Last weekend, I went to Spiel Essen, one of the premier board games conventions in the world.
Aside from board games, there's also a wargaming presence. One of the companies that tranditionally has a stand there is Battlefront, the makers of Flames of War.
This year, they had a whole bunch of previews for one of their upcoming releases, Team Yankee.
This ruleset is a streamlined version of the Flames of War rules that focuses on a hypothetical scenario: what if the cold war "went hot" in the mid-1980s.
The forces in the initial release will be based on those from the novel "Team Yankee" by Harold Coyle. This means US versus Soviets in southern Germany.
One of the ways things have changed is that units will now have reference cards which contain their stats, points values and special rules so they're easy to check.
They had a whole bunch of these at Spiel and I managed to take decent pictures of most of them. I also got to read part of the rulebook.
A few of these have been spoiled on Breakthrough Assault since I took these pictures, but I left them in anyway.
However, we start off with a card that doesn't contain unit stats:
Instead, we get a couple of special movement options units will apparently have in this ruleset.
They offer improved mobility options, but only if you pass a skill check. Which means that more skilled troops are better at using these advanced tactics as well, which makes sense. I do think the restriction of being close to the command team is going to be tricky.
The
Blitz move could be really devastating if used well, for example to have a unit with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) which can only fire from the halt pop up and shoot anyway. Of course, the penalty for failing this check is pretty harsh as well.
Follow Me! reminds me strongly of
Avanti! and similar special rules used by a few countries in FoW. A simple option if you want some extra movement and weren't planning to shoot anyway. This one would be especially useful if it can be used after a Dash movement.
Shoot and Scoot is basically a
Stormtrooper move. Who doesn't wish their non-German troops could make those? Well, in the 1980s, they can.
Cross Here allows extra mobility across difficult terrain, always useful to have.
Dig In is as might be expected, although the distance restriction could be tricky here as well. I'll have to see how this works out when we've got the full rulebook to look at.
