Team Yankee Syrian escalation league 2020

Team Yankee v2 has finally been released and our local club (Flames of War at House of War) are starting an escalation league in celebration, starting on the 22nd of February with scheduled days every two weeks and culminating in a WW3 Campaign event on the 16th of May. The escalation league will be done in stages, increasing monthly, of 55, 75 and 100 points, and with the requirement to select a formation to carry across through the entire league, the composition of the chosen formation can change, but at least one of the formation chosen at the start of the league must be taken in your list at each stage.

With the dates and points values decided I was faced with the choice of faction to run through this league (I had the choice of attempting to escalate multiple factions in the same league, but I just don’t think I could keep up with a hobby load that large, especially considering I’m already playing catch up as I really only seriously started building on about the 5th of February!), having some information as to what other factions other players were considering, I discovered a good spread of different factions spread over the two coalitions, ultimately though, I did decide on collecting a Syrian T-62 Tank Battalion from the Oil Wars book for the league.

Why Syria you may ask? Ultimately there are many reasons with some much more valid than others, firstly, I’ve been keeping my eye on the second edition of Fate of a Nation as a game I’d very much like to collect an army for, so simultaneously collecting a large amount for Fate of a Nation and Team Yankee would be killing two birds with one stone. This would involve some compromises involving my paint schemes and has also influenced some of my list choices, as I’d like to keep the amount of models that can’t cross between the games to a minimum as well as keeping my painting/modelling choices closer to 1973 Syria than 1985 Syria. There also is the fact that for many gamers, a Warsaw Pact faction is simply a counterintuitive choice based simply on the number of models and I tend to be a fan of Red vs Blue games whenever possible, from the murmurs of faction selection in the rest of the league I felt as though there were going to be slightly more NATO players than Warsaw Pact players, if the situation were reversed I could still achieve my simultaneous collection goal by selecting the IDF as my faction of choice but I also already have made several purchases intending to play Syria for Fate of a Nation, thus solidifying my decision (although the Merkava is very much a cool piece of kit and I’m still tempted by it).

Team Yankee is a game system that allows for some classic looking Hollywood moments and some rather desperate looking holdouts when a horde army faces off against a more elite army, selecting Syria let’s me also take the horde aspect to a bit of an extreme, which should result in some rather funny (to me) mid-game photos to show off! (I’m almost able to feel the desperation when seeing pictures of two Leopard 2’s attempting to hold off a unit of 9 T-55’s), Syria in Oil Wars is also a faction that gets a very nice variety of units to choose from, both high and low quality, allowing me a lot of different gaming experiences from a single list. And just to top all these reasons off, my favourite modelling project I’ve undertaken in the last couple of years has been my Flames of War Mid-war Italian Bersaglieri and I’m just looking forward to painting another desert army (in fact, a Soviet T-62M formation painted to be part of the 40th Army in Afghanistan made my shortlist).

So now that I’ve decided both faction and starting formation, we’re going to take a quick look at the list I’ve been thinking about to start the league off with:

For the first stage I’ve got a 55 point list to fill out, starting with the fixed formation I’ve chosen, the T-62 Tank Battalion, selecting the HQ and two platoons, one of 7 tanks and one of 6 tanks, simply as I’ve had the Fate of a Nation T-62 starter set on my shelf for quite a while, providing me with 9 T-62’s to start off with, however the minimum amount of tanks required for the formation is 11, so a single platoon box of 5 more T-62’s brings me to 14, hopefully enough to take some losses and deal out some damage with their above average AT 19 weapons.

Next, every balanced force needs some infantry, and drawing on my pile of unopened Fate of a Nation purchases, I’ve got a BMP Mechanised platoon works rather nicely, BMP-1’s can easily trade blows with other transports and may even pick up some of the slack in engaging lower end MBTs, the infantry themselves are versatile enough to handle both attacking and defending in these lower points games, even though I’d really rather have a few more stands I just couldn’t justify the extra 5 points to make this platoon a bit of a tougher nut. On the defense the infantry platoon can easily babysit objectives with their 3 RPG teams, warning off anything but the heaviest vehicles and easily destroying anything that doesn’t heed such a big warning, on the offense the standard AKM teams should be more than a match for the more specialised platoons such as Milan or Stinger platoons, as well as smaller mechanised infantry platoons such as Canadian M113 or the new UK Warrior platoons.

Finally for the main formation, a unit of 4 ZSU-23-4 Shilkas for some AA, hopefully enough to keep enemy helicopters or strike aircraft off of the main push of T-62’s as well as filling out a formation slot, in a pinch they’ll be able to help keep enemy ATGM teams pinned as my tanks or infantry get into better positions.

For support I’ve decided to take advantage of the addition of formation support platoons that TYv2 provides for us, taking a large unit of 9 T-55’s with Bazooka Skirts fitted, these should happily provide a good category C. unit to keep in reserve or to babysit the infantry and their BMP’s, their AT 16 firepower and AA MG’s hopefully help keep enemy scouting and lighter anti-tank elements honest while my T-62’s do most of the heavy lifting. I’m also taking a unit of 2 SA-8 Osa/Gecko to protect my more vulnerable rear elements, such as defending infantry and my artillery from marauding helicopters, as well as reaching out and touching enemy high-end strike aircraft such as harriers and A-10’s, which are far more likely to show up due to their effectiveness against category A/tier 1 MBTs such as Challengers and Leopard 2’s. Which is a good segue into my own unit of Su-25 Rook/Frogfoot which I’ll be taking for their hefty Kh-25 AT 27 missiles, hopefully either a good reserve unit or I might gamble having them on the first turn when I face an enemy such as Challengers, in the hopes that I can pop one of them early, very much taking the heat off of my T-62’s to get their work done.

Finally for my last support choice I’ll be bringing a unit of 6 BM-21 Hail, with their massive Salvo template and ability to drop a smoke bombardment, I’m very confident that they’ll provide a lot of excellent support, and with the numbers I’ll usually be bringing against my opponent I don’t feel that bringing unarmoured artillery units should be too much of a hinderance as I’ll be choosing to be on the offensive as much as possible.

Overall a tank heavy force in composition, but possibly a little weak against higher end NATO MBT’s as I’d be relying on getting my T-55’s or T-62’s into good positions without taking too many losses or hoping that my Su-25’s show up in time and evade what I have to assume will be a large amount of anti-aircraft fire, as anyone taking Challengers or Leopard 2’s will no doubt be aware of the grave threat that uncontested aircraft are to their plans.

Next time I’ll be going over my plans for the 75 and 100 point stages of our escalation league as well as showing off some of the building I’ve been doing in the last week as I’ve got more than a bit of catching up to do if I’m going to have everything at least built in time for our first games!