Team Yankee - Night fight!

In preparation for the forthcoming Team Yankee comp at the Hall of Heroes, Bryan and I have been working our way through the varied repertoire of TY scenarios, and we knew we had to get some experience of night fighting...

I laid out a fairly bland landscape, a good mix of urban and woods, with a river and railway cutting across the table - with the night fighting rules obstacle crossing takes on a whole new aspect, for the cold light of dawn can reveal a richness of embarrassments...

The scenario we chose was 'Bridgehead' from the TY 'More Missions' scenarios pdf:

And Bryan appropriately chose to defend from the river end of the table:

He had brought an Aussie Mechanised force, only one platoon of  4 x M1 Abrams (We appreciate the Aussies were actually running Leo 1s in 1985, but be patient, they will appear in due course!)

Several platoons of Mech:

Three x M109 155mm arty attached from the US Marine Corps:

And his rotary aviation assets a mix of USMC and Aussie helos for a total of 100 points:

For my part my 100 points were made up of lots of T-72s, lots of AA assets, a couple of Grach FROGFOOT fast air:

And for the first time, a small battery of Grad HAIL rocket launchers, for which I had high hopes!

As attacker I had the first move, and as usual used my 3 car scout platoon to extend my deployment bubble as far forward as possible...however the additional penalty for crossing obstacles at night meant that 2 of the recce BRMs ditched as soon as they entered the woods!

I soon discovered that keeping your artillery observer safely back in the woods at the edge of the table is pretty useless at night, so Bryan graciously allowed me to redeploy him further forward at the edge of the town...

I would use him to spot for the rocket battery, whilst the Gvozdika CARNATION battery, being armoured, would be more use up close using direct fire, or so I thought...

My T-72s attempted a barrage of fire against the mech infantry dug in around the closest objective...

But despite a couple of lucky hits, and Bryan's unlucky saves I soon realised that firing at night against a marginal target is foolhardy - all it does is open you up to be shot at yourself! Henceforth I would lead the infantry suppression work to the less valuable BMPs...

So duly began moving them up into position...

Bryan was unlucky with his reinforcements roll, and decided not to cut loose with his Abrams platoon which was in ambush, so I decided to push on boldly...

Once again the difficulty of obstacle crossing at night, not to mention minefields, cramped my style somewhat, with the red tide becoming more of a trickle...

Still my T-72s felt there way more successfully through the town, although this time the company commander exercised more fire discipline...

As my armour was steadily eroding Bryans M1 deployment options, he finally sprang the ambush....

TARGET! TARGET STOP!

 With more success on this reinforcement dice, he also launched a helo attack...



On my Strela GOPHER platoon of AA SAM missile launchers!



He knocked one out and bailed another, but lost 2 helos in the process...I moved my Shilka platoon up to beef up the defences around my precious armour - at night close range weapons seem more useful!



For the next few moves our tanks exchange fire :



In daylight this would have been a lethal exchange, as we were in or around close range,



however at night...



Whilst there were some hits,



these were few and far between compared to daytime. Time for the Red God of War to make his presence felt - cue the HAIL!

The observer did a great job of bringing the massive salvo template down on top of a rich haul of M1s, M113s, and dug in infantry...However, despite a several hits, the 4+ firepower check resulted in bails and pins rather than anything more lethal!



However as his M109 platoon came on as the last of his reinforcements, Bryan had learnt from my demonstration that, at night, direct fire is best! His artillery engaged my artillery, brewing two and bailing the surviving CARNATION!



Well past packing up time, the Battalion commander decided that the might of Soviet Armour would do better in the cold light of day, and the battle group pulled back to the cover of the trees for some hot tea, and a chance to survey the mess and think again...