Hobby VLOG: Oil War – How Big Is Too Big?
February 19, 2019 by cassn
John's been off for a week and he's got some inspiration on what to do for his next Hobby Vlog.
Click Here For More Oil War Hobby VLOGS
As Battlefront are working towards release of the new Team Yankee booklet for Oil Wars, John's got a grand idea to build a force out of lots of sprues we have laying around the studio and get it ready for the tabletop, and if John's planning the Iraqi force, that only means that Warren will be going red...
What size of army would you like to see John make?
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I would like to make a well educated and research comment about the historical context and potential ramifications of a potential clash like this, but I shall go for a more succinct breakdown of this project.
F***ING AWESOME!!
As for the points, build it all. Point it up and move some T-62 to balance the sides.
What if the points you have to spend depend on the oil fields you hold. The twist is, you don’t get tanks back between games.
Also, one of the most striking visuals for battle fields of this time has to be oil fields on fire. The image of tanks fighting through black smoke to a back drop of columns of fire is heavy metal AF.
I love the idea but don’t think you should have less models to take. If you had fuel depots and ammo caches as objectives and you don’t secure them all. Then next game you know some of your tanks are fueled, or have ammo, for 1 or 2 turns. But the key, for me, would be that you know which of your tanks you only have for a couple of turns but your opponent doesn’t. As for fighting in an oil field, I completely agree, columns of fire, black rain, thick smoke must have been one hell of a battlefield… Read more »
That’s a battlefield only augmented reality can provide or table top pyrotechnics… Now there’s a hobby challenge.
In true BOW/OTT style, just build the armies on the table THEN make your lists with whatever you have for each side. Asymmetrical is not something you lads are opposed too and you can always add a helo to the soviets or a bit of artillery to the Iraqi’s if you need to provide a bit of balance. If that is not too your liking, then I think 200 points would be well good as a goal/starting point. /cheers
yep … build everything …
How about an escalation of points? Start at the Tournament level of 64 then move up to 100 and then do a 200 point super battle. This way you can get a start on both armies and then get them on the board as they are built up. Both sides can find out what doctrine seems to work best looking at the smaller point costs and then you can get the units built that you want for the escalation. It would be a fun process to walk through over the time as we the fans could see what works and… Read more »
Just go massive just go mad, no limits…?
Tanks for the vid guys, looks like a barrel of fun. Best make track with this one… I think I have exhausted my current puns
I love Team Yankee and really enjoy getting my Brits to the table, so am looking on at this with joy. My suggestion for what it’s worth is to stick to <100 points, and maybe even go down to 60 and then do some varied scenarios so as you can mix up the units used in each battle. My rationale is that big "car park" battles in Team Yankee (and FoW!) are tempting but ultimately disappointing as the great fun of tank warfare is manoeuvrability, and if you end up with massive units of huge numbers of tanks you end… Read more »
@paul mullis you’ve missed the obvious solution to the tank park problem. (This is BoW we’re talking about…)
Get a bigger table!
Then use all the tanks!
That was my though… They certainly are not short of table space there.
Thought*
Except they said they wanted to keepnit to 6×4. Or am I gettinv confused with the St Nazaire raid stuff that they were talking about at the weekend?
Looking forward to this Hobby Vlog as I love this era of gaming. Would love to see a “lets play” with the army to finish out the series, as this is the point of most people building armies to begin with. Tank on Tank what could be better?
Looking forward to seeing this project grow from beginning to end as it will be the first one since i became a full fledged member. It’s an interesting subject matter and solid alt-universe scenario to boot.
Really excited to see this. I don’t play Team Yankee and don’t have the book, but am very interested. I say you should go big – lots of points, lots of tanks and a huge table. Possible worth considering where the battle(s) are taking place too. The USSR didn’t have a land border with Iraq, so where exactly are the Soviets invading from? Through Iran? Doesn’t seem particularly likely. Perhaps Syria? They have a big naval base in Tartus and the Syrian and Iraqi regimes didn’t get along. I can’t imagine that Iraq allying with NATO would improve relations… If… Read more »
Would agree with this in regards to the not doing Soviets
this is going to be a good one guys.
Size of the game, just keep painting until the brushes wear out (I hate to think how much all those sprues would cost). On the NATO stuff going to Iraq in this “alternate timeline”, I would have thought it very unlikely that the Germans would be exporting their best battle tank while Soviets are fighting either on German soil (or even in Europe), everything being produced would be going right into the front lines to replace losses. More likely would be second line AFVs from countries where the front line would be highly unlikely to fought over (eg USA), so… Read more »
Do you think Leopard Is would be more appropriate as, perhaps, castoffs of NATO?
(Assuming the IIs replaced the Is as I don’t know the period well enough.)
What an AWESOME!!! Hobby series, i shall be watching this all the time. I think John you have kind of sold the Oil War to the masses. Great Hobby Vlog I will look forward to more.
This looks like a great build and battle. One question I have is how are the helicopters based? Do they have a “floating” base or do you have to build something to give them height?
Sounds like a good project. No idea as to points as i haven’t played TeamYankee. But you might as well go OTT with it. I don’t think @johnlyons will see painting loads of tanks as a chore. The burning oilfields as terrain would look great. You can do nice smoke columns by blobbing expanding cavity insulation foam onto a wire armature.
Start with a full 31 tank battalion. Do multiple battalions up to your point limit. For the German tanks, do them in 14ish tank companies. Fill in with helos and ada to round up to same point totals. At 200 points you may end up with a short regiment for the cheap tanks. The real limit is probably the size of the table.
Tanks… who would have thought…
…which ones will be pink @johnlyons ?
Having the Soviets as the invaders makes sense as that was after the threat to Iraq in a general war as far as the West was concerned. Having the Germans or German equipment as the Iraqi reinforcements makes little sense. There weren’t enough Leo 2s around for the main NATO front, politically it wouldn’t have happened and its questionable Leo 2s would have actually worked without any modifications in the desert. You could reflag the Leo 2s as being part of the Turkish Army – as they did get them a decade later – and that makes for a reasonable… Read more »
@JohnLyons, Bugger the points cost, I want to see you play with exactly what you have their on the table (in & out of the sprues). You’ll probably get asymmetrical forces just form the numbers already available.
looking forward to the next vlog, when all is finished please tape the game and put it out on the show. point size, GO BIG, OR GO HOME.
Since this is an alternate timeline, I’m pretty sure one of the factions used all pink tanks as a desert camouflage.
so where is the sod with the box of matches?
Does ‘Oil War’ ret-con the Iran-Iraq war, ‘cos that was ’80 to ’88? If not, you could ‘alt history’ and make NATO involvement with the pro-West Iraqi regime the result of Soviet supported Iranian advances threatening Western oil supplies. Prior to the outbreak of war in Europe NATO deployed a German tank regiment to support the Iraqis but couldn’t spare anymore resources because of the growing threat in Europe. You could involve the Israelis as a ‘false flag’ force; older Israeli armour (British and American Supplied Centurions and M-60s) could fight in NATO markings, also have the Israeli Air Force… Read more »
@johnlyons Assuming oil war hasn’t changed the points values from the main rule books, for a 6×4 table then 100 points is about right. I echo what others have said which is that too many tanks in a big game just ends up being a car park. You’ll find with the T55’s that they will out number the Leopard 2’s about 8 to 1 (if not more) and out number the T72’s something like 3 to 1 so something to bear in mind when trying to create an army that represents a (within reason) historically accurate force. You’ll also find… Read more »
Having never played the game, I can’t really offer any input on points etc. But wow! that’s a massive pile of goodness. Gonna enjoy watching this project unfold.
Simple really.Build.It.All.