Welcome back to Breaking the Iron Curtain - a beginners perspective series for World War III "Team Yankee" by Battlefront Games.
In my last post I began my journey into Team Yankee, taking my first footsteps into the world of histroic/ alternate history wargaming and making a start on my first models.
In this months update I've made some good progress on the models I already, I've begun to learn a little more about the game, and started planning for future projects.
In my last installment I talked about building up Bannon's Boys, a now discontinued started set for the United States forces.
Getting started with Bannon's boys was relative straight forward. The Cobra and M1 Abrams tanks have no real options to them (at least in visual terms, or weapons options) so they were a simple build and paint job.
Despite my limited experience with more realistic models I was pretty happy with the build and the rough paint scheme I cam up with, and was full of enthusiasm to move onto the next project - Ryan's Leathernecks!
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This was to be the first starter set I'd build completely on my own, so I was pretty excited to get going... and I immediately hit a wall!
I was confronted with variable weapon options and equipment on the sprues for the M60s and the HMMWVs and had no real idea what to do... so I turned to my copy of Stripes and started to learn how to actually build an army!
Mustering for War
Team Yankee uses a really interesting "branched force organisation" to bring different types of models together in different ways. Further to this, the same model(s) can feature in multiple different slots within your force, allowing army compositions to look similar but be vastly different. It was a little confusing for me when I first looked into it (it's waaay more detailed than things like detachments in Warhammer 40k).
It's worth noting that Neil cover's army composition rules and some of the impact it has in more detail here; I'm just going to focus on how I've used the Force Organisation to inform me on what to build!
First I turned to the Force Organisation Chart for the US, found in Stripes (which I am aware will be obsolete within 2 weeks of this going live... but the principles still apply!)
On the left we have our Formations (the white boxes) and one the right our Support units.
What jumped out to me were that the M60's featured twice (either the M60 Patton Armored Combat Team or the M60 Patton Tank Company for the US Marines) and the HMMWVs featured three times (either a HMMWV Cavalry troop, or as a supporting Stinger SAM platoon or Observation Post).
One of the things I knew about the army build rules is that each Formations consists of Core Units and Optional Units (and you can see that reflected in the tree diagrams within each formation in the above image by the black and grey boxes). I wasn't too keen on the idea of adding support elements to the force yet, based on what little I know about the game, so decided to limit my options to just the Formations.
Starting with the M60's, let's look at the formation options:
Firstly - good news for me! Both the M60's Formation Core Units were the same (1 Company HQ and two Platoons), as were the points.
Unfortunately, there were some rules and visual differences in the models (note the difference in Thermal Imagining vs IR special rules, some of the Rally dice rolls, and the slightly different barrels on the main turret). Rules are still a little beyond me, but the small visual queues would matter in the long run (no swapping between the two!)
The other major difference was in the optional Units the formation could take
Damn... this wasn't going to be easy!
I was in a bit of a dilemma about what to take.
One thing I did notice, however, is that the Marine Formation could take optional HMMWVs... interesting!
Turning to the HMMWV Cavalry Formation, what stuck out to me was that the core Unit was the same Scout Section from the Marine M60 Formation (likely what the model choice in the box was influenced by)
My options at this point seemed fairly clear.
Build the three M60's as Marine variants, forming the start of the core Formation, with an optional MMMWV Scout unit (and possible HMMWV-TOW unit)
Or
Build the three M60's as the core units from the Armored Combat Team, and build the HMMWVs as the core units of the Scout Section of the Cavalry Troop.
Rather than flip a coin (which is pretty much all I could have done to decide from a rules perspective) I decided to fall back on a little bit of narrative.
Whilst the Marine Company would have given me better unit synergy, and possibly enabled me to get gaming faster, both the M60 Armored Combat Team and the HMMWV Cavalry Troop Formations are part of the Armored Division section of the force org... the same as my M1 Abrams's.
I decided to go with the two formations in the end, reasoning it would give my force more thematic consistency as a single Armored Division. That, of course, leaves the option open for a Marine Divison (with appropriate paint scheme) a little later!
Medge's Leathernecks
With a decision made, I got to building and painting! They're Ryan's no longer - allow me to present my Leathernecks!
In the end I decided to build two min strength Scout Sections, each containing one TOW, one MK19 and one M2.
Next Steps
With both Bannon's Boys and Ryan's Leathernecks done I'm regrettably out of Team Yankee to paint!
I've got the makings of a decent little Starter Army, but it's still a little way off being legal.
To date I've got;
M1 Abrams Armoured Combat Team; 1x M1 Abrams Command Tank, 1 2-tank M1 Abrams Tank Platoon (requires min of 2x M1 to be legal)
M60 Patton Armoured Combat Team; 1x M60 Patton Command Tank, 1 2-tank M60 Patton Tank Platoon (requires min of 2x M60s to be legal)
HMMWV Cavalry Troop; 2x HMMWV Scout Sections (required 2xHMMWV-M2s to be legal)
AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopter Platoon; 2x AH-1 Cobra (legal)
To play legal games (assuming no house rules) it looks like I'll need a few more boxes to start. At the moment I'm leaning towards trying to find another Ryan's Leatherbacks before it totally sells out from suppliers. It'll get my M60 and HMMWV Formations up to legal strength, and probably give me some bonus HMMWVs to add supporting elements (like a Stinger SAM platoon).
There's also the new Starter Box, which looks amazing value for money but leaves my M60's out to dry.
What are your thought? How would you advise a beginner? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading!
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