Monday 31 August 2015

Team Yankee Preview - Tanks and Anti Air

Hello All 

Welcome to the final model preview for Team Yankee (but not our final Team Yankee preview!).
This week we are looking at what you have all been waiting for, the tanks! We will also look at the AA assets.

Let's start with the M1 Abrams, the work horse of the U.S. forces. Entering service in 1980 and replacing the M60 Patton. Armed with a 105mm L/52 M68 rifled gun and protected by Chobham armour this is a beast of a tank.
While not as "advanced" as the U.S. Abrams tank the T-72 is still formidable. Entering service in 1972 a staggering 25,000+ were built! Armed with a 125mm 2A46 gun, later variants also received reactive armour for added protection.
Moving onto anti-air, the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS) is an adaption of the M113 chassis. Armed with a 20 mm M61 Vulcan rotary cannon, the gun fires 3,000 rounds per minute
The first of the two Soviet options is the ZSU-23-4 "Shilka". Entering serive in the early 1960s the Shilka is armed with four water-cooled 23 mm 2A7 autocannons that have a cyclic rate of 850–1,000 rounds per minute.
The final AA option is the 9K35 Strela-10, known to NATO as the "Gopher". The Gopher entered service in the mid 1970s. Its armament is a range of different ground-to-air missiles.
And there you go we have looked at all the models for the first wave of Team Yankee. Let us know what your favourite is, I can't decide between the Hind, A-10 Warthog or the T-72... 

We will have another update for you next week as we take a deeper look at Team Yankee, so come back next week for another update.

Thanks for reading

Ben

31 comments:

  1. Stunning! M1 and T72 look like plastic, as does the Vulcan, based on the existing plastic body I guess. Sov SPAA look to be resin... which makes sense from a business perspective...

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  2. Very nice. Depending on how it is put together the MTLB part of "Gopher" can be used for other purposes. Zvezda already do a very nice plastic Shilka. I wonder if the M1 will have additional parts to upgrade to a M1A1?

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    1. I took my eye off Zvesda, but that Shilka does look tasty. Bet its a bitch to assemble though!
      Found a few pics

      http://wam-plus.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/zvezda-1100-hot-war-zsu-23-4-shilka.html

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    2. and a plastic Carnation 2S1 Gvozdika
      http://wam-plus.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/zvezda-hot-war-1100-2s1-gvozdika.html

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  3. WOW.... need to go have cold shower..lol looking awesome

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  4. no Bradley, or recon of any kind....hmmmmm, not again

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    1. Was Team Yankee set in the late 1980's? Isn't that when the Bradley started to be deployed?

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    2. There is Recon don't worry. Bradley's were very very new at this point so I guess we'll see them at a later point.

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    3. The Mechanized Infantry BN in TEAM YANKEE had M113A1 APC if I remember correctly. Transmission problems delayed M2 and M3 deliveries. First M1 production deliver was in 1981. First M1A1 delivery in 1985 I think. IPM1 in 1983. Its frontal armor would be +1 higher than the M1 as would the M1A1 tank.

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    4. The M3 Bradley appears in the novel as the Battalion Scout platoon, in the last two actions of the novel.

      The troop carrying version M2 does not. But model wise the only external differences are the deletion of the firing ports on the M3 - I think.

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  5. Very cool stuff! But will probably wait on this until the M60A3, whenever they release them.

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  6. Why aren't they doing a T-64B? Wasn't that the most common tank in GSFG?

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    1. Yes, but the book is based around M1's and the guy who wrote the book was in a M1 unit. It would be odd to have a game based on a book and not use the main tank from the book. This is only wave one, lets not point out what isn't there until we have the full picture.

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    2. This game is based on the novel Team Yankee by Harold Cole. When the novel came out the US Army was pretty convinced that the T72 was the Russian MBT, so the novel used the T72... rightly or wrongly. So T72s it is.

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    3. This game is based on the novel Team Yankee by Harold Cole. When the novel came out the US Army was pretty convinced that the T72 was the Russian MBT, so the novel used the T72... rightly or wrongly. So T72s it is.

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  7. The A-10 is easily my favorite model among those previewed. That said, they all look to be very nice and I can see myself finally giving Flames of War a try as a result of these releases.

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  8. very tough deciding between the ZSU, Frogfoot, or BMP...they do look great. Thanks for the previews.

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  9. I'm assuming the T-72 is modelled on the T-72A given it has a laser rangefinder housing rather than an optical rangefinder. But I'm wondering what the squiggly thing below the commander's cupola and above the two ammo boxes and the buzz-number (300, 314) on the turret roof is?

    It doesn't appear on T-72A I've seen:
    http://www.armyrecognition.com/russia_russian_army_tank_heavy_armoured_vehicles_u/t-72a_t-72_a_main_battle_tank_technical_data_sheet_specifications_information_description_pictures.html

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  10. I'm assuming the T-72 is modelled on the T-72A given it has a laser rangefinder housing rather than an optical rangefinder. But I'm wondering what the squiggly thing below the commander's cupola and above the two ammo boxes and the buzz-number (300, 314) on the turret roof is?

    It doesn't appear on T-72A I've seen:
    http://www.armyrecognition.com/russia_russian_army_tank_heavy_armoured_vehicles_u/t-72a_t-72_a_main_battle_tank_technical_data_sheet_specifications_information_description_pictures.html

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    1. That thing is a fire extinguisher. According to the Osprey book on the T-72 BF got that right for the T-72a:

      https://books.google.de/books?id=EQcWAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=t72a+turret+fire+extinguisher&source=bl&ots=JOU0sG0ZjU&sig=76SeWXtTman5d-9d2obDy89Soig&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAGoVChMI7LPp87PUxwIVBG4UCh2vmwji#v=onepage&q=t72a%20turret%20fire%20extinguisher&f=false

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  11. Hmm, it seems to be something that appears more often on models (presumably going off schematics like the Osprey) than actual T-72s.

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    1. Yeah that's my impression as well. Shouldn't be too difficult to remove though if the T72s are really plastic.

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  12. Can't wait to blow up some M1s on the table! For ze Mozerland! :)

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  13. Hind & A-10 for me.
    Great job on this first wave !

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  14. Outstanding stuff! This might just be the game that finally brings me over to Battlefront (I've seriously considered it before, but never quite gotten around to it).I think my favourites so far are the Mi-24 and Su-25 - it definitely looks like I'll be going air-mobile if/when I get into it (now I just need to wait for Battlefront to make an Mi-8/8M/8MT model...).

    The Soviet artillery was a bit of a letdown for me, I would have preferred the 2S7 Pion and BM-30 Smerch, but it's only the first wave so presumably they'll show up later.

    My biggest disappointment though is probably that they're working from a book series - as something of a storyteller at heart I was hoping that they'd keep the WW3 setting open-ended with the possibility for anything to happen (since it's by nature based on alternate history rather than history) and I'd be free to decide on my own the hypothetical outcome, and having it based on a book leaves me concerned that might not be the case. Then again I might be totally wrong/overreacting, and I suppose if the mechanics and models are good enough I could discard the source material. I guess I'll have to wait and see where they go with it - maybe the next preview will calm my fears.

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  15. I do hope there will be some nice fluffy Chieftains to come. Likewise the Challenger. I've not read the book and I've only just started to follow 'Team Yankee'. And so, I don't know when it's set.

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