Team Yankee - Somewhere east of Fulda...

No-one ever supposes that the site of an armoured artillery battery is supposed to be a nice quiet location during World War 3...

But the feeling is generally that the guns will be firing at targets somewhere over the horizon, with ranges measured in kilometres rather than hundred of meters...

But at yesterday's Team Yankee game at the uni, the battle raged right through the battery's position. See, it happened like this...

Setting up an impromptu game, we decided to try a scenario a little off the Fulda Gap beaten track - what if the 8th Guards Army had sent a battalion sized group to find their way over the hilly forest areas to the east of Fulda? - after all there's a pretty extensive track network in them thar hills...

Our table approximation ended up looking like this, massively generified, of course...The unfortunately rather shattered village of Margretenhaun is on the far left corner.

My excuse, and I'm sticking to it, is that it all went wrong with the mission selection process. I picked 'hasty attack' with my Soviet Tanks, Bryan picked ''deliberate attack'', so when the die was cast I ended up with a 'hasty defence', with only half my platoons on table...

Well, with a background in Naval Fire Support, what I've seen of 'brownjobs' were mainly Gunners, so as far as I'm concerned in my Soviet Army the artillery remains the 'Red God of War', so I duly centred my defence, and an objective, around a battery of 122mm SPGs...



And their forward observer, natch! (Actually with hindsight, maybe he was a little too far forward...)

My second platoon was a detachment of Gophers providing LRAD against Bryan's Cobras.

And my third platoon of Motor Rifles was protecting the second objective in the ruined village of Margaretenhaun.



I was hoping their Spandrel ATGW would cover the main line of approach...

And lastly I had a company of 5 T-72s waiting in ambush...

Which left 2 companies of T-72s, my Shilkas, and Recon company back in reserve, not due on until at least turn 3!

Bryan led off with 2 x Mech Infantry platoons mounted in M113s, a flight of Cobras, and a platoon of M1 Abrams...

The M1s headed straight for the battery position and the objective they straddled. If I hadn't had an ambush up my sleeve it could have been a very quick game!



As it was I deployed them as close as possible to the storming M1s and then closed through the woods, without, incredibly, a single T-72 bogging in the woods. A first for me! It looked as if I had the Abrams down cold...



However the dice Gods were only toying with me - my entire salve either missed or bounced!



However as a small consolation, my Gophers locked onto the Cobra flight, launching a salvo of 4 Strela-10 AA missiles...

and downed a Cobra!

Bryan's response was decisive however, with one of his Mech Platoons assaulting and clearing that position.

Fortunately there were no objectives in the vicinity, so we were still in the game despite only having one tank platoon, and the company commander's vehicle, in the game!

Actually the Company Commander was busy fighting his own little war, doing his best to whittle down the fleet of M113's crossing his path...

Which left me free to make foolish decisions - my eye fell on the Bronegruppa of empty BMP-2s twiddling their thumbs in the village, with no target for their missiles in sight.



Leaving the infantry to hold the objective, I sent them off, with the now unemployed Artillery Observer, to assault the US objective, held by a mere one platoon of US Mech dismounts...

However, I was forgetting the range and effectiveness of Dragon ATGWs....

Who soon reduced the BMP platoon to a pile of smoking wreckage. Meanwhile back at the battery position, on the objective which Bryan had focussed, the US dismounts were coordinating with the armour to put in an assault...

at right angles to the M1s - a beautiful example of all-arms coordination I have to admit. Despite the Carnations blowing away an M1 and several M113s, they eventually succumbed, and Bryan had taken the objective by the end of his move 5.

Moving swiftly on from that tale of woe, a couple of other interesting games were on...

Including a game of SAGA, which seemed to me to be the biggest skirmish game evah! But certainly the attention to detail in terms of painting was of skirmish game standard:

Whilst in another corner a clearly entertaining and engrossing game of DBA was occurring..

In fact, we enjoy quite a catholic collection of games at the uni club, which is why your humble correspondent doesn't bring you quite as much Team Yankee action as I would like...but there's always an other opportunity to defend the Motherland!