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Hobby VLOG: Oil War – How Big Is Too Big?
February 19, 2019 by cassn
John's been off for a week and he's got some inspiration on what to do for his next Hobby Vlog.
Click Here For More Oil War Hobby VLOGS
As Battlefront are working towards release of the new Team Yankee booklet for Oil Wars, John's got a grand idea to build a force out of lots of sprues we have laying around the studio and get it ready for the tabletop, and if John's planning the Iraqi force, that only means that Warren will be going red...
What size of army would you like to see John make?
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I would like to make a well educated and research comment about the historical context and potential ramifications of a potential clash like this, but I shall go for a more succinct breakdown of this project.
F***ING AWESOME!!
As for the points, build it all. Point it up and move some T-62 to balance the sides.
What if the points you have to spend depend on the oil fields you hold. The twist is, you don’t get tanks back between games.
Also, one of the most striking visuals for battle fields of this time has to be oil fields on fire. The image of tanks fighting through black smoke to a back drop of columns of fire is heavy metal AF.
I love the idea but don’t think you should have less models to take. If you had fuel depots and ammo caches as objectives and you don’t secure them all. Then next game you know some of your tanks are fueled, or have ammo, for 1 or 2 turns. But the key, for me, would be that you know which of your tanks you only have for a couple of turns but your opponent doesn’t.
As for fighting in an oil field, I completely agree, columns of fire, black rain, thick smoke must have been one hell of a battlefield to witness. As for in game, maybe exploding cover, 1’s go boom and halve sight ranges?
That’s a battlefield only augmented reality can provide or table top pyrotechnics… Now there’s a hobby challenge.
In true BOW/OTT style, just build the armies on the table THEN make your lists with whatever you have for each side. Asymmetrical is not something you lads are opposed too and you can always add a helo to the soviets or a bit of artillery to the Iraqi’s if you need to provide a bit of balance. If that is not too your liking, then I think 200 points would be well good as a goal/starting point. /cheers
yep … build everything …
How about an escalation of points? Start at the Tournament level of 64 then move up to 100 and then do a 200 point super battle. This way you can get a start on both armies and then get them on the board as they are built up. Both sides can find out what doctrine seems to work best looking at the smaller point costs and then you can get the units built that you want for the escalation. It would be a fun process to walk through over the time as we the fans could see what works and doesn’t and that may have an influence on the central planning of both armies for their future engagements.
Just go massive just go mad, no limits…?
Tanks for the vid guys, looks like a barrel of fun. Best make track with this one… I think I have exhausted my current puns
I love Team Yankee and really enjoy getting my Brits to the table, so am looking on at this with joy.
My suggestion for what it’s worth is to stick to <100 points, and maybe even go down to 60 and then do some varied scenarios so as you can mix up the units used in each battle.
My rationale is that big "car park" battles in Team Yankee (and FoW!) are tempting but ultimately disappointing as the great fun of tank warfare is manoeuvrability, and if you end up with massive units of huge numbers of tanks you end up losing the ability to do that and find you just have two huge stationary "car parks" of T62's and Leopard 2's slogging it out over a big, barren desert.
My suggestion would be to limit yourselves to 3 or 4 units of 3-5 tanks each, with some air/anti-air support. If you play that out on a 6×4 desert field with a couple of oases or buildings/bunkers you could end up with a battle of manoeuvrability that will put old Warhammer Fantasy Battles games to shame!
Now, of course, that means you can't play with ALL THE TOYS!! So hence my suggestion of mixing it up with a couple of linked scenarios – maybe an intelligence-gathering raid with a few light recon units scouting out a position with hull-down heavies defending. Build up to a raid of combined heavies and scout units taking out well-defended anti-air missile sites, and then leading up to "the Mother of All Battles" where depending on the successes or otherwise of the previous scenarios the MBT forces of the two armies have greater or lesser support from air/anti-air support and intelligence.
That's how I'd like to approach the subject anyhow. Speaking as someone who was glued to 24hour News coverage in 1990 and in 2003 for both Gulf Wars (and in 1982 during the Falklands War I also should add, although it wasn't 24-hour coverage then of course!)
I love Team Yankee! (Did I mention that?) These are the vehicles and situations I grew up seeing at tattoos and shows as a teenager and on the TV during the news. Working them out on the table top is an act of the greatest respect to the men and women who put their lives and wellbeing on the line in those times and in understanding the conflicts we give justification to their sacrifices.
@paul mullis you’ve missed the obvious solution to the tank park problem. (This is BoW we’re talking about…)
Get a bigger table!
Then use all the tanks!
That was my though… They certainly are not short of table space there.
Thought*
Except they said they wanted to keepnit to 6×4. Or am I gettinv confused with the St Nazaire raid stuff that they were talking about at the weekend?
Looking forward to this Hobby Vlog as I love this era of gaming. Would love to see a “lets play” with the army to finish out the series, as this is the point of most people building armies to begin with. Tank on Tank what could be better?
Looking forward to seeing this project grow from beginning to end as it will be the first one since i became a full fledged member. It’s an interesting subject matter and solid alt-universe scenario to boot.
Really excited to see this. I don’t play Team Yankee and don’t have the book, but am very interested.
I say you should go big – lots of points, lots of tanks and a huge table.
Possible worth considering where the battle(s) are taking place too. The USSR didn’t have a land border with Iraq, so where exactly are the Soviets invading from? Through Iran? Doesn’t seem particularly likely. Perhaps Syria? They have a big naval base in Tartus and the Syrian and Iraqi regimes didn’t get along. I can’t imagine that Iraq allying with NATO would improve relations…
If you go this route, then probably it would make sense for the Soviets / Syrians to invade northern Iraq via Hasake and Qamishle, heading for the oil fields of the north around Mosul and Kirkuk. Not much point invading the centre of the country and heading for Baghdad as there’s no oil, and the south is too far.
All of that said, I think it’s a shame to be making one of your factions the Soviets. I know they’ll have a different paint scheme, but you’re basically just repeating what you’ve already done in Europe. You’re playing in the Middle East, so my vote would be to make the most of it. I think the book only has three armies in it, and Israel won’t be much use to you if you’re looking for an opponent for Iraq… Which gives you the prefect opportunity to do an ‘alternate history’ Iran.
If you want some help writing some Arabic grafiti / numbers / unit markings, etc. for your tanks, let me know and I can probably help you out. (And if you go with Iran as an opponent, I’ll ‘snag a normie’ – aka my girlfriend – to assist with the Farsi.)
Would agree with this in regards to the not doing Soviets
this is going to be a good one guys.
Size of the game, just keep painting until the brushes wear out (I hate to think how much all those sprues would cost).
On the NATO stuff going to Iraq in this “alternate timeline”, I would have thought it very unlikely that the Germans would be exporting their best battle tank while Soviets are fighting either on German soil (or even in Europe), everything being produced would be going right into the front lines to replace losses. More likely would be second line AFVs from countries where the front line would be highly unlikely to fought over (eg USA), so likely sales to Iraq would have been from US National Guard stock (so M48s, M60s, M113s etc).
Would have been nice for the opponents to be Iran again (with maybe a few Soviet units added as they did in Angola). Again I think the Soviets would be using all their T72s in Europe, so anything sent to the middle East would have been second line stuff with a few Elite units of Front Line Soviet equipment and crews.
By adding Leopard IIs vs Soviets, your basically playing European Armies painted “sand” (other than the soviet tanks supporting the German Tanks, but in the same way French AMX tanks might be supporting the Leopards in Europe (AMX tanks aren’t up to being a first class MBT in the way a Leopard II or Abrams is)).
….but you do need some infantry, artillery and AFVs other than just Tanks John 😀
Do you think Leopard Is would be more appropriate as, perhaps, castoffs of NATO?
(Assuming the IIs replaced the Is as I don’t know the period well enough.)
What an AWESOME!!! Hobby series, i shall be watching this all the time. I think John you have kind of sold the Oil War to the masses. Great Hobby Vlog I will look forward to more.
This looks like a great build and battle. One question I have is how are the helicopters based? Do they have a “floating” base or do you have to build something to give them height?
Sounds like a good project. No idea as to points as i haven’t played TeamYankee. But you might as well go OTT with it. I don’t think @johnlyons will see painting loads of tanks as a chore. The burning oilfields as terrain would look great. You can do nice smoke columns by blobbing expanding cavity insulation foam onto a wire armature.
Start with a full 31 tank battalion. Do multiple battalions up to your point limit. For the German tanks, do them in 14ish tank companies. Fill in with helos and ada to round up to same point totals. At 200 points you may end up with a short regiment for the cheap tanks. The real limit is probably the size of the table.
Tanks… who would have thought…
…which ones will be pink @johnlyons ?
Having the Soviets as the invaders makes sense as that was after the threat to Iraq in a general war as far as the West was concerned. Having the Germans or German equipment as the Iraqi reinforcements makes little sense. There weren’t enough Leo 2s around for the main NATO front, politically it wouldn’t have happened and its questionable Leo 2s would have actually worked without any modifications in the desert.
You could reflag the Leo 2s as being part of the Turkish Army – as they did get them a decade later – and that makes for a reasonable realistic setup in fact. Might give some interesting other paint scheme which would tie in with the scrub/desert look. The alternatives are French forces as they Iraqi’s had a lot of French kit or the USMC as a sizeable Marine force was earmarked for the region. All depends on how alternate you want to go.
Large tanks battles, yeah good in theory, but with Team Yankee at 15mm there is the visual problem of moving tank parks. As much as I like the system this aspect of large battle puts me off. What @osbad has suggested is a good approach. Or use the table space you have to double up the front to get some good manoeuvre space. After all tank warfare in the desert is all about manoeuvre.
@johnlyons, Bugger the points cost, I want to see you play with exactly what you have their on the table (in & out of the sprues). You’ll probably get asymmetrical forces just form the numbers already available.
looking forward to the next vlog, when all is finished please tape the game and put it out on the show. point size, GO BIG, OR GO HOME.
Since this is an alternate timeline, I’m pretty sure one of the factions used all pink tanks as a desert camouflage.
so where is the sod with the box of matches?
Does ‘Oil War’ ret-con the Iran-Iraq war, ‘cos that was ’80 to ’88?
If not, you could ‘alt history’ and make NATO involvement with the pro-West Iraqi regime the result of Soviet supported Iranian advances threatening Western oil supplies. Prior to the outbreak of war in Europe NATO deployed a German tank regiment to support the Iraqis but couldn’t spare anymore resources because of the growing threat in Europe. You could involve the Israelis as a ‘false flag’ force; older Israeli armour (British and American Supplied Centurions and M-60s) could fight in NATO markings, also have the Israeli Air Force flying some ‘false flag’ missions under NATO guidance against the Iranians.
I think some theatre specific flavour would be nice; fighting in the oil fields especially.
As to how much stuff? Sauron sums it up best; ‘BUILD ME AN ARMY!!’
@johnlyons Assuming oil war hasn’t changed the points values from the main rule books, for a 6×4 table then 100 points is about right. I echo what others have said which is that too many tanks in a big game just ends up being a car park. You’ll find with the T55’s that they will out number the Leopard 2’s about 8 to 1 (if not more) and out number the T72’s something like 3 to 1 so something to bear in mind when trying to create an army that represents a (within reason) historically accurate force.
You’ll also find that in a head on, the T55 has a 1 in 6 chance of penetrating the front armor of a T72, but the T72 Auto penetrates the T55 from the front so expect to use a lot of burning tank markers.
Personally, I think you should double the table, 12×4 and spread things out. Some good LOS blocking terrain like sand dunes to allow flanking maneuvers (gives the poor old 55’s a fighting chance).
Either way, really looking forward to how this project progresses.
Having never played the game, I can’t really offer any input on points etc. But wow! that’s a massive pile of goodness. Gonna enjoy watching this project unfold.
Simple really.Build.It.All.
If your just doing tanks go for 200 as those leopards eat up points … remember though can take the trusty Leo 1…
For anyone looking to build an Iraqi army then this is probably a good starting place, its a list of all former vehicles in use with Iraq up till 2003. You could make quite an interesting army from this list of kit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_equipment_of_the_Iraqi_Army
Build it all and have the mother of all battles. Cant wait 🙂
Go big or go home. Do the biggest that you can. I’m just sad that the Soviets are still stuck with their T-72s, where are the T-80s?
200 points! Go for it!