6mm Team Yankee - Russians

With all of the Team Yankee fighting going on at the club, I decided I wanted to jump in as well.  However, being my normal difficult / contrary self, I had to do something a little different.

I really like the Team Yankee rules, as they are essentially FoW but with smaller forces (which is where the rules work better!), but have some visual issues with them.  While the 15mm models are amazing and highly detailed (I own some), I have serious issues with the scale.

Let me run you through some numbers that lead to my issues with the rules:

- An M1 Abrams is roughly 32 feet long in real life (back of hull to front of barrel)
- M1 Abrams had effective kills at ranges above 8000 feet in desert storm
- That provides a vehicle length to kill length ratio of 1:250
- An M1 15mm kit is roughly 4" long and has a range of 40"
- That provides a vehicle length to kill length ratio of 1:10

SEE THE ISSUE I HAVE???  Most of you probably do, while Conscript Greg probably threw his hands in the air and is ranting about math and games not belonging in the same universe together!

Therefore, I went to 6mm, where an M1 is roughly 1" and if we keep the same 40" range, we get a ratio of 1:40 which, while still far below real life, at least looks and feels far better on the table (at least in my mind).

 So, onto the show and tell, and despite using the US main battle tank in my example above, I am going to show off my Russian force today.

All the figure are either CinC or GHQ figures.  They are painted to be used with Team Yankee as desert war or as USA vs Iraq war.  Early on I decided that since Greg was doing European theater cold war gone hot stuff, I would do something different and focus on desert colours.  This lets us do either Team Yankee cold war gone hot battles, or Desert Storm battles.
 

I know some pure historical games are cringing at that last statement, but tough....  I know that Dessert Storm had some different vehicles and that this is somewhat inaccurate, but many of the same vehicles were used, so for a game we can stretch it a bit. While I like historical battles, I am not caught up on exact recreation. I have no real need to worry about which version of which gun was at which battle, I really don't care.  If the figs are well painted, and reasonable resemble something, then all I care about is the game itself.  Is it fun and plays well, Awesome!  I took that view for this so that we could do fun games based in the Team Yankee "world" and use their rules, but stretch it to other areas a bit.

The Russian force I have started here has 20 T-72's, 10 BMP-1's, 5 BMP-2's, and a pile of infantry.  I followed the Team Yankee force creation rules so that it is valid for the game.
I based all of the vehicles and infantry to force some separation between them.  Having learned from Greg, it really bugs me when I see tanks parked side by side on a table.  with the bases being about twice the width of the vehicles here, even if you put the bases next to each other it would still look OK and represent at least 10-15' in real life between them (which is still too close, but better than some nimrods that park 15mm FoW tanks touching each other).

All of the bases were 3d printed to have lips around an area at the back to drop labels into for easy identification (in theory).  6mm is sometimes hard to tell apart at a distance, so having seen many people online use labels similar to these I decided to copy the idea.  Each label has three sections: Unit type (Tank, Infantry, Transport, etc), Description (T-72, M1, etc), and a unit number/colour (so if there are 5 T-72's in a unit but I have 2 units, there is a blue shaded 1-5 and a green shaded 1-5 to tell them apart).

I loved painting these up as they are so insanely fast and easy to do.  Even though I was pretty fast and sloppy with painting them, at table top they look really good!  I am really starting to see the appeal of 6mm!

Still to do with the Russians is some aircraft, helicopters, and some artillery and anti-air firepower.  Coming soon!

New Poll! and results

Our last poll asked if respondents would buy the limited edition Imperial Space Marine produced by GW to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the original.

You overwhelmingly responded that no, you had no interest in such a thing, and we should ashamed - ASHAMED!! for asking. (72%)

The remainder of the respondents replied, rather more reservedly, that yes, they did buy at least one, and four readers bought more than one. (11%)

Our new poll asks, "Do You Even Team Yankee, Bro?" (referring to Battlefront's new 1980s Cold War hot game that has many Conscripts aflutter)

Vote early and vote often!!

Return to Passchendaele

Canadian commanders Greg and Bill survey the battlefield

A couple weeks back, as we always do, we had a big game to commemorate Remembrance Day. This year's game saw a return to the mud of Passchendaele and the battle that raged 99 years ago nearly to the day.

The particular part of the battle we re-created was the assault of No.1 and No.3 Companies of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry up Bellevue Spur to Meetscheele Ridge and the village of Meetscheele. The Ridge was fortified with machineguns and pillboxes, and is represented on the table by the round raised hill at lower centre of the picture above. The village is just above it to the left, with ruined church and several buildings. The objective of the PPCLI is to take one of three objectives: the church, pillbox no.1 on the ridge, or pillbox no.2 on the ridge.

Meetscheele Church, defended by a German platoon.

Germans occupying a trench just to the left of the Ridge. PPCLI seen at top.

Conscript Mike explaining the finer points of the German defence... Pillboxes clearly visible at the front of Meetscheele Ridge.

The German defenders consisted of a three-platoon company and two machineguns. The PPCLI attacked with two companies - each of three platoons - three machineguns from the MG Company, accompanied by future VC winner Lt. Mackenzie, and one 18-pounder field gun. The battalion command section included the OC himself, Lt.-Col. Agar "Ever Thine" Adamson. Notably, No.3 Company was commanded by Acting Major Talbot Papineau, a personage of some distinction, touted as a future prime minister of Canada... who was later played in a CBC production by actual future prime minister Justin Trudeau (!)

Isn't he dreamy???

Papineau went over the top with the men of No.3 Company at 5:53am. Just prior, he spoke his last recorded words to Major Hugh Niven: "You know, Hughie, this is suicide."

The Canadians have gone over the top and are working their way across no-man's-land. The terrain of Passchendaele was described as a hellscape of mud and fetid water-filled shell craters and I think that comes across. 

The PPCLI came under heavy fire from the German defenders nearly from the start. One of the German machineguns was placed in the village with the other in a pillbox on the left side of the ridge. Canadian fire from their own machineguns and the 18-lber concentrated on the German guns at first but the German fire took its toll.

We used the Warhammer Historical "Great War" rules, as usual. This ruleset allows a saving throw of "6" for troops in a skirmish line where each model is at least 1" apart, but owing to the nature of the terrain, this was often not possible. fairly fitting I reckon.

As the game began to draw near its turn limit, the Canadians had made it to the village, where a few doughty Germans hung on...

The PPCLI used the cover of basements and trenches to approach for the final assault.

But in the end, time ran out for the PPCLI as a few Germans remained to contest the objective.

All in all, a bloody slaughter, as it should be, I suppose. It's always fun to amortize the trench table and I think a 4x4 layout was just about right for this game. Thanks to the guys for coming out to play, I hope you had fun, I sure did!

Necromunda Gang - The Jail Birds

Fellow Conscript David Violago decided to run a Necromunda campaign a little while ago (well, too long ago really and I have been slacking) and I wanted to get into it and play some games in it.  However I did not want to use one of my old gangs so I looked around for a new gang to play.

What I found that I really liked was a bunch of figures by a company called Raging Heroes called the Jail Birds.  In my mind these worked perfectly as a gang for Escher.

Anyway, they took far too long to get done, and I still have a few more in the works, but I have finally started getting some games in with both David and Mike.

My gang of ladies, all sporting some prison orange (other than the flamer girl who has her own style)

My leader is sporting a sniper rifle (counting as a Bolt Rifle for game purposes), Mickey Mouse ears, and sucking on a lolly pop, 'cause why not....

My two heavies, one with a flamer and the other with a grenade launcher.

 

 

Next up are my gangers, a bunch of them with autoguns, lasguns, and some with pistols and swords. There are some issues with the pictures though as I just could not get the colours to match in the images and real life, something I really have to work on correcting.  I even have a lightbox and a good camera, I just can't make it work correctly.

Oh, and a shotgun in the hands of the pissed of member of the gang

Lastly and some of my favourite figures are the Juves.  They are literally little girls with pets and guns.  Almost all of the figures have little pets or stuffed animals with them, and carry guns 2x their own size.  Since the guns are so huge and they are little, I count them as auto pistols, to symbolize the reduced accuracy of a big gun in little hands.

One of my favourite figures, a little girl with a big gun, scolding her pet pig!
I am very happy with how the face came out.

I tried to base all of them on urban rubble of some kind to fit into the Necromuda universe.

Now to get more games in!

Soviet SU-25s for "Team Yankee"

1/144 scale SU-25s from Battlefront carry out an attack on the dishes in my kitchen...one way to handle housework :)

More "Team Yankee" material - a pair of 1/144 scale Soviet SU-25 "Rook" ground attack aircraft.  These planes are known more commonly among gamers in the West by their NATO code name - "Frogfoot".  While the US A-10 "Warthog" gets somewhere between most and all of the ground attack love in fluff like "Team Yankee" and "Red Storm Rising", the Frogfoot is a scary beast, armed to the frigging teeth with a 30mm cannon and a bunch of rocket pods and air-to-ground missiles.

Ground attack aircraft should be ugly and intimidating, and the Frogfoot fits the bill.  It has a lovely inelegance in the odd proportions of the airframe and its broad pug nose.  What an ugly, yet beautiful aircraft. Seems like it shouldn't fly, and also looks hard to shoot down - nice work! 

Heads up! Here comes the Soviet air support...

I would have preferred the models to be in 1/100 scale, consistent with the tanks and vehicles on the table.  This would mean the aircraft would be quite large, but I'm good with that - (I love involving all arms in a "cold-war-gone-hot" game, but aircraft should be a pain in the @ss to have on the table for a tactical game, in my opinion).  The Soviet player in Team Yankee can bring as many as six (!) of these bad boys to the table in a single formation...which is kinda bonkers to me (and leads to other silliness like huge NATO AAA formations attached to a single company - but I digress).  Two of these is plenty in my view...

Check out the nose cone at the front...not even close to fitting properly, but from two feet away, meh...

These aircraft models come in two core parts - a small soft plastic/resin nose cone, and then a single piece resin casting of the body, wings tail etc.  The weapons - rocket pods and missiles - are separate pieces, and also cast in soft plastic/resin. Assembly is straightforward (for you, that is - I still f*cked up with the magnets, because that's what I do, but you won't have any issues).  I painted the weapons separately from the aircraft, and recommend you do the same - it makes painting the underside of the wings very easy.  The magnets are great (and again, easy to use unless you are clueless like me - see the photos) and there is a nice decal set too.

Soooo...be careful with superglue and magnets, kids - if you are impatient like me, you'll end up gluing BOTH magnets together in the flight stand, which is not how it is supposed to work *cough* - hopefully Dallas can spot me another magnet to sort this out...

The proportions this aircraft seem out-of-whack, and it looks...beautiful! Love this plane

I do appreciate how Battlefront is making an effort to bring all of these models out.  For someone who has always enjoyed modern gaming but struggled to find a reliable and complete collection, "Team Yankee" has been fantastic, but once again Battlefront disappoints on the quality control front, and I have to rant a little about it.

The sculpts are lovely, but casting quality is very dodgy.  The nose cones were clogged with flash (still a lot there, after quite a bit of work to sort them out) and did not properly fit the nose of the aircraft bodies - it's quite pronounced, depending on the angle that you see the models at.  Several of the weapons were badly miscast, which is why the planes are not carrying full loads - even the missiles which I managed to half-salvage have some pretty ugly lines and blobs, but you don't notice them too badly tucked under the wings. One of the aircraft main bodies had a warped wing, which is still a little warped.

Ready to paste the NATO position with cannon fire, missiles and rockets...ouch!

Are models going to have little flaws? Yes.  But Battlefront charges premium pricing, and if they are going to do that, they should improve on the lowest-bidder casting quality, and give more of a sh*t about the stuff going out the door.  Why is it that Peter Pig, or Jez at Old Crow, can get the casting done so well, and an operation with the marketing resources Battlefront brings to bear cannot? Come on, guys! I love the setting, love that you are doing these models, love the sculpts, but cast them properly!

OK - rant over.  I'm looking forward to sending this pair on a sortie against the NATO lines at a Fawcett Avenue gaming table in the near future.  Those Kh-25 air-ground missiles should be handy against those Leopard IIs and M1s...

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!

The Quest for Shrubbery...

... Ok, maybe not a real shrubbery, but Trees are close, right?

As most of the local gamers around here know, I have had an obsession with finding some decent trees for the last few years. When I started my World War 1 collection I had the very clear idea of doing the Battle of Kitchener's Wood, which is an early war battle where there were still actual trees standing in the battle field.  These were old growth European Oak and Beech and were 30-60 feet tall.

All I had in my collection was a bunch of Woodland Scenic trees that were 3-6" tall and while passable as wargame terrain, they never really looked that great on the table.  At 3-6" tall they also didn't look like actual trees next to a 28mm scale figure as in scale they would be 15 to 30 feet tall.  What I wanted was something 9-12" tall.  I have spent years looking for something that was both realistic looking and cheap (or at least affordable for this cheap @$$ Ukrainian).

Well I finally gave up on buying something pre-made as anything I liked the look of that was used for model train setups cost upwards of $100 per tree!  I needed roughly 8-12 for my table so that kind of killed that idea, as while I was tempted my lovely wife would probably kill me if I spent a $1000 on little trees!  She is understanding and patient with my hobby spending but not that understanding!

Anyway, I found a method to create my own trees that I believe looks very realistic and is semi-affordable.  So, here is what I finally created...

This is obviously just the start of my collection as there are only 4 trees done so far, but I believe it shows what I am going for.  They are fairly large ranging from 8" to 11" tall and cover large areas of the table.

In this picture you can see that the tree covers huge real estate both horizontally and vertically.  This one is almost 11" tall and is roughly 10" wide at the top, compare that to the building which is 6" wide and 5" tall.  Now, this looks like correct scale in my view, unlike the normal woodland scenic trees I have been using.

The trees themselves are made up of real wood that has been baked to dry them out and sterilize them.  They are then cut and trimmed to shape and based.  Once based I applied a poly fiber mesh to them and then pulled and stretched it out until it was as thin and transparent as a spider web.  I then applied spray glue and flocked them several times.  I then clear coated them and finished off the basing.


While they are not super sturdy (constant travel and packing may be an issue) they are a lot sturdier than I thought they would be and should hold up well to the occasional packing and travel, and have already been dropped a few times and have held up very well.

Best of all, they work out to be "fairly" inexpensive.  Even with all the poly, flock, basing material, spray glue, and clear coating, my estimate is roughly $15-$20 per tree in materials.  Time wise it took me about 4-6 hours for the first one, but am now averaging about 2-4 per tree depending on the size.  I don't think it will get much faster as you have to be methodical with the poly or it just wont look right.

I may be biased, since they are mine, but.... I think these are some of the best looking model trees I have seen (short of some of the large $200+ model train trees from expert custom builders).  Like I said though, I am probably a bit biased, so what are your thoughts?