Hexsides and Hand Grenades

Since I'm enjoying Team Yankee so much, I thought I'd write up a quick post so you can enjoy some nice pictures of my awful model assembly and painting skills and see how this game plays.  In this scenario, I've designed a quick defensive battle between two small forces. Here we have the Soviets with: 3 x T-64 tank company 1 x Soviet Motorized Infantry Rifle Platoon versus: 2 x M1 Abrams tanks 2 x Canadian Lynx Recce armored vehicles The NATO side sets up first with the objective located at behind the group of trees located near the roadside. The Soviets will enter their tanks on turn 1. The infantry are reserves and must be rolled for each turn to see when they enter the game. Turn 1 - Soviets We roll for reserves and get a lousy "1". The infantry will not be coming on the table. The Russians send their three tanks on the east side of the playing area at tactical speed and in echelon left formation. Only one of the T-64s has a valid LOS to the Ab...

Team Yankee from Battlefront Games of New Zealand is a World War III miniatures game set in the same world as the novel published in 1985 by Harold Coyle. The series offers players the chance to battle out the fate of West Germany between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces on a dinner table. Of course, like Warhammer 40K and the like, there's always the aspect of assembling and painting your chosen army, so the game becomes a hobby in itself. If you have the time and the $$$ to spend on that sort of thing, you're in luck - the game's Hammerfall starter kit will get you hopelessly addicted to help ease you into the world of Team Yankee, or as my friends call it, "Plastic Crack Cocaine" for middle-aged guys. I'm joking of course - I have no friends. Rules For those who aren't well acquainted with the rules set, the game is played in an IGOUGO format. One player moves his units, then shoots, and finally assaults. Then the opposing player does ...

This might be hard to believe - but I am not a weeb. I don't watch anime and I don't think Japan is the greatest country to have ever existed on the planet. There are lots of problems here. Big ones too. But I like it just fine as a place to live and work. It's a nice place with lots of good food and people. With that disclaimer out of the way, I'm going to necessarily weeb out a little bit in this continuing look at Tsukuda Hobby's wargaming output in the 1980s. As I mentioned in my look at Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan , Tsukuda had started off producing wargames in 1981 with their science fiction line then soon branched out into historical wargames and then beginner level games aimed at casual players. Fortress is the second game ever released by Tsukuda Hobby. Designed by Atsutoshi Okada, the game is based on several key battles that take place in the original Mobile Suit: Gundam animation series that came out in 1979. I could go in-depth here about...

KHAAAAAAN! Tsukuda Hobby made their first real venture into wargaming in 1981 when the company acquired the license for Mobile Suit Gundam . At the time, the animated space opera was a huge hit in Japan. And no wonder! It's about huge freakin' robots fighting each other in space. How could you go wrong with a premise like that?! pic from BGG . credit to Matt Boehland. The success of the first two Gundam-based wargames, Jabro (which dealt with ground combat) and Fortress  (which focused on space battles) spurred the company to venture further into their existing licenses and make games that dealt with other topics. Star Wars: Death Star and Star Trek: The Invasion of the Klingon Empire were published in 1982. I'm not sure if any of these games were good or not but they were successful enough to spur Tsukuda to keep releasing similar gaming products throughout the 1980s. In fact, the company branched out its wargaming into three separate series. The first wa...

To boldly go where no copyright infringement has gone before Waaaay back in 1982, the wargames industry was reeling from the death of SPI. Meanwhile, roleplaying games were the new hotness as TSR was hitting its stride. Dungeons and Dragons had firmly usurped the time and dollars of the gaming public and Gary Gygax sat perched on the teetering throne called TSR. Fantasy Games Unlimited , which had been busy publishing wargames during the 1970s, saw an opportunity in the changing market and shifted gears towards publishing roleplaying games. One of the results was a game called "Star Trek"...I mean, " Star Explorer ", which billed itself as a "role playing boardgame" that allowed you to step into the shoes of a StarShip [sic] captain of the Federation. I am a HUGE Star Trek nerd. Designed by Dr. Leonard Kanterman (M.D.) and Douglas Bonforte, the game was more than a homage to classic Trek. Years after the game's publication, Dr. Kanterm...