Recently I took a much greater interest in Team Yankee due to the fact that the rumors and then affirmation that Flames of War v4 was going to be strongly influenced by the Team Yankee rules.
Mix in the fire sale at The Source up in the Twin Cities which resulted in the rules being about $5, I started reading and generally liking what I was seeing. The ability to actually target teams, artillery targeting by location, start with pre-plotted artillery, more order options, air that can loiter, and a bunch more that seems to be taking the game in the right direction, one heck of a carrot to dangle in front of an avid gamer.
Alas still a d6 game, but I’ve looked at the odds in the past for flames of war and the reality is the hit/save/firepower combos work out pretty close to d10 based games that do a hit/penetrate type of approach.
Given interesting rules, of course one needs to test them out. I thought from a past 1/300 lot that I had a bunch of modern American/Russian lead, oops, guess not. 1950s Russian hardware yes, but not 1985 Abrams or T-72s. This leads of course to actually picking up some lead, err plastic, mostly plastic.
I really really really wanted to pick up West Germans but at the time I was up at Dreamers Vault in the Twin Cities they effectively only had Russian hardware, they didn’t have the German book so I dove in picking up Russians since from table talk more Russian players were needed. If it all proves to be mighty fun, a West German force definitely could be in my future.
Which then leads to painting….
I decided to go with a Finnish camo scheme on my vehicles. O yeah, I like the look!
Then suddenly I’m sorting through my music collection in iTunes looking for ~1985 tunes, which all tally up to about 6 hours of junior high, high school era good times.
Then I’m picking up the Team Yankee book by Harold Coyle and it’s good … I mean a really good page turner.
So at some point will get to play a first game and I’m really looking forward to that. The Twin Cities Flames of War Facebook group has a number of new Team Yankee players so it’s all good.
All this coming from a guy who hasn’t played a ‘modern’ era military game since some time in high school back in Bismarck when I played in a what if game involving the Russian, Iranian, and American navies. I ran the Iranian gun boats and got totally smoked.
Good luck with the games. I was fine with my one exposure to the game at What-Khan. Keep us posted on developments. When the Source had their fire sale I might have done the 4+ hour drive if I hadn’t had a conflict already. What are the aircraft? I’m not an authority on the 80s by any means, but I don’t recognize them. Yes, loitering over the field is good.
Thanks! Those are SU25 Frogfoots. Essentially the Soviet “version” on an A-10.