The New British Army for Team Yankee v2 – World War III

By Paolo Paglianti

The new Team Yankee V2 rules arrived with few surprises: we already knew they essentially would have been the Flames of War (FOW) V4 “updated” for the Cold War era. However, in the rule book we find a lot of references to the new British army book, scheduled for next February. So, let’s have a look at this update order of battle.

Guess what? When the new Team Yankee V2 rules come to the “picking your force” scheme, the example is straight from the new British book. So, even if we don’t have all the elements, we can a pretty good idea of our future British army will be, or – if we play something different – what we can face next year with an opposing player deploying the British Army.

The full British rooster: all the “old” flavour with some very good and tasty new entries.

We have the full Company formation, with some juicy new entries. The very good news is the Challenger Squadron, featuring the monster tanks. We also have the stats and the costs, thanks of another example in the rule book: the Challenger is probably the best tank of the whole game, with a frontal armour of 20, sides of 8, the usual 120 l11 Gun (AT 22, Firepower 2+ and Brutal – the same we find on the Chieftain). The only bad thing is a moving ROF of 1, a common trait on British tanks.

You can also upgrade the tanks to the ROMOR version, with a front armour of 21 and sides of 10. The Challenger is also equipped with Thermal vision, much better than the common IR visors usually found on British vehicles, and with Chobham Armour, taking the sides up to 16 if hit by HEAT weapons. So, a true mobile fortress, but with a cost: the Challenger is the most expensive piece of equipment, costing 11 points – 13 if you take the ROMOR.

The frontal armour with 21 is the strongest in the game, right now: this value is really important, since it can’t be even touched by “normal” missiles like the Milan (AT 21), and only a few units in the whole game have AT 23 – and even, in this case, it can be easily resisted with a 3+ roll. The only way to kill a ROMOR Challenger is to hit on the flank with something really heavy, like a missile from an aircraft.

Let’s imagine a list with such an expensive tank. With the new morale rules taken from FOW V4, you won’t take troops of two tanks: if one explodes or is even just bailed out, you test every turn on Morale 4+. This means that the wise British player will max out the troops (Ed note: thanks, Simon Pearson!), so we’re going to take 3 Challengers in each troop. If you want to deploy a single troop, it’s 33 points (39 if ROMOR). If you want the full Squadron, 88 points for 8 tanks (2 HQ, and two troops with 3 tanks each). It’s something impossible if you play 75 points army, and almost ridiculous if you play 100. The only viable option seems to have an infantry Formation with one single Challenger Troop as support, still costing a third of your budget.

You will like to protect the Challengers, so you’ll probably buy a couple of AA units. We don’t have all the costs right now, but a list with 3 Challengers will not have too many other troops around them. The same situation we see in FOW V4 with the German Tigers.

The Challenger Formation also has the option to field a Warrior Mech Platoon, another new entry: the Warrior is the new transport for the British player. You can now choose to deploy your mech Infantry (in my opinion, the best of the game) in the usual FV432 transports, or give some good support with the Warrior. Thanks for another example in the rule book, we know that the Warrior Mech Platoon with 4 GPGM, 3 Carl Gustav and one Mortar base, with 4 Warrior transports, costs 14 points. If you upgrade it with two Milan teams and another Warrior, you need to add 4 points. This means the Warrior Mech Mech Platoon costs exactly the double of the FV432 one – ouch!

The Challenger Formation – you need to add the HQ, also. You can see you have the option to field some Swingfires or choose the new Warrior Anti Tank Section with Milans. 

Also, you can uparmor all Warrior vehicles for 1 point in total – something we feel we will do, even if we don’t know the Warrior armour values. We know, from the “formation example”, that the Warrior Anti Tank Section (with Milan) costs 4 points for two vehicles.

From the same example, we also know that the new artillery, the MLRS Medium Rocket Artillery, costs 6 points for two vehicles, and we will deploy 4 of them for – we can imagine – 12 points. We don’t know the stats, but we hope they will have the Salvo area. With the new Artillery rules, we will want to have two units of artillery and they are a perfect companion for our Abbots or M109s.

Finally, from the example list, we know also the cost for the Fox Recce. We already have an excellent choice of Scouts/Spearheads troops with Scimitars and Scorpions, but for 3 points for 4 Foxes, we could expand our light cavalry. They also have their Formation and could be a cheap alternative to the Scimitars/Scouts one. We only need to know which heavy support comes within this Formation since we really like our Strikers with their heavy missiles. The Striker Troop present in the “old” Recce Formation is the only one in the British list to have 4 vehicles and AT 23 (the Swingifire troop, available in the Chieftain Formation and essentially identical to the Strikers, has only three; the Spartan Troops available in the Mech infantry Formation has AT 21, doesn’t have “Swingfire” trait and doesn’t have Thermal).

One last surprise revealed: the British now can field the Chieftain Marksman AA Battery. Essentially, they are a Chieftain chassis with the German Gepard turret. With ROF 5 AT 11 and Firepower 4, it’s really good both against infantry/light vehicles and Aircraft. With the new rules so good with Flying objects (infantry and AA MGs need to reroll successful firepowers against airplanes), we will need some help for our Rapier Sam Section: the skies will be full of planes and helicopters, with the new Team Yankee V2!