SA-9 Gaskins, and Spandrel AT launchers I could not pass up the great deal that the new World War III: Team Yankee (WW3:TY) Soviet army box was.  This gave me five BRDM-2 sprues that I was not sure I needed. I considered selling them or giving them away but decided I’d go ahead and build them to help get me to my goal of completing 365 Flames of War and WW3:TY teams in 2020. I also thought I could do a decent review article since I could compare these new plastic models to the older resin-metal models.

By Tom Gall

Christmas comes early for Soviet Team Yankee players in the form of the book with its impressive array of new units and new formation options. In this article, I’m going to share with you what I’m thinking about in terms of list building ideas, how I’m planning to supercharge my Soviet Team Yankee armies to dominate the battlefield.

No matter if you are a new or experienced Team Yankee player, you’re probably looking to do your best to win some games. With the new book, Battlefront is giving you additional tools towards that goal. I’m going to come at this from a few different angles. One is what if I was an entirely new player, what would I recommend you buy to put together a fun and competitive force?  As an experienced player, how will I modify my existing lists?  Last what older lists might I refresh and bring out again?

By Ron Winkler

With the continued COVID 19 restrictions on gaming opportunities, I decided to try another solo game. This time it would be a modification of Team Yankee to represent a rescue operation in Somalia. For purposes of the game, I selected units and concepts from both Team Yankee and ‘Nam gamebooks. The scenario would be based on Hot LZ with US forces attempting to rescue Western newsmen held captive in a Somalia prison compound.

by Dennis ‘Matt Varnish’ Campbell

Those that know me, know that I am a huge plane nerd.    So it might be odd that I did the A-10’s for my Team Yankee Americans last and not first. The reason for this was threefold:  In the previous version of Team Yankee, aircraft were too easily killed by AA fire, even humble vehicle machine guns.

Second, the very high AT weapons weren’t really needed in a game without M1A1s, Challengers and T-80s.  Third, they were the Battlefront resin kits, with the weapons in the wrong spot, painted in a Desert Scheme that wasn’t really used, plus I did not have access to decals even if I did repaint them.

By Tom Burgess

One aspect of playing World War Three Team Yankee that many people enjoy is list building. Trying to design the most perfect list to take on all opponents in all mission is almost a hobby withing itself.  However commanders through history rarely ever get to “design” their force.

Instead, Commanders are generally are assigned units to accomplish a specified task. As much fun as it is to design a force and test it, it also can be very enjoyable to see how well you can do with a set force challenged to contest with specific historical conditions.

We are talking about playing historical scenarios rather than playing generated missions with designed forces.

Though World War Three Team Yankee is set in a fictional World War Three setting, Battlefront has done a great job including “historical” scenarios from this hypothetical war in their  World War Three Team Yankee books.

By Tom Burgess

I am very excited about the impending release of the new World War III Team Yankee American book. That may surprise many who know me as I have only ever played Soviet and East Block type forces in Team Yankee so far. But the reality is that US forces were my first purchase for Team Yankee and I have quite a collection of US units still boxed and waiting to be built.

I only shifted to Soviets to help the force balance in my local gaming area. By now my Soviets are quite complete and its time for me to go full throttle into Americans for Team Yankee with this new book.

The World War III Team Yankee American book is a significant expansion from the preceding Stripes US Forces in World War III book. All the formations and support that were available to the US player in Stripes are also in the new book. In addition to these, the new book has added the M1A1 Armored Combat Team, M2 Bradley Combat Team, M3 Bradley Cavalry Troop, Combined Army (Heavy) Company, Combined Arms (Light) Company, and the Light Attack Company.

By Chris Jackson

The new US book has been sent to the gaming stores and I was able to look at a copy, so after a long, anxious wait we can finally play with the American Army we have seen in news reports and grown to know and love.

Tanks that can swat anything in front of them like flies with near impunity, armored transport that can kill tanks and armored vehicles with the same ease they move across the battlefield.

Aircraft that kill from beyond the reach of most air defense systems, and other technology that allows the Americans to come and to dominate the battlefield like no one else can.

The downside to all of this high tech and nigh-invulnerable equipment is that it comes at a steep price. Even with the elevated points of the 2020 tournament season, a single platoon of M1A1 HC tanks could make up 60% of your points.