Soviet Anti-Aircraft Options

I was in the middle of assembling a platoon of Gaskins, feeling disappointed that I only had 16 wheels to clean up, and started wondering about the relative effectiveness of the different anti-aircraft options available to the Soviets in Team Yankee. In the past I've typically run two Shilkas and two Gophers. Is this the best way to spend four points, or is there another combination that would be more effective? To answer this, I did what any normal person would do and built a spreadsheet.

Which Soviet AA option is the most effective?

The spreadsheet looks at ROF, To Hit, Save, and Firepower ratings, and allows a comparison between  the chance different weapons have of shooting down aircraft. It does not factor in range at this stage. The results are presented as the probability of shooting down 0, 1, or 2 of the attacking aircraft.

The first thing I looked at was the effectiveness of full-sized platoons of four flavours of anti-aircraft vehicles in Red Thunder: 2pts of Gaskins, 4pts of Gophers, 8pts of Geckos, and 4pts Shilkas. The target in all cases was a typical NATO jet flight of two aircraft with a To Hit of 4+ and a 5+ save.

For the SAMs, it comes as no real surprise that the effectiveness is strongly related to price: Geckos are better than Gophers, which are better than Gaskins. The standout is the Shilka, which is as effective as a Gecko at half the price, albeit with a much shorter range. The key lesson here is that there is no point trying to bomb a target that is protected by four Shilkas, as you only have a 6% chance of getting through unscathed, and a 75% chance of losing both aircraft.

The next thing to consider is cost-effectiveness. Two points can get you two Gremlins, four Gaskins, two Gophers, (hypothetically) one Gecko, or two Shilkas.

Once again, the stand-out performer is the Shilka, being far and away the most effective weapon for the points. Those Tornados will only get past two Shilkas unscathed 25% of the time. Do you feel lucky?

It surprised me that the Gaskin is the next best option. All of the SAMs have a similar chance of bringing down one of the attacking aircraft, but the Gaskin has a higher chance of killing two, with the eight shots you get from the platoon making up for its lower firepower. The other three weapons all have equivalent cost-effectiveness.

SA-9 Gaskin: Punching above its weight

A four point platoon gives similar results, with the Gecko and Gopher being equally cost-effective, but both are left in the weeds by the performance of the Shilka. What is interesting here is that for four points my initial combination of Shilkas and Gophers is not that much worse than straight Shilkas, but replacing the Gophers with Gaskins would give it a slight bump in effectiveness, at the cost of kicking myself every time I roll a 4 for Firepower.

Given other factors not included here such as range and the advantage of having two AA platoons instead of one, I would argue that if you only have four points to spend on air defence, the best option is the Shilka/Gaskin combination.

Having settled which weapons are the most effective, I decided to answer another question that I've had: is it best to shoot at Hunter Killer helicopters in their turn or your turn? In their turn, they are Concealed and Gone to Ground, but you have a chance to kill them before they smoke a couple of your tanks. In your turn, the damage is done, but they only count as being Concealed. I have looked at a pair of Cobras being shot at by four Shilkas.

With the most effective air defence unit the Soviets can field, if you try and shoot at the Cobras while they are still Gone to Ground, you have a 60% chance of bagging at least one. Those odds jump dramatically to 84% if you are prepared to wait until after they have fired. When shooting at them with four Gaskins you have a 25% chance of killing at least one while they're Gone to Ground, vs a 50/50 chance if they're only Concealed.

In future I will try to be patient and let the Cobras shoot first. It's far better to lose two tanks and then take them down in your turn, than to shoot in the enemy turn and probably still lose two tanks.

How will this affect my future list builds? For a given number of points to be spent on air defence, I would look at the following:

• 1pt: Go back and try to find another point from somewhere
• 2pts: Two Shilkas, the bare minimum
• 4pts: Two Shilkas and four Gaskins to give a mix of power and table coverage
• 6pts: Four Shilkas and four Gaskins
• 8pts: Four Shilkas and four Gophers, although I'm not sure what size game would justify spending this many points

I would probably only use Geckos in large multi-formation games on a table larger than 8x6, where their range can come into play, in addition to each formation having its own anti-aircraft units. I will have to rething this for the Czechoslovaks as they did not have Shilkas, instead using the M53/59, an armoured six-wheeled vehicle with twin 30mm cannon.

Next Time: Hopefully one more practice game before Remember December, and a few more units being painted.

Thoughts on the Warsaw Pact lists for Team Yankee

Now that the new Czech and Polish lists have been published for Team Yankee, I thought I would take a look through the four Warsaw Pact nationalities that are now available. On the surface they are all very similar, but there are some differences that will affect the way they play on the table.

Infantry

The easiest comparison between the lists is on a BMP1 company, being an option in all four . All four nations have the same unit structure and a To Hit stat of 3+. All have a different combination of skill/motivation stats, and there are a couple of minor weapons stat differences as well.

Warsaw Pact Infantry Unit Stats

	Soviet	East German	Czechoslovak	Polish
Courage	4+	4+	5+	3+
Morale	3+	3+	4+	4+
Rally	3+	4+	5+	3+
Skill	5+	4+	4+	4+
Assault	5+	5+	5+	5+
Counterattack	3+	4+	5+	3+
Weapons Difference	FP5+ AK-74 teams	-	-	FP 5+ AKM teams, No RPG-18s or AGS-17
Mid Size Price	14pts	14pts	10pts	16pts

To summarise what this means on the table, we have:

• Soviets: hard to break, rally easily, good at clearing out entrenched infantry due to their ROF3 FP5+ AK teams and good counterattack rating, but poor at skill-based orders.
• East Germans: hard to break, but otherwise average.
• Czechs: poor in assaults, don't rally well, but are significantly cheaper.
• Poles: Aggressive due to passing Follow Me orders on a 3+ and having FP 5+. Hard to keep pinned, reasonable in assaults, but expensive and lacking the AT14 RPGs and AGS-17 grenade launchers of the other nations.

In all cases, you need numbers due to the poor To Hit and Assault ratings. A minimum sized company only gives you four teams with Assault 5, and the rest either Assault 6 or Heavy Weapons teams. Full size companies seem quite unwieldy, particularly as they result in units of  12 BMPs running around, so the mid-size two platoon option seems optimal.

Looking at the transport for the infantry companies, the Soviets are the only nation that can take a battalion of BMP2. The others get the option of a company of BMP2s as part of a BMP1 battalion. The Soviets also have the most flexibility for transporting the infantry supporting their tank battalions.

Warsaw Pact Tank Battalion Infantry Support

	Soviet	East German	Czechoslovak	Polish
T-64	Any	-	-	-
T-72/T-72M	Any	BMP1	BMP1/BMP2	BMP1/BMP2
T-55	-	BTR	BTR/OT-64	BTR/OT-64
T-62M	Any	-	-	-

My favourite infantry option is still the Afgantsy, with Assault 4+ and a consistent 3+ across all motivation stats. If running a BMP company, the choice between nations will be influenced by game size: I would only run Czechs in larger games where I can make the most of their lower price, while probably favouring the Soviets in smaller games due to their Firepower and motivation.


Still the best Warsaw Pact infantry, limited only by Formation size

Tanks
A major difference between the Soviet and other lists is the tank technology. The Soviets have the better equipment, while the others have the lower-quality T-72M and T-55AM2. This has changed slightly with the release of T-62M cards, giving the Soviets a cheaper option (six for the price of four T-72, or seven for the price of four T-64). It's an interesting call: a few extra dice that are almost as effective as those of the more expensive tanks, but vulnerable to AT19. I'm not yet sure what my opinion on it is.

Warsaw Pact Tank Stats

	T-64	T-72	T-72M	T-55	T-62M
Front	17	16	15	14	14
Side	9	8	8	9	9
Top	2	2	2	2	2
AT	22	22	21	17	21
Tactical	14"	10"	10"	10"	10"
Terrain Dash	16"	16"	16"	14"	14"
Crosscountry Dash	24"	24"	24"	20"	20"
Cross	3+	3+	3+	4+	4+
HEAT Protection	BDD Armour	BDD Armour	Bazooka Skirts	Bazooka Skirts	Bazooka Skirts
Point of Difference	Advanced Stabiliser, Brutal	Brutal	Brutal	Slow Firing	No Stabiliser
Optional Extra	AT-8 Songster	-	-	-	AT-10 Stabber

The T-64 is much more effective while only being slightly more expensive than the T-72, so would be my preference for Soviet lists. I haven't used them, but on paper I don't rate the T-55. Sure you can get huge numbers, but unless your fighting Leopard 1s or AMX-30s, they need to get into the flanks to do any damage, and Slow Firing really hampers them there. My pick of the bunch is probably the Volksarmee T-72M for the overall package of armour, gun, price, and motivation stats.

A good all-round performer, at three for 7pts, then 4pts each.

Support

The Soviets have the most complete range of support, with the Storm, Acacia, and BMP2 scouts, plus the option of having tank and infantry companies as support units. The East Germans are hardest done by, not having the Gecko or Acacia due to the order of product releases, despite having used both.

The support unit most obviously missing is the towed mortar battery of eight 120mm tubes that each Motor Rifle Battalion included. For some inexplicable reason Team Yankee occurs in a universe where mortars do not exist unless they're bolted to an M113. This lack of cheap and historically plentiful indirect fire support is a fundamental flaw in the lists.

Looking at the artillery options that they do have, all of the lists have access to a regimental battery of 2S1 Carnations, plus support from a battery of heavy artillery (except the poor East Germans), and a battery of rocket launchers.

Warsaw Pact Artillery Stats

	2S1 Carnation	2S3 Acacia	DANA	BM-21 Hail	RM-70
Front	2	2	1	-	1
Side	1	1	1	-	1
Top	1	1	1	-	0
Artillery AT	4	4	4	3	3
Artillery FP	3+	2+	2+	4+	4+
Direct Range	24"	16"	24"	-	-
Direct AT	21	14	14	-	-
Direct FP	2+	1+	1+	-	-
Point of Difference	No AA MG	Optional Krasnopol	Autoloader	Salvo template, No AA MG	Salvo template

In the small 45pt games we are playing a the moment, I wouldn't take any of these. Dual-purpose everything is absolutely the name of the game there, and artillery is too specialized and sinks too many points to be viable. Far better to take an extra tank or two. I've tried a trio of Carnations in a small game before, but I lost them to infantry due to their lack of a self-defence MG. At 80pts I would look to take a full battery of six of something. Infantry hasn't been a huge part of the local meta so far, but it will come, and at that point I'll need to consider whether a second battery can be justified.

The most intriguing artillery option is the DANA. The Autoloader rule gives them a -1 to hit, which, combined with Skill 4, FP2+, and a further -1 for being in a unit of six, makes them a great antidote to Milan spam: veterans are being hit on 2s, at best 3s if they are gone to ground. The DANA's performance will be even better, edging ahead of the French AuF1 and British eight-gun M109 batteries, with the expected changes for next year's 2nd Edition. Rocket batteries will also become better, and it will be an interesting decision between a 10" template with FP4+, or a 6" template with FP 2+. Compared to how ineffective I see it as being now, artillery will become a thing to fear and will jump up the list of priority targets to be second only to air defence assets.

Arguably the best artillery in the game

For anti-aircraft, the Gecko is potent at ROF 3 and FP 3+, but with the advent of the French 'Gun Slinger' Gazelle they're terribly vulnerable, and the points are probably better spent on twice the number of Gophers.

Gun Slinger: Shoots before AA.

All of the other support options are pretty similar: Hinds, Frogfeet, Spandrels, and BMP1 or BRDM scouts, with the same variations in skill and motivation as discussed earlier. It would have been nice for the other nations to have the option of MiG23s or SU22s rather than being limited to Soviet SU-25s, but that's really just cosmetic. The only really differences would be worse save and a slightly less effective cannon, for a small points break.

Summary

I couldn't quite understand why the internet seemed so keen on more Warsaw Pact lists, given how similar the equipment was going to be. But now that the books are out, I appreciate the new models that have come with them, and the way that we have been given variety in the unit stats to create a number of distinct choices:

• Do I want the better tech options? Then I have to go with the Soviets.
• Do I want to build a list around the most effective (and best looking) artillery piece? It's a choice between the Czechs and Poles.
• Do I want to pay a premium for an aggressive list? Then it's the Poles.
• Do I want numbers, on the understanding that they won't hang around once they start to take damage? That would be the Czechs.
• Or if I am happy with middle of the road stats and prices, at the cost of a reduced variety of units to choose from, then it's East Germans.

I can seriously see myself playing lists from all of these nations from time to time. I definitely plan to get a couple of boxes of DANAs in the near future, but don't think I'll go down the path of T-55s, T-62s, or BTRs. A little way further over the horizon is 2nd Edition, which is likely to move the timeline along and open up an even wider range of options than we currently have, and I am looking forward to that.