Team Yankee - Amendments

I have had a couple of requests to share the amendments that I have made to the Team Yankee rules, so here they are. A couple of points to note first. These are amendments that we have play-tested. There are more on the way, some of which are fully formed, some which are just thoughts at the moment, but in any case, until they have been used in a live game, I'm not going to detail them here. That can be for a future post. Secondly, the amendments were made so that the game played in what I believed to be a more nuanced manner. As such, you may (should, and indeed, will) disagree with some of the changes made. That's a good thing and I welcome comments, suggestions and points of view.

Playing Team Yankee for the first time was an enlightening experience. Very different from our usual moderns rule set (Combined Arms), TY was a fast paced and rather bloody game and this raised some questions. Undoubtedly, it filled an afternoon, but what it lacked was a sense of satisfaction. It was too lightweight, too gamesy. So here we are.

Can't fault the production values...

The first thing that I changed was the hit values on the main battle tanks. This was to counter the "BANG, You're dead!" style of game play and to bring a dose of reality to the table. Modern MBT's can take some punishment and I wanted to reflect that in the game. Once a hit was scored, I made the player roll for hull or turret. If the hit was on the hull, another dice roll decided if the tracks were hit (1 or a 6) or the main body (2 to 5). A hit to the tracks created a mobility kill which meant the tank could still fight but not move. If a turret hit, then a roll decided if it was main armour (1-2 and 5-6) or mantlet (3 and 4). Take the Leopard 2 for example: the sighting system carves out a great chunk of the turret front. For tanks with Chobham type armour, their values were inflated too. Again, with the Leopard 2, the frontal armour went from a flat 18 to 24/18/24 (right panel/mantlet/left panel). This meant that a T-72 hit (with a value of 22) could kill with one shot but it wasn't a certainty. I also added a rule that if one section of the armour was hit and the tank survived, that section was now rated down to the weakest level on the front of the tank (18 in this instance), meaning a second shot on the same area had more of a chance of destroying the tank but allowed the game to reflect that the armour was doing what it does in the real world. In the same vein, Soviet vehicles fitted with Explosive Reactive Armour resulted in a temporarily higher defense value, but if hit and the armour saves the tank, the original armour value comes into play as that panel has now been used.

After the armour came the bailing out rules. A previous comment on the Durham post tried to clarify that the rules don't necessarily mean bailing out, just a possibly short term effect that can be recovered from. Me, I take the direct English here and the rules say bailing out and re-mounting. I changed this by asking if the crew wanted to bail and if they did, and the enemy were in MG or small arms range, they would have to deal with incoming fire. Any hits rendered the crew out of action.

The assault rules were also looked at. No more bouncing back. If you failed to pass over an obstacle, you got stuck, effectively giving yourself a mobility kill. Speaking of obstacles, if fording, Soviet crews had to roll a D6 and if they got a 1, their engine stalled. Rolling another D6 and another 1 led to the engine compartment flooding. This was, apparently, quite common and river obstacles were only traversed during exercises by vehicles equipped with radios in case such events happened. Probably not the same possibility as the two D6 roll gives but it adds a bit of flavour.

Ranges were next examined after the Durham game and the following were put in place for the most recent one:

Allies

L30 120 mm = 60 inches – 3000m

7.62mm MG = 16 inches – 800m

30mm Rarden = 30 inches – 1500m

SA80 = 8 inches – 400m

MBT LAW = 1 to 20 inches – 50 to 1000m

Hellfire = 10 to 160 inches (500m to 8000m)

Javelin = up to 50 inches – 2500m

30mm Avenger – 24 inches = 1200m

Maverick = off the table

H’aarqui

T72 125mm = 50 inches – 2500m

12.7mm = 20 inches – 1000m

AK47 = 7 inches – 350m

73mm cannon = 10 inches – 500m

30mm cannon = 30 inches (armour) 80 inches (ground 1500m and 4000m

AT3 Sagger = 10 to 60 inches – 500m to 3000m

AT5 Spanderl = 2 to 80 inches – 100 to 4000m

SA-9 = up to 84 inches – 4200m

Whilst not 100% accurate, they are close enough and now fit in relation to each other. Additional calculations were used for the effect of 30mm Avenger fire, based on the A-10 travelling at 400 knots, covering 175m/s (so 3 inches). A one second burst when used for strafing would cover 3 inches, a two second burst covering 6 inches and so on. This led to ammunition rules so the A-10 was limited to 5 one second bursts. In the same vein, armoured vehicles firing MG's had a maximum of three consecutive turns before rolling for heat-related jams (1-3 jammed, 4-6 ok).

Aircraft were also changed and can loiter for as long as five turns before fuel becomes an issue and removes them from the table. Naturally, if you have weapons that can shoot at them, if the aircraft is on the table, they are a target.

Finally, artillery. Well, mortars so far. Instead of an over-priced piece of plastic, I used the ground scale. One mortar with observed fire could accurately hit a 50 x 50m square (1 inch by 1 inch). Hit rules remain the same and I'll look at battery fire later on. This makes mortar fire more of the pin-point weapon it should be and forces the player to think about target selection.

It may seem that this puts a heavy responsibility on the game umpire to keep track of things and yes, you'd be right. Our group uses the umpire system as it fits in well with our outlook of the hobby and , for one, quite enjoy umpiring now and again as it's something different.

As I have said above, any comments, queries and suggestions are most welcome and I'll try and reply to each in turn.