Team Yankee Unboxing: BM21 Hail Battery
October 21, 2016 by dignity
Today the dynamic duo are unboxing some more Team Yankee as, today we have the BM 21 Hail Battery squad.
The BM 21 are a fantastic force to have on your team and with a 90+ inch range on the table you're sure to blast away your target. Perhaps you want that field nearby ploughed or maybe the sky to be engulfed in a fog of war?
Have you used the BM 21's in your games?
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Once a Grad, always a Grad.
@johnlyons and @dignity
The Battlefield soundtrack makes these much cooler!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vkz3opneLo
They have been around since the early 1960’s and a lot of variants have been developed, both of the transport vehicle and the rockets themselves – longest ranged version go about 40km so 96 inches is an understatement 🙂
If you want to see really scary MRL’s check out the BM27 and BM30. The 27’s would be eligible for Team Yankee.
You have to remember the “sliding ground scale in battlefront games. The tanks have main gun ranges of I think 40in, Given the tank model is 2-3in long, that gives a he tank gun a tangle of 20 or so tank lengths. Given a 26ft Abrams, that’s a gun range of a little over 500 feet. We all know modern tank guns have ranges well over that.
What I struggle with is a use for this vehicle. It has a hard time hurting vehicles due to low AT and firepower. Thus it’s best against infantry. It’s advantage over the gun art is the larger template, but most non-soviet forces don’t have large infantry units. This you have a weapon that’s best against other soviet players.
@foehammer888
The new British infantry formations have quite a few stands of Milan launchers in them, it would totally ruin those!
Another great video, guys. And have no fears re: “Katyusha,” @dignity . I’ve heard many correspondent and reporter call basically any “rockets on a truck” system a “Katyusha,” so you’re not alone.
Grad is the term I have heard as well, Град – but this is “Hail” in Russian (as printed on the box).
These things are still being used all over the place even today. In particular, I ran across countless mentions of them during research for last year’s Ukraine 2014-2015. Both sides had and used these constantly. Their bad accuracy made them notorious in that war for hitting civilian targets, and are definitely considered the most hated weapon of the Ukraine War. It got so bad that Simon Ostrovsky, the VICE reporter who made a name for himself reporting on that war, could identify the burnt-out spiral-shaped tail fins of an expended and impacted Grad rocket. Apparently these are the only part of the rocket to somehow survive the blast, and picking through the charred rubble they’re easy to spot. “Yep, a Grad did this . . .”
I’ve also “used” them many times in Avalon Hill Arab-Israeli Wars, where Egyptian Grad batteries do plenty of damage vs. Israeli infantry, mortar, and artillery positions during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. They can even pin down tanks or slow their movement via interdiction fire.
In the Marine Corps, Grads used to feature heavily in our “lore” as they were used by the NVA in the Battle for Hue in Jan-Fen 1968. So these things have been around a while. I’m sure they’re being used in Syria at the moment as well.
I’m curious about the Grad’s reload rules in Team Yankee. In many games, weapons like this get an incredible “one-punch” blast attack, then must spend several turns reloaded (or never at all, they’re sometimes considered one-attack weapons). This might account for their low point cost in the game compared to more conventional artillery systems like the M109 Paladin series, which fire a much smaller attack but can do so for literally weeks at a time with proper resupply (see Israeli bombardment of Beirut during 1982’s “Peace for Galilee”).
Arghh . . . that was supposed to be: last year’s Ukraine 2014-2015 article series.
On one position in the Gulf a MLRS battery pulled up behind our M109’s and carried out a 59 0 round fire for effect. The noise and experience at the launch end was incredible, God only knows what it was like to be on the receiving end. The noise was immense, and they loosed thier rounds with incrediable speed.
nice video guys
one hail storm not to be caught under.
The BM21 in action
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bm21+bombardment&&view=detail&mid=2C52BE0B1F104C0AA24A2C52BE0B1F104C0AA24A&rvsmid=BD8DD172DC337DDDD591BD8DD172DC337DDDD591&fsscr=0&FORM=VDFSRV