Team Yankee 6mm Soviets Versus Americans

Andy wins the roll and chooses the left side of the table.

I have been working on getting my 15mm Team Yankee armies together and fully painted. It has been a long time since I "started from scratch" so to say, with a miniatures game.  It has been a very long time since I had to "start from scratch" so to say with a miniatures game.  With Flames of War, I may have to buy and paint a couple of extra units here and there for my Americans or add an extra few tanks for the Russians, but starting from the ground up in order to even play?  That is tough.  So the great thing about Team Yankee is my friend Andy has micro armor that can be used with the system.  So as we learn the rules and teach ourselves to play, micro armor has been a very good experience for us.  We can field a lot of troops on table, with large point armies, to get a good feel for the play of the game.

With that being said we got together for a game this week and decided to roll a random mission from the book and we got Dust Up.  Now a lot of you may be familiar with this mission from Flames of War, but there are some subtle changes to the mission in Team Yankee.  I am going to go as far as to say that these changes are improvements on the mission.  Changing the entry point of the reserves and very unique deployment area makes the mission a bit more balanced in my opinion.

We chose 100 points for each side.  Take a look at these lists.  Unfortunately, digital lists are not available at this time, so we have to do this the old fashioned way.

Americans
Team Leader M-1 Abrams 8pts
M-1 Abrams x4                 32pts
M-1 Abrams x4                 32pts
VADS x4                            6pts
TOW x2                              3pts
A-10 Warthog x2              10pts
AH-1 Cobra x2                   7pts
TOTAL                             98pts

Soviets
Soviet HQ T-72                  5pts
T-72 x6                             32pts
T-72 x6                             32pts
SPH Artillery x6               10pts      
BMP-1 Observer x1            1pts
ZSU-23 AA x2                    2pts
SU-25 Frogfoot x2              7pts
BMP-2 Recon x3                5pts
TOTAL POINTS              93pts

Seeing Andy with his AA, Artillery and only 1 tank platoon I decide to be bold and try to overwhelm him  quick.  I position myself to be able to move out fast.

Since I move first I have to hope that he will not get lucky with return fire.  Staring down 7 T-72's is not a fun proposition.

Some close ups of the units.  He did a great job painting these tiny little guys.

Turn one gets me in shooting range.  He is a 3 to hit and a +1 for the wheat field.  ROF 2 on the move and hitting on a 4, yeah I'm feeling good about that. 

Two bails and 1 kill.  Return fire is going to be scary.  Since this a mobile battle the air assets have to loiter off table the first turn.

Andy calls in the air on the M-1s.  He actually has two Frogfeet, but only one painted model and we just can not bring ourselves to put an unpainted model on the table.

The Frogfoot takes out an M-1.

Soviet Artillery only manages to bail a VADS. I finally get to use my Litko markers!

The situation beginning turn two.  We have both lost a tank and that's it.

The Americans call in air.  A-10's on the T-72's and the Cobras are targeting the Soviet Anti-Air.  My thought is if we can take down the Anti Air my air support can strike at will without any repercussions. 

Two M-1's target the ZSU's, killing them first.  The A-10's take out a T-72 and the other two M-1's manage to bail another.

Soviet self defense AA takes down an A-10. 

The Cobras hit the Soviet artillery, but only manage four bails. 

The Americans may have gotten a little too bold.  The T-72's go in for the dream shots, side shots on M-1's.



The artillery bombardment  is not effective.



Hey the Soviets have no more Anti Air!  Oh yeah except that the remaining Frogfoot has air to air missiles.  I am very fortunate that Andy sucks at rolling dice.  The Cobras get away unscathed.

The Soviets kill one M-1 and bail the company commander.

Turn three brings in American reserves at the worst possible moment for the Soviets. 

All but one of the T-72's will be a side shot.

The picture says it all.

The Cobras and A-10 either out right kill or double bail the Soviet artillery.

To make matters worse the artillery fails their motivation and flees the table.  The T-72's are not going anywhere though.

Unfortunately the Soviet armor does not bail back into their tanks leaving the Americans with an uncontested objective and the win.

Final thoughts:  Both games of Team Yankee I have played have been very exciting with shooting i.e. "the action" starting on turn one.  The improved ranges and movement  versus Flames of War, plus the technological advances of laser range finders mean that you are not taking as many penalties to hit your opponent.  This means things start dying right away.  We were not very subtle in this game and did not take advantage of a lot of moves like "shoot and scoot".  We had to look up lots of rules as we played, but this was a really fun game and  I am looking forward to many more.