The Soviets managed to win this close WWIII contest. This was down to the tough-as-old-boots T80s and the (albeit late) arrival of their Sukhoi 25 strike aircraft. The Dutch Leopard 2s couldn't dent the armour of the T80s, although they did shred pretty much every other Soviet vehicle on the board.
For the first time in a long time, some Teal Yankee action. In this game, we have assumed hypothetically that the Poles would have been motivated enough to have gone toe-to-toe with NATO in the mid 1980s, bearing in mind the recent history of the Solidarity national strikes and the imposition of martial law in 1980-81. We have deployed the 20th Warsaw Armoured Division (considered elite) on the basis that they may have been more up for the fight, although this is debatable.
The Poles almost won the game, if it hadn't been for a T72B fluffing an open side shot againts a Challenger. As it was, the British managed to destroy most of the Polish force in the following turn.
Even with the new dynamic points system, it is difficult to see how the Poles could have won. They only nearly won because they rolled in their reserves straight away and successfully called in their SU-22 aircraft strikes, whilst the British struggled to bring in their Challenger and Chieftain reserves.
We played Team Yankee on a double size board with 200 points per side to see what would happen. Mutual obliteration is what happened!
Both sides - Soviets vs Americans - went heavy on air assets, which skewed the game somewhat. Initially the American air arm ran amok amongst the Soviet armour, knocking out a whole company of T64s by the second turn.
The Soviet reserves arrived first, in the form of some T80s which, along with some BMP1s, managed to flank their opponent, enabling them to take out the American Chaparral air defence systems. Also, eventually the Russian Gophers, Shilkas and Gremlin missiles managed to weaken the US helicopter force (helped by the fact that the Warthogs failed to show up for a few turns). The 'Krokodils' (Hinds) then made an appearance, taking out a couple of M1A1HCs, but by that time, there weren't that many ground forces left on the table.
In the end we gave a 'winning draw' to the Americans.
I'm not sure we would play 'big game' Team Yankee again with just two players (as it was a bit of a slog), and we would probably seek to introduce a few other special rules to allow for the larger spaces involved - along with limiting the amount of air assets allowed.
This was a real nail biter of a match, that wasn't settled until the last shot of the game. The Soviets pressed their attack remorselessly, taking heavy casualties in the process, but eventually overcame their American opponents. The stars of the show were the Russian AA 'Gophers' who shot down three A10s (the final one being shot down by an infantry 'Gremlin' missile team). The disappointments of the day were the M1A1s who only arrived on the table too late to save the day.
