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The Cold War Gets Hot With Battlefront’s Team Yankee
August 4, 2015 by stvitusdancern
I have read the Harold Coyle book "Team Yankee" numerous times, it is a really good book in my humble opinion.
When I first joined the army in 1986, we trained and trained for the big Communist push that was supposedly going to happen in places such as the Fulda Gap. Thankfully, it never came to fruition and times have changed, but "what if"?
Now you will have that opportunity to explore this possibility with Battlefront's new Flames of War expansion that will be named the same as the book I mentioned previously.
Team Yankee will explore all the possibilities of a clash between NATO and Warsaw Pact armies. While not much has been released about this yet, I believe that we will see the great tank battles that all those tankers trained for in West Germany the Eighties and earlier.
Hopefully, we will hear more about this soon. Until in the meantime, may I suggest the book. It is good reading and gives you the feeling of being there.
Can you stop the onslaught of Communist armour?
"Team Yankee will explore all the possibilities of a clash between NATO and Warsaw Pact armies..."
So FoW is going alternative history with this. That is very interesting and unexpected.
I have never been a Big ww2 Fan so i haven’t given Fow a closer look. But this looks interesting
I really hope they expand this further than the simple bear versus the west. There was a lot of dangerous brinksmanship in these times. It was a time of dark nights and TV government small cartoons telling how and where to place the body of your nearest and dearest. I wonder wether this next generation of people becoming aware of the Russian intercepts almost a daily event, nothing is new here in the UK. You may remember in the late 70s through to the 80s and beyond a lack also of the pressure cooker east west by proxy wars have gone by the way.
Books what about Red storm Rising cant remember who wrote it probably Clancy, but any of his stuff both factual and fiction of this period as a subject and it gets scary, forget your Mr Kings horror stories.
And can I mention in passing here what is the British Government doing about the Chinese expansion which is bringing their forces into I will use the word a none firing conflict with the Australian forces. Please look into this, its pretty nasty stuff to say we aren’t getting involved to aid a Commonwealth country the last I looked???
And who can forget Red Dawn! lol
Wolverines!^^
Yeah there is a lot more to ww3 than fulda’s gap, but they have to start some were. I am super exsited(as always)^^
And yes It would be very interesting to se how it would affect the Australians/ New Zeelanders.
Probably fighting off the Chinese who are fed up paying for Australia’s ore deposits
Hmm yeah, is there any Austrailian military defence doctrine around stopping a possible Chinese invasion? Would it be some kind of counterattack in Indoneisa or?
I think any war in the pacific area will come down to how thin the American Navy can spread itself.
Red Storm Rising was indeed Clancy and one of his best books in my opinion as it played out a theoretical escalation between the then USSR and NATO triggered by a single terrorist event which just happened to have ramifications for the wider Soviet economy.
I agree it’s a fascinating and quite frightening era, just not sure how well that translates to the tabletop unfortunately. As you say there was a lot of brinksmanship and the risks being taken were simply staggering considering the ramifications.
Co-written by Larry Bond who went on to write many more books about this topic in specific theatres. So the neat thing with this type of “modern” historical will be the large amount of source material that can be turned into long campaigns.
yup tom clancy @chrisg .
YEEEEES! I shall make houserules for a swedish army it must be done! Owww man I can use centurions(kak stridsvagn 104) man we never got to train in them. My generationonly got the awsome leopard2^^
Battlefront seem to be jumping around at the minute
What ever happened to their WW1 releases ,still so much for them to cover or have they abandoned it?
I still think 3 or 6mm is the way tongo for this period if you want to fight larger battles
I agree i would like to see french for ww1, but i think the Team Yankee is up for an october slot. I dont know if ww1 would be a Christmas release( prefrebly then with an armstice in the middel of the game for some football)^^
Still exited though, i like 15mm but it all depends on the scale of egagement, company level would be fine but batalion I am not sure.
I believe the Great War rule book is out later this month, listing French, US, British and German forces, according to the gents who demonstrated the game for me last month at the local wargaming show. Fun, but pretty brutal. Army boxes for each of the forces have also been advertised in this months WI but no idea of time scales for those.
Personally I mostly relate the “Cold War gone Hot” scenarios with naval combat but that’s probably me playing a bit too much Harpoon when I was a kid.
Thank you for sharing !^^
Well that sounds great! My clubb have started a bit with great war but most of our gents wants to play the french so now I am the bearer of GOOD NEW!
Id expect this stuff didn’t sell well at all if they didn’t push it further. Its just super niche and I doubt it can fill the gap the saturated WW2 branch leaves to be filled.
Totally agree on both points. Whatever happened to “Fate of a Nation?” When were they ever going to get around to 1973 Yom Kippur? You know, the Arab-Israeli War that actually provides good opportunity for wargames (as opposed to 67)?
And 15mm is kind of a big scale even for World War 2, given the ranges of the weapons involved. “WW3” weapons, ATGWs, anttank helicopters, etc make 15mm really dodgy for a realistic treatment of this topic (unless you get to play on really big boards). 6mm (like GMT Microarmor) or, like @torros suggests , even 3mm might be a better option.
The Yom Kippur is a better period and the “fate of a nation” is not bad in it self. The israelis are a bit to good and 3 t-54 is not enough in box making it … hurt to buy a tank battalion.
Yeap Torros are right on the money whit 6mm, but batlefront is not going to change there scale. I will suport them anyway even tough 6 mm would be nicer.
I know people who play FOW in 6mm by just using the same ranges. They say it works fine
Pardon me Torros I was unclear. I meant the scale of all my terrain. Switching the terrain is what filles me with an icey cold dread in the space my wallet and free time rests.^^
Then there is the problem, if no one buys batlefronts miniatures how will we get more of ww3 related products?
I agree with @torros so strongly I almost have to “disagree” with him (just kidding). Not only would playing FoW with 6mm terrain and vehicles work fine (leaving all the math and ranges in place), it would make the game BETTER. The reach of these weapons compared to the size of the units / vehicles is a lot longer than many gamers realize, and the “battle space geometry” is very badly compressed in many miniatures wargames. Just something that comes with the genre, I guess, and FoW is faaaar from the worst offender in this regard.
A WW3 game would greatly exacerbate these problems. But if you’re dealing mostly with infantry, or just trying to have a good time, well . . . that’s the point of gaming, isn’t it? I buy plenty of BF miniatures and will continue to support them irregardless.
We used to teach tactics back in the 80’s with 1/285 micro-armour. It was fragile stuff… especially the tanks and their bendy white metal barrels, but it gave a great feel for the ranges of vehicles.
Yep, @cpauls1 . 🙂 1/285, that’s 6mm so far as I know. As far as terrain goes, it becomes exponentially easier to build as you go smaller in scale . . . but you need exponentially more of it.
FoW has passed me by but this could be interesting. Team Yankee by Harold Coyle is OK, I can recommend First Clash for those who haven’t read it.
Yup. Canadian Cold War tactics primer.
I love First Clash. I’m hoping Battlefront will do Leopard 1A3s, they’d be “close enough'” to be C1s for the Royal Canadian Dragoons.
I want a Leopard 2 tank…. That’s enough to get me interested. I hope they are going to include countries like Denmark / Sweden / Finland et all. Though the Stridsvagn 103 is a must for me love that tank its so cool
Yeah Stridsvagn 103 is awsome! But god dam was that expensive to makeXD. I got to ride in one and it was an experience!
Okay if it Guinness to it I will do a Stridsvagn 103 centric list for the show. I wonder if the attack helicopter on the cover is a Hind?? I like then too… Also the ability is have Westwood’s Red Alert on the table is so good to pass up
Bloody auto type it should read “if it comes to it” how that got Guinness I will never know
Product placement.
Yes, what does it say about you Dave that it come up with that ? 😉
Yeah I hope for hinds to, becuse a airborne russian force would be fun to paint!. Do it you know in your hearth what it desiers!^^
“Yes, what does it say about you Dave that it come up with that ?”
Good pint…. I mean point… I dont have a problem, I can drink away all my problems!!!!!
They better have cyborg-zombie commie-nazi’s in this version!
*rolls up news papper* Swaths manpug on the nose. Bad manpug! Bad, no boueno!
It’s great being British or American cos we’re automatically the good guys!!! Mainstream understanding of the period is equivalent to the the Lord of the Rings with name-swaps: The great evil in the east waiting to attack ‘any minute now’ whilst the brave ‘defenders’ in the West desperately try to hold back the tidal wave whilst saving as many injured kittens as they can.
Tearful, jingoistic stuff.
But if they dont save the kittens YouTube wouldn’t never be made… And that would be … Bad?
Well now a miniture wargaming can be as jingoistic as you set it out to be. But do necesearly see the Warsawpact as bad guys? And no one is “the good guys in wars”.
This is coming from a Swede and we have a manchurian candidate thing when russia and realtime politics come in to play.
A great book to “correct” this perspective is “Red Army” by Ralph Peters (former US Army intelligence officer and Soviet military affairs analyst). This same scenario, East invading West in central Germany, but told entirely from the Soviet perspective.
If you can still find it, highly recommended. Better than Team Yankee and Red Storm Rising put together. 🙂
Thanks Oriskany! I bought it and now to camp by my mailbox!^^
No worries @rollski . Man, I hope you like it, now that you’ve bought it. 😀 It’s sort of an “ensemble” cast – with maybe three or four main characters that don’t know each other – a private, a tank battalion commander, a five-star general, and an airborne battalion commander dropped behind British / West German lines.
Another great thing about Red Army is the war lasts like three days (no spoilers on who wins) 🙂 It doesn’t last 14-16 days like it does in Sir John Hackett’s “The Third World War” (admittedly written in the late 70s, I think) – and this was the overarching setting and background that Harold Coyle admitted using in his Team Yankee. Peters does a great job of portraying just how fast late-1980s war was expected to progress and the horrifying speed at which even conventional war would consume whole armies.
Doesn’t the war in Red Storm Rising last like six weeks? Don’t get me wrong, I like some parts of that book (the naval-air elements that Larry Bond helped him write, and the Soviet airmobile assault on Iceland). But when it comes to the Fulda Gap, he was clearly out of his depth. Team Yankee and Red Army are much better in that particular regard.
The synopis sold me on it.^^
Yeah the time table seams pretty acurate, I believe the swedish military counted to lose something like 10k for half a days combat
Ooo god its was a long time ago I red Red Storm Rising, remeber reding it at 12 but memory is aslippery thing.><
We (4 CMBG) were the only strategic reserve “plug” for the Fulda Gap, and as I recall, we weren’t under any delusions about how long we could hold out against a swarm of Cat “A” divisions, or even “B” divisions, or how much of a dent we could make in the counterattack role.
Having said that, there were great swaths of ugly terrain I could have defended myself with a Karl Gustav and a chimp loader.
That scenario sounds pretty scary, @cpauls1 . I mean, if the Soviets had cracked the Fulda Gap and your unit was put in there as a strategic reserve, that means . . . damn, I don’t even know how many US units are already gone. All of VII Corps? And **that** was no small group of guys. 🙂
Or was your unit actually IN VII Corps? For at least some of the Cold War 1st Canadian Mechanized was listed as part of VII Corps? A quick peek at Wikipedia reveals . . .
VII CORPS, STUTTGART
** 1st Armored Division, Ansbach
** 1st Infantry Division (Mechanized), Fort Riley, Kansas, OPERATION REFORGER unit. POMCUS Set 1 depots at Mannheim
** 1st Canadian Infantry Division (Mechanized), Kingston, Ontario
** 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), Würzburg
** 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment, Nürnberg
True enough, although only 4CMBG was in-theater, and we were considered the CENTAG strategic reserve. There was no doubt in our minds that this was going to be a come-as-you-are war, with little time for the strategic deployment of further assets… although there were plans for that. The Reforger and Fallex exercises tested those capabilities each year, and oddly enough, those exercises coincided with the WP exercise. We would move along the border as they moved.
We were also grouped, at one point, with two German panzer brigades, 94 and 95? so there was some flexibility in the orgs, as I recall.
True Story:
In 1981, when I was in the third grade here in Pennsylvania, I didn’t sleep for two nights after a Nun in my Catholic School told us, in all seriousness, that Godless Communists could, at any moment, storm the school and begin mowing us down.
I have more than a bit of interest in this because it is the war that hung over my head as a child and was used to justify all sorts of lunacy during the Reagan years.
And yes, if there is no option for “Midwest American Resistance Fighters” they will have missed a great opportunity.
What was the mini series starring David Soul that was WW3 set in Alaska
World War III
Sometimes it’s just that simple 🙂
Cheers
I gotta be honest and say me gut reaction to seeing this is that title is awful. It does smack of the kind of jingoistic nonsense that I find so hateful.
As a teenager in 80s Britain it often felt like the USSR and the USA were both the bad guys. They were going to start WW3 and use Europe as their battle ground. It was very easy to get sucked in to the anti-American feelings that were around at that time.
What makes me uneasy now is the idea of history being divided into good guys and bad guys, which brings me back to that title 🙁
I do understand your sentament Erabus. Take it from a” neutral” country, none of them are good guys. They are two super blocks how are circling each other with knifes out on the euouropean landscape. But nowhere in that do I see anyone portatyed as a good or bad.
The art has a very GI JOE-esque feeling to it…….Would love for someone to do a GI JOE table top game!
I thought the same thing. Sort of started looking for Destro…
This I could go with. I don’t play anything post WW2 and if I gave my reasons it would unfairly go off topic. But suffice to say, inject a fantasy element into a modern setting and I’m sold. Keep the backdrop modern but bring in some fictional pro/antagonists that aren’t just existing countries or organisations (NATO) given a new name and a badge.
I want to fight Halliburton as the Emperor of the Orkney Isles!
I’ve put together an East German force in 6mm for ‘Cold War goes Hot’ games, although we’ve not played yet. We found some rules we were planning to use online. They were based on Flames of War with a few additions, clearly. I wasn’t 100% happy with some of the unit stats which had been created for the Soviets (reactive armour was good though) so I’m very interested to see what Battlefront do.
I’m fascinated by this era, as a child of the 70s. Red Storm Rising equally enthralled and terrified me when I read it as a kid. It was probably that book, in part, which got me in to wargaming in the first place.
There have been rumours that BF would be looking at the Cold War next for some time so I’m delighted to see them confirmed.
That sounds like an awesome idea, @stusidle . I’ve seen some photos and videos on line of FoW games played in 6mm (on really big tables, too). It definitely looked interesting, like they were actually doing a WW2 engagement some justice. 🙂
It does seem to work. There are some great minis out there although I only have vehicles currently. The advantage of those is that it only took me a few hours to paint them all (with the aide of an airbrush). I doubt I’ll add infantry at any stage but a few Hinds and/or fast-movers are very tempting. In 6mm aircraft don’t look ridiculous (cough, 40K flyers, cough).
We (my club) have loads of terrain, as Epic Armageddon (also 6mm) is one of my favourite systems and, if you ignore the odd Imperial Eagle, it just looks like high-rise buildings.
Having lived through this as a civilian child who now has an adult’s perspective (retrospective?), I didn’t feel like the USA was especially “good” at being the good guys. Proxy wars in Central America. Support of dictators like Noriega because they would act as a buffer against the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere. Trillions of dollars squandered on untested weapons systems. A policy in Afghanistan that put military hardware in the hands of the men who would become the Taliban. Doesn’t look like Good Guys to me, and I live here. But this is what happens when you elect an ideological president who thought nothing about cracking jokes about starting a nuclear war into an open microphone.
@rollsk1
Now the terrain thing I can understand
Luckily I have quite a bit of 6mm, but if I do do modern again it will probably be 3mm
Yeap it hurts a little. And yes FOW would have been better if it were 6 mm from the start, but beggers cant be choosers^^
Of course the other problem with the title is it sounds too much like Team America: World Police;)
I have Team Yankee in my personal library. There was a follow-on book or two – it is so many years since I read them that I have forgotten the titles. What I remember about the book was the horrendous casualty rate.
I was anticipating WW III FoW ever since they expanded into modern combat with Arab-Isreali War and Vietnam. Really looking forward to this an will probably pick up the novels mentioned above.
I did enjoy the computer game many years ago as well on my Atari ST
Hopefully they will bring models for this. There is a ton of tanks and such to do ! Nukes even !!!
What’s the template size in 15mm for an ICBM? I’m sure GF9 is already making them.
Size of table x 2 ?
Feathers tone always suggested everthing except stuff within 6″ of the table edge is auto destroyed, though he was talking about low yield Tac nukes
Yeah, this amazing pocket nukes !
As someone who grew up in army bases around West Germany during the cold war I have one thing to say…
This isn’t going to end well!
Fascinating period of alternative to go for. I guess “Ukraine 2015” is a bit too close to the mark.
Might be time to get into FoW
Funny you say that now that so many are getiing out of it 😀
Poor title.
But hopefully a great game with glorious miniatures…
I’d fancy a good match of East Germany v West Germany and the BAOR joining in to save the day 😎
I don’t like the name, but it makes total sense to do a WWIII expansion. They were going to run out of new units that people would want to buy for WWII sooner or later, and I think this has more possibilities than the Arab Israeli wars or Vietnam. Mainly because WWII and WWIII both give opportunities for games to field ‘cool’ tanks and other equipment, but some of the other wars are a bit more one sided – at least in a conventional sense.
WWIII also has the advantage of not being true, so the setting can be adapted to the needs of the game – at least a bit.
Loved playing pacific islands on the Amiga so may be a good possibility to get into.
I thought it was a cool title, but then again I have read the book and by naming the game that, I know exactly what the game is. But if you haven’t, I can see where it makes ZERO sense. And considering the age of the book, I don’t see how they are benefitting a lot from having that as a license. So many other colorful titles could have been used instead.
That all said, very excited FOW is taking a chance and taking wargames somewhere “new”, rather continuing the endless fight for folks WW2 dollars. This also seems like a good extension of the Vietnam line of miniatures, as much of the same Soviet equipment was still very much in use in the 80s.
I will probably pick this up. I have some GHQ Soviet armor lying around somewhere, so I might paint those up to use with this ruleset.
Not that good of a book, pretty formulaic and predictable.
Cliff
It might seem formulaic now , but when it was released it was rather groundbreaking to hypotesize that NATO superiority in technology more than made up for numbers. Many folks genuinely believed that Europe would be overrun quickly by Warsaw Pact. Sentiment changed after Gulf War and everyone realized, “oh, guess nato could have blunted a soviet attack.”
Its well written novel and worth a military enthusiasts time, especiallyiftheyare interested in a contemproary work. Rather than something written with a ton of hindsight.
Some of the best Modern games I have played have been using 2nd or 3rd line Warsaw pact kit in fights between the Balkan countries.
Rather they focused on WWII which made them great. New content is great but cutting out old content and not continuing production of certain things is sad.
My only thoughts on that is . . . hasn’t Flames of War pretty much done **almost** everything for World War 2, at least as far as vehicles go?
A few caveats :
Yes, vehicles. We’re talking 15mm here. If you’re heavy into infantry battles and skirmishes you’re probably playing 28mm Bolt Action or something similar.
I stress the word “almost,” they’ll probably never get EVERYTHING for WW2. But for the past year or so (at least) they’ve been coming out with WW2 vehicles that were extremely rare.
88mm PaK36s on SdKfz-251 halftracks, certain American bridgelayers and engineer vehicles, these flamethrowing halftracks we saw recently, Panthers with night fighting IR kit . . .
All interesting and fun, but when you actually sit down and do some research, you find that . . . ten of these were built and were used for 3 weeks only in Italy, a recent American engineering vehicle they came out with (some kind of Sherman variant), the Americans built exactly four of them and they were used on ONE DAY in ONE Rhine River crossing operation (March 45), etc.
When are players supposed to used these? It just seems that BF are really squeezing the last toothpaste out of the tube here.
Which is why things like Great War, Tour of Duty, Fate of a Nation, and now Team Yankee are so great. It’s a whole new area they can expand into and sell more miniatures (and stay in business). 🙂
Now if they can just start releasing more stuff in PLASTIC . . .
Really well put Oriskany. At this point the only possible extension to their WW2 line would be to also make a speculative line of WW2. Either releasing kits and scenario books for a war that started early, lasted longer, or fired back up with the Allies breaking up (in similar fashion to your WW2.5 scenario).
They could also go with near WW2 product line, covering Korean War. But why hit the same notes over and over? Branching out to a near-modern era makes their products a lot more unique and can catch new people, while also getting their loyalists to spend loads more money on a great game.
Thanks, @stkelly82 – except when you say: “Really well put Oriskany.” . . .
I’m cringing from my VERY first phrase in that post, where I say: “My only thoughtS on that IS . . .”
I’m expecting my third grade grammar teacher to materialize out of some spirit realm and slap me on the back of the head. 🙁 “Did I teach you NOTHING, young man?”
Indeed new wars seems to be the way to go for BF. The only other option would be expanding their WW2 lines into new scales, but there they would run into big competition from PSC (20mm) and Warlord (28mm). Plus, MAJOR changes to manufacturing base.
Have they covered the Spanish Civil war or Japan’s invasion of Manchuria yet?
they did rising sun which has some pre-war Japanese that could be used for Manchurian invasion not sure of the composition of Chinese army’s at this time
Apart from doing it for completionist’s sake, does the Pacific War stuff sell? The breakdown of folks at the Bolt Action boot camp probably aren’t far off on the percentages in general for WW2 gaming. 20 people, and 1 or 2 choose pacific forces? If there is an interest in Asian conflicts, I think Korea and Vietnam make better games than the Japanese intervention on the continent.
Just dragged out my dog-eared paperback copies of Team Yankee, Hackett’s tome and Clancy’s Red Storm Rising….might have to give them all a re-read but I have read them all at least twice….I was huge in FOW but they have largely passed me by the last few years a s I couldn’t keep up with the releases… But this will get me back
A lot of the discussion here makes me wonder if there will be an air lift component? Vehicles with no men, guns with limited ammo, and the need for strategic withdrawal while waiting for everything to arrive.