Team Yankee - Free for All Scenario

Continuing with my pre-competition practice games, this weekend I set up the Team Yankee 'Free for All' scenario. With both sides starting off with all platoons on table, I was anticipating that this would be suited to my rather imbalanced Tank Heavy Soviet force - it can be vulnerable to air if the AA platoons don't come on in the first 3 moves...

I duly laid out and marked up a 6x4 table, once again placing more terrain pieces than I would normally, but anticipating the worst in a competition environment...

There were however some clear channels of advance left open - surely if they want games completed in 2 hours the organisers have to leave some space clear? My general theme remained Southern Germany, (despite my current fixation with Leopard and northern Germany!) so the table was edged with high ground and there were lots of pine woods.

I went into some detail of my streamlined Soviet Tank force in my last blog, so this time I'll go into a little detail about the US opfor - I've deliberately gone for as balanced a force as I can muster in the opposition, again trying to cover all competition eventualities!

So the 2 small platoons of M1s were supported by a platoon of Mech Inf with additional Dragon team...

A battery of 3 x M109 155mm howitzers (This eye candy's for you Baz!)[Ex RHA horse gunner)..

A small platoon of 2 x ITVs:

A section of Vulcan SPAA - although I wasn't taking any Air, Fast or Rotary, so these boys probably wouldn't even have to clean their guns... 

Fast Air - 2 x A10 Warthogs...

And a flight of 2 Cobras:

In the Free for All scenario the sides alternate in deploying platoons, the attacker leading, so I lead with my trusty Scout platoon allowing a fair sized forward bubble into no-man's-land with the Spearhead rule...Remembering lessons learnt from the last game all 3 tank platoons were crammed in opposite to the central objective...

With my own side's offside objective only held by a small platoon of Motor Rifles, with their Gremlin detachment...

denuded of their BMPs, which formed a BroneGruppa Zulu muster on the other side of the table, basically as missile carriers:

The anti air envelope was extended mid table by the 2 Gophers. The Shilkas would stay up front with the armour.

Given my obvious concentration against just one objective, and with no ambush on offer, the US opfor also placed all their eggs in one basket - these wouldn't be good woods to be wandering around in as leg infantry at night!

So this is the table at game start - nothing subtle about the Soviet deployment!

And having the first move, the dice gods continued to smile - 2 M1s knocked out in the opening volley from 6 T-72s! I needn't expect that to happen in the comp! But perhaps indicating the merits of concentration...

Off to the flank, yet another M1 was knocked out by a volley from the third, smallest T-72 platoon - absolutely unheard of and amazing luck - These dice are coming to the comp!

However the opfor successfully called in an airstrike with their first die roll! And it was nothing if not a target rich environment. A salvo of 4 SA-13s erupting from the woods had no effect whatsoever, neither did the rattle of cannon fire from the ZSU's...

But the A-10's Maverick missiles sure were in working order - consider those M1s avenged!

Actually the surviving M1s were doing pretty well on their own account!

And with the redlegs laying down a FASCAM minefield right on the Autobahn, suddenly the mass concentration of armour didn't seem so clever after all - its no good being on the objective if your steed is a twisted mass of molten metal!





However the next desperate soviet move saw the Scout platoon, who thought they had done their job for the day, given orders to lead the surviving couple of T-72s onto the objective...






However, despite their earlier losses, these were picked off by the Abrams with flank shots - and with just 2 tanks left, I decided the game had ended its training value, basically a US win as they could have strolled over to take their pick of objectives! However, I got a lot closer to the objective than last time, so I'm beginning to think I'm starting to craft an effective formula - use the spearhead rule and max revs to get their hard and fast, in force, and just swamp one objective!