US M901 ITVs for "Team Yankee"

M901 ITVs in 1/100 scale from Battlefront

Still more "Team Yankee" reinforcements for the US NATO contingent.  These are M901 ITVs...I'm sure that acronym stands for something...but anyway these things shoot fancy TOW missiles at enemy tanks.  And of course TOW is also an acronym...I don't know how real military people sift through it all...anyway, it is a guided anti-tank missile.  Takeway is that these are pretty deadly if you are a Soviet tank.

Anyway, TOW missile launchers + lame M113 chassis = very useful AT vehicle for US mechanized infantry forces. While the US will count on the M1s to blow away everything in sight, there will be times where the infantry needs some dedicated assistance to deal with (or at least slow down) enemy armour, and these M901s will do the trick, allowing the crew to zap TOW missiles while the M113's "armour" protects them from (most) small arms fire and (supposedly) artillery bombardment.  The elevation of the box launcher also allows the M901 to seek out hull-down type positions while limiting the actual exposure of the vehicle to return direct fire. 

TOW missiles are pretty nasty, but they seem to be a fiddly bit of business to use properly, so all the protection counts and helps the crew concentrate on their role in (relative, for a battlefield) safety.

Hunting WARPAC armour at a distance...

Like the M163s, the M901 models from Battlefront are relatively easy to assemble, and thankfully I didn't screw up too much on the parts, trimming etc.  As before, I did my best impression with the MERDC camouflage pattern. 

While I don't care for the M113 chassis, I have to admit these M901 variants have a kind of spooky look to them...something about that launcher...certainly looks ominous to me, without being directly scary...what could be in that box? Oh...yes...whoosh!  The little trio of lenses in the front of the launcher make it look like a robot of some kind...

Thankfully the conflict portrayed in "Team Yankee" is fiction, but TOW missiles have seen action in real conflicts.  I believe the US first used them in Vietnam against NVA armour.  The IDF may have used them in the Yom Kippur War, and I believe they also saw use in the attack into Lebanon. I'm sure smarter folks will know if they have seen other use as well - please don't hesitate to chime in below!

Again, very nicely done kits from Battlefront - I hate plastic models, but you will like them

Weapons like these are one of those things I find tests the mettle of the "Team Yankee" as a ruleset, for two reasons. The first is the range.  As with so much modern hardware, "if you can see it, you can kill it" and it can be a challenge to make the engagement ranges "appear" reasonable on a 6'x4' table in 15mm.  Not impossible, but a bit of a challenge.  Weapons like the TOW are a particular challenge for this, as they are meant, I believe, for a somewhat longer "stand off" engagement range.  I find it totally possible to imagine a situation where tanks with 125mm high-velocity main guns end up practically knife-fighting due to battlefield conditions, maneuvers, fog-of-war etc. But I'm not sure the TOW is much use in that kind of circumstance.  So like I said, a bit of a squeeze for the game.

The launcher looks...kind of spooky...has a bit of a pre-Sky-net look to it..

The second has to do with cost. Western military equipment is generally noted for valuing quality over quantity, and these TOW things are probably not cheap.   I find the narrative progression of stories like "Team Yankee" or "Red Storm Rising" assume a high effectiveness of these sorts of weapons, such that the Warsaw Pact advance is of course imperiled by these circumstances where a few troops with a launcher are easily delaying the vast Soviet armoured columns.  This thinking takes for granted that lots of these TOW missiles (and MILANs and others) are stocked up - but if the actual shooting war had started, how many missiles would have been on hand?  Sure, in the first few days, Team Yankee would have all they need, but I wonder how much ammo the M901s would have had handy after one week, and what that would mean for the mechanized troops who count on them...thank goodness we never had to find out for real!

But blah blah blah - this is just toy soldiers, so enough drivel! On to more reinforcements...stay tuned!

US M163 Vulcans for "Team Yankee"

M163 VADS in 1/100 scale from Battlefront

The "Team Yankee" painting run continues.  Following on the M113s from last week, here are some M163 VADS vehicles to provide some essential AA cover for the US formations in "Team Yankee".  The models are 1/100 scale plastic kits from Battlefront.

Making the skies a little less friendly for Warsaw Pact types...

I have to hand it to Battlefront - their "Team Yankee" rules are a lot of fun.  Not perfect, and it took me a while to get used to them, but overall a lot of fun. A big part of that (for me) is the ability to have a lot of involvement from helicopters and strike aircraft in the game.  The Soviet Hind helicopters are real beasts! I can remember the first time we tried the "Team Yankee" rules, the games didn't even make it past three turns, in part because the Hinds blasted the NATO fellows off the table. 

I generally hate plastic model kits - but I must compliment Battlefront, lots of detail on these

So where I often see AAA units as really optional - and often kind of silly - in a "Flames of War" game (unless a specific scenario has been devised or you are talking very late war, where German AA formations often found themselves on the front lines), you sort of really need them for a game of "Team Yankee" to get a flavour for the setting in my opinion - YMMV.

Watching for Hinds...

These M163s were decent kits to put together, and I generally despise plastic kits, so I bet normal people will find these to be a real breeze to work with.  As before, I cursed the MERDC camouflage, but it's my own fault for not thinking things through at the outset, so I did the best impression I could with the plain old paint brush. 

My model skillz were not too sharp with these kits, and when you observe the photos, you'll see some gaps in the frames where I thought I was cutting away excess flash, but was in reality shaving the sides of the top and side plates (whoops!).  I wish I had some bed rolls or something to cover those little gaffes...maybe in the future...but from two feet away, it looks good enough :)

...but in reality, hoping to light up a motor rifle company...

While the AAA vehicles of other nations, such as the ZSU-23-4 or the Flakpanzer Gepard have a certain notoriety among gamers and geeks interested in the setting, the M163 is kind of an unkown for me. I thought this was an IDF vehicle at first, and I did not realize it was part of the US arsenal.  Sure seems deadly, though - and like all gamers, while I want to protect my vehicles from air attack, what I'm truly hoping to happen on the table is for these things to have an opportunity to rip open a column of enemy BMPs...because Vulcan rotary cannon...

More "Team Yankee" stuff is rolling off the painting table...stay tuned!

Up Next: Team Yankee

Great! More toys! 15mm "Team Yankee" US starter set from Battlefront

What's a New Year without a New Insane Project, right? The madness of Warhammer 30k will certainly continue in 2015 - in both 6mm and 28mm scales to boot! I guess I could try and "focus" on those.  I've heard of this thing called "focus"...but screw that. The release of a set of cold-war-gone-hot rules from Battlefront is certainly too interesting to pass up.  The goodies have arrived in the mail, and I was excited to dive in. Let yet another New Insane Project Commence.

I generally enjoy Battlefront stuff - Flames of War, when I take off my gaming snob hat, is a ton of fun, if you ignore some of the sillier stuff (and there is a lot of that - like artillery right on the table -arrgh! but I digress).  I was pleased to hear Battlefront was doing some 80s Cold War rules.  I expect they will be relatively light, fun and quick, and have lots of flaming tanks on the table.  If you check through a lot of the modern "what-if" and historical AARs on this blog, you will notice that is a recipe that works for me...
 

You get a bunch of cards...whatever - it's the figures that matter!

But in this case I care less about the rules and more about the figures. Finding a unified, relatively complete set of figures for any particular sub-period of "modern" is not easy.  Micro stuff is covered extensively and completely (see GHQ, Scotia and Oddzial Ozmy). Once you are looking to get larger than 6mm in size, however, the ranges become incredibly balkanized. So I'm excited Battlefront is stepping in, as they tend to be really complete with their ranges. They certainly were with the Arab-Isreali Six Day War stuff (and seemed to be with Vietnam).

Pretty nice plastic on the M1 Abrams sprue - I'm pretty sure the parts are included to make another variant...maybe the M1A1, which had a bigger gun, among other things?

And yet, a few things hang in the background. Maybe the word that worried me most is "plastic".  Battlefront is making a huge effort, it would appear, to have most, if not all of the Team Yankee product range be plastic. Plastic today seems to have this totemic place in the minds of many gamers as "oooh, this will be so great and cheap". But this is not always true.  Price is a function of supply and demand - plastic in and of itself is not magically cheaper as a final product.  Furthermore, plastic is really hard to do well, particularly in smaller scales, and my previous experience with Battlefront plastic has not been great - cheap, brittle plastic and soft details.

To give Battlefront credit, I think they have been working very hard to make improvements when it comes to the plastic. They care what customers think, and they want to get things done right. They seem to want to have a great product, and are prepared to risk some bumps to get there. So I was keen to see for myself when I received my first "Team Yankee" products.  

Test model number one...now to figure out that MERDC camouflage...

I wanted to start with the US forces first, as I already have some 15mm Soviet kit painted (as does Mike F), so this seems to be a quicker way to get to a test game. The US starter box contains five M1 tanks and a pair of Cobra Helicopter gunships. I stuck together one of the M1s, and I have to say, not too bad.  The detail on the plastic is nicer than I have seen on other plastics from BF, though still nowhere near the nice, sharp details you get on properly executed metal vehicles. And the plastic is still a bit brittle for some parts, like the .50cal MGs - use extreme caution clipping those suckers off the frame.

With the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge underway, one of the side-duels I have going on is "Modern Mayhem" with Curt and Byron.  Getting these models underway will hopefully score me a few points in that area.  Just have to try and puzzle out that confusing MERDC camo the US seemed to use in the 1980s...