Team Yankee: Pied Piper - the defense of Hameln

At our Christmas Drinks, Declan, one of our youngest members, requested more 'big Team Yankee games' for the New Year...so what better way to start the year's gaming?

The game took on even more meaning when, the table laid out, another, slightly older, member came up and told me this area was where he used to deploy on exercises with the British Army's Senior Infantry line formation, The Queen's Regiment! (I grew up in the area as my father did repeated tours with 28 Amphibious Engineer Regt RE also based in Hameln.)

The table looking east from the outskirts of Hameln. I dread to think how much of my pocket money was spent in that McPizza Hut!

We omitted the railway lines that meet in Hameln, since, running parallel to the axis of advance, they were tactically insignificant. Looking north:

The Buying Time mission is a favorite of mine - it allows big games to be concluded in a short time.

For this scenario the Warsaw Pact attackers had twice the points of the defender. So Declan and Peter had 140 pts of NATO Bundeswehr, with at least 90pts spent on FA15+ tanks, Ed had the same of East Germans and Daniel 140 points of  Soviets. Unusually for us we included air and AD assets.

The Soviet force also had a small company of Motor Rifles in BMP3s:

Peter's West Germans primarily consisted of Leo 2s, put he also brought a troop of Leo 1s, and, giving us great cause for concern...

Plus a troop of the dreaded Leopard 2A5, which the formation commander and his deputy also used.

Below, Declan on the left, surveys the scene. It was all his fault...

To balance out the player numbers, Daniel, on the right, was persuaded to come across to the dark side, giving us the NATO plan!

Our plan was an early Suppression of Enemy Air Defences, targeting the Roland SAMs. We rolled well for Air support but not so well for hits!

With only 6 turns to seize an objective we set off anyway...

As always with a Warsaw Pact horde shaking out into tactical formations was a challenge:

And the Luftwaffe took full advantage with their cluster munitions!

The German artillery was pretty useful too, hampering our mine clearing efforts...

At this points the Bundeswehr were feeling pretty relaxed...

The Soviet T-80 force, with its better armour, focused on the relatively open left flank whilst the NVA with their T-72Bs advanced down the covered right flank. Covered from everything except air strikes, that is!

I don't normally bother with attempting to lift minefields, but Daniel was up for it: 

He had been telling me our T-80s couldn't penetrate the L2A5s frontal armour, but in the excitement I didn't really register the implications that we would also benefit from a covered approach on this flank...

Our second airstrike faired much better and we knocked out both Rolands, leaving Frontal Aviation free to start whittling away at the Leopards...

We were on top of the left hand, near, objective by the end of Turn 3. Astute placement of our artillery marker by Ed steadily knocked out the L2A5s in the woods facing the objective, so we were set fair!

Then the Germans sprang their ambush - a platoon of venerable Leopard 1s were able to get sideshots into the side of our lead wave of T-80s with disastrous results!

However once again Ed came to the rescue with the offending Leo 1s themselves taken in the rear by his T-72s!

With our Frontal Aviation leisurely picking off Leopards and Daniel's T-80s also coming in from the rear of the objective, the Bundeswehr team conceded at the end of Turn 4.