Using GHQ with TY

[GHQ]

There is much discussion around the internet relating to the size of miniatures to use with the Team Yankee rules. A growing number of people are choosing GHQ 1/285th scale Micro Armour® for playing Flames of War. Many people have said that they would switch to 1/285th, but they have already invested hundreds, or thousands, of dollars in Flames of War miniatures. Now people are looking at the same choices in contemplating getting into the Team Yankee rules.

There are some facts that you should be aware of before making that decision.

GHQ developed its Modern armour line in the 1970's under a contract with the Command & Staff College at Fort Leavenworth specifically for the Dunn Kempf game, a tactical and grand tactical game designed to train army officers on how to defend the Fulda Gap from attack by Soviet forces- the same Fulda Gap scenario that inspired the Team Yankee book.

GHQ's line of modern miniatures were designed from highly classified drawings and photos supplied to US Army Intelligence on a "need to know" basis. These were designed at a time when few people even knew what the equipment looked like. The army contacted GHQ because they became familiar with our 1/285th scale line of WWII Micro Armour® miniatures. They liked them, and felt that 1/285th was the perfect scale for wargaming modern warfare.

After supplying the miniatures for Dunn Kempf, we established a long term relationship with many units of the US Army and National Guard units across the country. Many foreign officers attending the international officers school at Fort Leavenworth, and later Fort Leonardwood, came into contact with GHQ Micro Armour®. Over the years since, GHQ has supplied Micro Armour® for training aids to Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Australia, New Zealand, and many other armed forces.

In 1991 during the run-up to Desert Storm, GHQ shipped huge quantities of Micro Armour® to many military units before they deployed, as well as to forces in the field in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Kits were specially prepared for use in the field, carried in Bradley squad leader vehicles for on-site explanations of planned attacks. Some of you may remember footage on CNN of a squad leader deploying the kits in the field using his hands to form miniature terrain in the desert sand and deploying GHQ Micro Armour®, both US and Iraqi vehicles, on the sandtable-like battlefield. GHQ also supplied all of the miniatures used by NBC, CBS, and ABC that were used on-air for demonstrations as Desert Shield turned into Desert Storm.

GHQ has a long and colorful history supplying Micro Armour® to the US Army for wargaming. At the same time that GHQ was developing Modern Micro Armour® Gen. Donn Starry was in command of 5th Corp covering the Fulda Gap. He developed the plans for defending the Gap. He was a big fan of GHQ Micro Armour®, and when he was later put in command of TRADOC (US Army Training and Doctrine Command) at Fort Eustis he was instrumental in getting Micro Armour® in use at training schools all over the country including Fort Benning, Fort Carson, Fort Huachuca, and many others including the Marines.

GHQ makes all of the vehicles used in Team Yankee for the Dunn Kempf game, as well as many others in the 1980's, and has kept current with vehicle introductions by most nationalities since then. GHQ's range of modern vehicles is staggering, and today represents hundreds of vehicles.

The GHQ Modern Micro Armour® is the same line, continually improved, that was used by the US Army in the 1980's to train for the Fulda Gap. You make the choice which line of vehicles, and scale is the most appropriate for modern wargaming. The US military already has.

Thank you,
Gregory Scott, GHQ Founder

[chrisswim]

I am sold, I will buy GHQ! Let's play.
Gregory, I enjoyed reading that background. Appreciate it.
Happy New Year!
Chris

[Bruce Morris]

A review of the Dunn-Kempf system in Wargamer's Digest (1978?) got me started collecting GHQ MicroArmor. I recall seeing some of the stored boxes of the vacuum formed boards in the Training Aids storage building here at Fort Benning in the mid-eighties. I am lucky to work next door to the Armor Museum storage area in Building 3716 at Sand Hill on Fort Benning!

[SKeeM]

I would like to give my opinion on this subject. I have been collecting GHQ miniatures since 1990 and was very surprised when I went to basic training at the armor school at Fort Knox to see them using GHQ miniatures as training aids. I have been war gaming since then with rules from the day like Close and Destroy and MBT. Today I play FoW in 15mm but have been very excited for TY but knew from the announcement the game will be better played in 6mm. I have been promoting this to anyone who will listen on web forms and Facebook. There is a bunch of us on a 6mm Facebook page thats all about GHQ and TY tactics page that has a lot of people talking about playing in 6mm. The truth is most modern rules are either too complicated or a 4-1, 5-1 scale. Most people want fast paced rules that are 1-1 scale, combining GHQ with TY gives the best of both worlds. You can play a battalion level game in 2 and a 1/2 hours and have a lot of fun. The game looks and feels better in 6mm. The weapon ranges feel more realistic. I have played 3 games already and if no one complains I will post pics of the games.

[bishnak]

...I have been promoting this to anyone who will listen on web forms and Facebook. There is a bunch of us on a 6mm Facebook page thats all about GHQ and TY tactics page that has a lot of people talking about playing in 6mm...

Which Facebook page is that? Can anyone join?

[SKeeM]

You have to request permission to join and wait for someone to grant it, normally it is either a friend or admin.

6mm wargaming and terrain

Team Yankee tactics and models

If you have any problems getting in let me know and I will try to get it worked out.

[ORCRiST]

The official miniatures for TY are just too damn big.

Modern combat is about he-who-engages-first and stand-off. If you're going to accurately model the modern battlefield, its all about range/distance. You NEED to go smaller. The size of their tanks and especially helo's is laughable!

Granted, I only played an introductory game of TY, but it felt exactly like FoW with modern vehicle "miniatures". According to TY's stat cards, a T-72 is superior to an M1 in every way. Better armor, better gun - seriously. Thats just factually false.

There are no rules for specific armor or ammunition types, FCS's, rates of fire differences for auto-loaders vs. manual loading, etc..

Team Yankee is one of my favorite books, so I was really excited - followed by extremely disappointed to actually see the rules. Gladly, FFT3 and GHQ are around to save the day.

[paul]

That's too bad. I liked the 1:1 concept and was hoping it would be a good rule set.

[SKeeM]

The T72 in TY is not superior to the M1 in any way. The T72 125mm gun has a higher anti tank rating but less range. The M1 has a higher armor rating then the T72, so what you get is both tanks have a 4+ save against each other. Now the two tanks sound equal but there are other factors, the M1 is RoF2 and the T72 is 1 so the M1 is putting out more shots and this simulates the auto loader. The M1 has better fire control, stabilizers and night vision. They all allow the M1 to move further every turn and shoot with out penalties. The T72 can move and shoot but if it moves as far as an M1 it is +1 to hit. The M1 can see further at night and most important the M1 is hot on 4+ and the T72 is hit on 3+. So clearly the M1 is a far superior tank. But the M1 cost 8 points to field and the T72 cost 4.7 points to field. Almost twice as much.

Let me just state for the record I am a tanker, I was on M60A3TTS tanks and IPM1's and I am very happy with the way the game feels. The game is more about combined arms and tactics then about having one big hammer. I have MBT and FFT3 and find TY to be the more enjoyable game.

[ORCRiST]

The T72 in TY is not superior to the M1 in any way. The T72 125mm gun has a higher anti tank rating but less range. The M1 has a higher armor rating then the T72, so what you get is both tanks have a 4+ save against each other. Now the two tanks sound equal but there are other factors, the M1 is RoF2 and the T72 is 1 so the M1 is putting out more shots and this simulates the auto loader. The M1 has better fire control, stabilizers and night vision. They all allow the M1 to move further every turn and shoot with out penalties. The T72 can move and shoot but if it moves as far as an M1 it is +1 to hit. The M1 can see further at night and most important the M1 is hot on 4+ and the T72 is hit on 3+. So clearly the M1 is a far superior tank. But the M1 cost 8 points to field and the T72 cost 4.7 points to field. Almost twice as much.

Let me just state for the record I am a tanker, I was on M60A3TTS tanks and IPM1's and I am very happy with the way the game feels. The game is more about combined arms and tactics then about having one big hammer. I have MBT and FFT3 and find TY to be the more enjoyable game.

Let me restate that ours was an introductory game, so we don't have the rules down 100%. But the stat cards I was shown said the T-72 had better front armor and a better gun (AT rating), less the range. I forgot about the ROF difference, you're right on that one.

However, the M1's ability to move/shoot was moot. Moving meant A, no cover, and B, closed the range to the enemy tanks giving them the advantage. The laser range finders on both tanks negated any range penalties, advantage: T-72 unless playing a night scenario, which we did not. Seeing as how T-72s cost approx. half as much, their numbers out-weigh +1 to-hit difference. The M1 is superior on paper perhaps, not in practice, unless playing specific scenarios (ala night) with TY rules.

Again, these are first impressions (I'm not the one who bought the rulebook), and we'll definetly try out TY again - but to me, on the surface, pretty much the same game as FoW - with damn little modern flavor to warrent a "new" ruleset.

[6mmwargaming]

It sounds like you need to play some more games to see if they are any good or not. I try not to draw any conclusions until I've had a couple of games and checked to see if we played it right afterwards (usually not).

I've played a bit of FOW and ROF 2 vs 1 is massive, especially if you are Soviets trying to advance. Move and shoot is huge as well in FOW if you have ever fought Stormtrooping Panthers/Tigers popping out of cover and blowing up your tanks, and then back into cover.

I'm not to sure about TY myself as it seems similar to FOW and I dont know why the T-72 is the main Soviet tank!

Has anyone looked at or tried Sabre Squadron?

[tank_santa]

I would like to see if TY can be adapted for current gen combat.

[ExGGFG]

In my local club I've been advocating moving to 6mm GHQ minis for Flames of War for years now, and wishing that Battlefront could put out a rules set. Finally they did several rules for me - Tour of Duty, Fate of a Nation and Team Yankee for Vietnam, 1967 Arab/Israeli and 1985 NATO/Warsaw Pact.

A buddy and I made armies for 1967, and I made both Israeli's and a 31-unit horde of T-55's as my Egyptian force, while he made a Jordanian army. 6mm is sooooo affordable and the detail on GHQ's mini's.

Switching from 15mm to 6mm does make the ranges work better, IMHO, without any modifications to coherency needed either. We made some changes to artillery template sizes, as they become truly massive in 6mm, so we cut everything in 1/2.

For Team Yankee, I'm building a 15mm force for both sides (100 points), as I'm a big fan of Battlefront's models, but I've already got a large force of 6mm models available as we tried another modern rules set a few years back, but didn't like it (1 tank = a platoon just isn't for me).

I played my first game of TY using GHQ minis just on Friday, and quite enjoyed it. The balance between M1's and T-72's works well I think. You can move fast in the game mechanics and still maintain a full rate of fire. For the M1, you have a higher ROF when moving, offsetting the numbers of the Russians. They're also easier to hit than the US units. So US can dish out a lot of shots and will be harder to hit in return. Like it or hate it, Battlefront has an affinity for the Russian 'horde' and that's how they usually make their lists / points work.

I actually think that the Russian Motorized Rifle Battalions will be a serious force to contend with as BMP-2's are potent and numerous. T-72's can come in units of 10, and overall Russian morale is better than US. There's a very strong rock/paper/scissors balance to it.

Anyway, to sum it all up, I am really enjoying 6mm GHQ minis with Team Yankee - best of both worlds right now!

[Delta Echo]

Our play group has been playing FoW in 1/285 for a couple years now, so I have been watching with much interest in the Team Yankee ruleset release. I went from zero moderns to able to play 200+ pt TY games for both Soviet and US in GHQ miniatures in just a couple months... now to get them all painted...

I'm glad to see that GHQ is open to people discussing games with "cross-company" models and rulesets, and strongly agree with the majority that FoW and by extension, TY are both better suited for play at the 1/285 scale.

ExFFGF - Agreed on the need for cutting the "stock" artillery template area down. I have a complete set of "GHQ 2/3 scale" templates made by Litko that are about perfect for artillery and airstrikes for FoW and TY (in 1/285 scale). I know Litko makes GHQ 1/2 scale, but they seemed to think that halving the length of the sides (from 6" to 3") is 1/2 scale... its not, being area of effect templates deal in area instead of just linear length.
For example:
-"Stock" Team Yankee artillery template is roughly 6"x6"= 36" square.
-Litko 2/3 scale artillery template is 4"x4"=16" square.
-Litko 1/2 scale artillery template is 3"x3"= 9" square.

1/2 scale area of 36" is actually 4.24" squared, but with rounding that ends up being pretty close to Litko's GHQ 2/3 scale template... go figure.

The "Stock" TY Salvo template (or artillery and aerial rockets) is 10"x10", so I'm probably going to have to hunt around or create a 7"x7" to bring that down to scale too.

On another note, what is everyone using for the TY Unit Cards? I have made due with what's publicly available, but it seems pretty lacking with a several still unreleased. I was really hoping to not have to by a kit, keep the card and then eBay the model minus the card...but can't see too many other options to get the TY cards separately at this point.

[Extra Crispy]

All of the stats needed to play are in the book. The cards are just a nice way to make it easier to play. I've been making my own for Flames of War for a while now...