Friday 12 August 2022

Battle Report - Team Yankee Oil Wars

Howdy folks,

Recently I had the chance to give Team Yankee Oil Wars a chance; pretty much a straight shot along with the gameplay of Team Yankee, but just a small change in setting from the European battlefields to the Middle East. For this go, Mike was fielding an Iranian force…I think a heavy collection of British kit (challenger tanks, Scorpion vehicles) and BTR riding grunts. Duncan and I were fielding an Iraqi or Egyptian tank heavy force with some rocket trucks, helos, and air defense SAMs.

If I remember correctly, the scenario was a meeting engagement with everyone having been considered moving in turn 1. Anyhow, it was good to get back to a game table and always good to get in some Team Yankee.

As always, Mike beats me to the punch, here’s his side of the table.

The game…

The Setup…Duncan and I are on the left side of the pic…built up area to our front to manage and move through, not the best terrain for heavy armour. Duncan is leading the T72 formation, and I’ve got the T55’s.

The balloon goes up and we hit the gas…hard!!! T55’s away and we are looking to skirt past and through the built industrial section. Which is clearly sound tactical doctrine, because we leave the rear objective wide open…

A variety of fabulous looking paint schemes, away we’re going…warehousing to our left…and at one point I was going to divert left through the centre of the area, but Mike popped some Cobra’s so I thought I’d deke to the right and close in to engage them with Dshk 12.7mm MG fire.

Duncan is pushing on our left to hit the objectives on Mike’s side…he is taking hits from long range gunnery, and without stabilizers, we can’t really do move & shoot well…1 ROF per hull gets somewhat stale.

Slow push past the warehouse, splash1 cobra…

Duncan keeps pushing and trading fire with Mike’s Challengers…he’s having some luck, but not easy to get the kills on these guys. I keep plugging away with 12.7mm fire…its ROF3 per tank, so a great volume of dice…

I’m able to get the gang in behind the warehouse and then I think I can get a good shot at some side shots on these damned Challengers…so splash another Cobra, and then Mike pops some Scorpion APCs behind me and I have to divert attention to these runts…

Duncan is still having a rough go…taking a pile of hits in the centre. 

At this point, I’m splitting my formation…1 company to deal with the pesky Cobra’s, and another company to deal with the damned runts…who have an insanely powerful 76mm main gun that raises havoc when they’re at your 6!!

So at this point, I manage to chip away the runts down to one vehicle…and then Mike gets more reserves an brings on 5 BTRs which we try to counter with a pair of Mi-24 Hinds…with some success…2 vehicles are brewed up and some passengers are able to get clear.

Having taken a few hard hits, Mike dismounts the rest of his grunts and then brings on the last of his reserves, a platoon of TOW mounted jeeps. You can see, I’m still having a hell of a go with Mike’s forces in this pocket…

At the same time, Duncan is equally having a hell of a go…the loses in the centre are mounting and then some…my pocket of fun is getting even more fun, my tanks are being pared down considerably and Mike still has some combat power on the field.

At the end of it all, Mike played a good holding action, not giving any ground and had some great rolls on the saves as well as reserves. He did a much better job of scaling his reserves than we did…we went tank heavy from the go, but could have done with some supporting arms to give us some maneuver room to make it a little harder on Mike. Good game to him!


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