Wednesday Wargaming - Team Yankee 130 Pts

Hello Folks, time for another Wednesday wargaming report. This week we decided to play a big game of Team Yankee with everything that is so far painted, which worked out to 130 points. I had to do a couple of extra tanks last week but no big deal.

I thought it would be fun to try out some missions from the new set they posted last week, so I selected Breakthrough which is one of my favorites, and Serge elected to defend with the Russians.

So the goal is for me to break through the Russian force and capture one of the objectives by turn 6 or later, with 1 reserve to come on from that area. Actually with the way Team Yankee works that is to long for the objectives to really matter it seems and I wonder why they didn't reduce the turns now that the game plays faster. I have the same thought about Forced Withdrawal, but we will see how things get on.

US List:

Abrams HQ
4x Abrams
4x Abrams
3x Abrams
2x ITV

4x VADS
2x Cobra
2x Warthog
3x Artillery

So here is the start point, I have 2 ITVs in reserve as the breakthrough, everything else on the table. I thought about what was the best approach, should I mass to one side or not. I decided to try and attack both forces at once. So my plan is to kill the main Russian AA so my air units are ok, and sacrifice my VADS to put a hurt on the Hinds as they have been troublesome in the past. Then everything can kill as many tanks as possible.

This was reasonably successful, half of the Hinds were shot down, along with both of the AA tanks and a good amount of tanks. That left the Russians with just 1 AA stand so I felt pretty safe.

The Soviets countered by placing their ambush to attack my platoon of 4 moving up the side and killed half of them plus a bail but I passed the morale test. All the missiles concentrated on the tanks around the fuel tanks. My self defense AA was able to kill the last 2 Hinds as they were put in a bad position, but the Frogfoot planes still did some good damage. So two of my main tank platoons were now severely damaged.

At this point it is very apparent to me that the key is to kill as many tanks as possible and win the war of attrition so I try to do that. I moved my tanks near the fuel tanks and town as best I could to limit fire from the other side and concentrated on the new tank platoons. No planes for me this time either, and it's pretty much impossible for the VADS to catch a frogfoot unless it is placed badly. But I got a good amount of kills so was happy that I was still keeping up the pressure.

Unfortunately the Russians brought in their artillery from reserve which can direct fire the same as a T72. So they gutted my last good platoon making things a bit of a pickle.

I moved my stuff for flanks and tried to make a last effort with the few tanks I had left. The one guy by the barn with the artillery managed to see off the Russian guns, but up by the town my luck left and I didn't kill much. Another guy or so with the Cobras so the Russians also were down to aruond 4 tanks! Getting close.

In the end the Russians killed my commander but he was able to jump in a VADS, so I got another turn out of it but no luck so wasn't able to do much. If I had gotten the warthogs to come back and a bit of luck it could have been possible to kill all the T72s! But no luck and then I broke next un of course.

So another fun game, a bit bigger this time on a big table, hope you liked it.

Thanks;
Mike