Wednesday Wargaming - Team Yankee Dust Up

Hello Folks,

So time for another Team Yankee report. We played a huge game again, this time the mission was Dust Up. I set up the table differently this time and tried to make it annoying to get more of an effect from that.

I played mostly the same list, but I dropped the Warthogs and upgraded my artillery with all of the upgrades, but the copperhead laser guided munitions is the only one that really mattered. The Soviets had mostly the same list with more jets and less choppers I believe.

I got to be the attacker and rolled for a Night battle, which would give me a bit of an advantage due to having better thermal imaging, but we then immediately forgot about that! Oh well.

So here is the initial set up, this is one of the diagonal corner missions. I set up to hide in the woods, and the Russians tried to be sneaky. Both sides have half their stuff in reserve. For me that is 2 platoons of 3 Abrams, VADS, and cobras which I forgot about. I hopped to not have to go first to avoid planes on turn 1 and fire my laser guided munitions, but the dice did not agree.

So I just moved back my platoon for safety and passed a turn.

The Soviets then hid behind the rocky hill and entered the town. On my second turn I moved my platoon back to fire on the town T-72s, and set my ITV platoon way down around the hill to threaten the objectives and be annoying. In retrospect it is not a great idea to toss this small platoon away as it is actually a part of my formations instead of support. I also killed some BMPs with laser guided munitions, which was their only chance to fire as the FIST team was killed next turn.

The Russians then decided to man up and fight my HQ platoon of 2 Abrams, but accomplished not much, and the town T-72 blew up a ITV and the other failed morale and ran. Still no Frogfoots for them so there is that at least.

No reserves for me on turn 3 so I decided to try and kill the hill T-72s. But of course half of my tanks failed there 2+ test to cross terrain. Still did some decent damage thou. No Russian reserves or planes so they didn't get much done. At this point I am starting to feel confident about this game!

Turn 4 and I got to bring in both of my tank platoons. I figured between them and the 2 Abrams in my corner I could finish off the town T-72s, and the artillery which moved up to support. But the dice gods game me 2 handfuls of misses. I got all but 2 of the town T-72s but the last passed morale, none of the artillery! But did get the last of the hill T-72s.

The soviets did better with the return fire and along with some Hinds, 1 shot down to AA fire, reduced both platoons to 1 tank or 1 tank and 1 bailed tank, and they both failed morale and left! The next turn I brought on my VADS and along with the tanks killed more of the artillery. But in the process I bogged half my tanks in the woods again! Then of course the Russian jets picked this time to show up! I shot down one with a lucky AA shot which I was gifted but they killed the 1 tank in the open with ease and my third platoon of tanks failed morale and left! Then the Hind murdered my formation commander. So the next turn was an auto lose for me due to formation morale.

So there you have it another fun game of Team Yankee. I feel like I had this one in the bag but lost it to bad dice! But these things happen. I am increasingly convinced that air is not really worth it, and I probably would have been better off with another Abrams platoon on the table instead of the ITV, but that is hard to know. What I really need to do is paint my infantry platoon, but there are only so many hours in a day.

The last day of our campaign in Sunday so I probably will have another report then, but we will be doing something different next Wednesday!

Thanks;
Mike