More Soviets for Team Yankee

This week I managed to paint a set of Soviet Motor Rifle heavy weapons for Team Yankee. This was the new plastic set, of one AGS-17 team and two AT-4 Spigot teams. I was a little disappointed when I first saw the figures - my first experience of Battlefront's plastic infantry - but they grew on me and were pretty good to paint. I'd be quite happy buying more of them.

AGS-17 team.  At a truly ridiculous ROF 9.

AT-4 Spigot team. AT 19, ROF 3.

I have now completed a full Motor Rifle Company including heavy weapons The Spigots are not an option in the BMP companies, only the BTR company which I have no intention of doing. They will however find a use when running Afgantsy, and to this end I'll pick up another Gremlin team and an AGS-17 team for running two minimum sized companies in small games.

The other painting I did this week were three Spandrels. These came out of watching a game last week where the Soviets were trying to fend off about a million LAVs. It was a useful reminder that you can spend a lot of effort focusing on how to deal with the M1s and Leopard 2s, but there will be games where it's the volume, rather than quality, of shots that matters. You don't get that from T-72s. And so, three AT21 shots for 2pts seems like a good start.

The Battlefront model is a good resin and metal kit, crisp and nicely detailed, including suspension in the wheel wells where no one will ever see it.

The plan for this week is to paint up the BRDM-2s I had originally planned for this week (another strand in my "get more shots" plan), plus a couple of Hinds. Because you always need more Hinds.

45 point Team Yankee

All of a sudden it's been nearly 10 months since I last posted. I've been inspired to start again by McZermof at The Regiment, who has been posting weekly and keeping himself on track by committing to what his next post will be about. It's working for him, so I thought I'd try the same thing.

This weekend saw a 45pt game of Team Yankee on a 4x4 table at the club with Scott, seeing how it plays ahead of the format being used at the club's Remember December event at the end of the year.

The mission we played was 'Recon in Force' from the Quick Missions pack.

I ran a T72 company, which was possible since the list building rules for Remember December reduce the minimum compulsory platoons to one:

T-72 Tank Battalion - Red Thunder

Battalion HQ - 1 x T-72

T-72 Company - 4 x T-72

BMP2 Motor Rifle Company - Minimum size plus SA-14 Gremlin

SA-13 Gopher Platoon - 2 x Gopher

Shilka AA Platoon - 2 x Shilka

Hind Helicopter Company - 2 x Hind

Scott ran Marder Panzergrenadiers, supported by two Leopard 2s, Gepards, Fliegerfaust, and Tornados.

We worked out later that we'd deployed wrong, overlooking the clause on the Spearhead rule that requires you to treat objectives outside your deployment area as enemy teams. Always read to the last line of the rule! This completely broke the game, allowing an attacker with spearhead to win at the end of their turn one. To get around this, we played that the objectives didn't become live until turn three, but the misunderstanding still affected the game significantly, as it put my BMP2s into a position where some lucky dice allowed me to take out one of Scott's Leopard 2s in turn one. We also forgot that his Leopards had Chobham, which would have prevented the second one being RPGed in the back near the end of the game.

One of the challenges was the table size: nowhere was safe from my Gophers or Scott's Gepards. His Tornados came in once, saved all the hits from the Gremlin and Gophers, but lost one to the Shilkas. The resulting cluster bomb template, which seemed to cover about half the table, and even though it was hitting on 5s for there only being on aircraft left, cleaned up my T72s and most of my BMP1s. I kept my Hinds off for as long as possible, but brought them on because I needed to deal with the remaining Leopard. One fell to the Gepards, the other missed its target, and was dispatched the following turn.

The mission was a nice change from the usual FOW/TY ones. It would have played better if we had got Spearhead right, but even then I have reservations about how easily a more mobile force can potentially sneak a quick win. The table size felt a little cramped for the number of vehicles in my list, and it makes it really difficult for aircraft to operate. But we did put down a lot of terrain, and the location of the objectives forces everyone to converge on the centre of the table.
I'm looking forward to trying out a few of the other Quick Missions:

• Seize the Bridge looks very thematic, and I'd love to play it with Afgantsy trying to hold a river crossing against a NATO counterattack. Not so good for tournaments though, as every table would need a river added for that round.
• Bypass is unlike any other FOW mission: a reverse fighting withdrawal where a platoon that captures an objective is removed from the table, and you have to do that three times to win. Your force becomes weaker as you do this, so it looks like it could be quite hard.
• Gauntlet is the other different one, and looks like it could be quite tough for infantry forces as both sides need to move to contest the objective.

There's no reason why the Quick Missions couldn't be adapted for use on a larger table, and are a welcome addition to the existing selection of missions.

So, to emulate McZermof's example, what will I write about in a week's time? I plan to paint up some more for units TY, focusing on some Soviet heavy weapons teams for the loaner army I'll be contributing for the event, and a couple of other units with the intention of spinning my 45pt list into Czechoslovakians, using Volksarmee as it seems unlikely that the official Czech lists will be published in time.