The Angry Dachshund played a large-ish Cold-War-Gone-Hot battle recently, recreating battles from the Team Yankee novel and using a few sets of rules to do it. If you read the first installment, we now come to the denouement. (if you have not yet read it – I strongly suggest reading it first and then circling back to this post! If only for the pictures of the miniatures!)

The newly liberated town of Lemm is in ruins after repeated artillery bombardments and small unit actions inside the village. Team Yankee is racing like hell to assault Objective LOG, AKA Hill 190, with the ultimate mission of capturing Hill 214, the prized high ground overlooking the town of Arndorf, from the Soviets.

There should be more maneuver space between Lemm and Objective LOG but this is how it sat when I played the game. LOG is menacingly close to Lemm and the Americans are under the watchful eyes of the Soviets throughout their redeployment. We commence the story where the Americans are swinging wide around the hill to try and take it from multiple directions. The Americans took such heavy casualties seizing Lemm that additional significant casualties here would be catastrophic and endanger the Team’s mission to capture Hill 214.

Redeploying an M1 platoon to serve as a base of fire element for the infantry in APCs to swing around. unfortunately for them, they are close to the hill – too close!

The M1s are taking heavy volleys of RPG fire on their way around the hill mass. The Soviets, wishing to be more aggressing, manuever some of their squads to the side of the hill to match the Team’s advance. Instead of sneaking up the opposite slope, the Americans run into a Soviet squad and RPG team and another nasty surprise – the PKM team from the first battle!

While the Americans left 1 infantry squad and dragon team in Lemm due to losing their ride, 2 x M113s swing around the flank. Both are taken out by accurate RPG fire. The Americans have to get to grips with their ambushers and assault towards the hill, calling in one of their last remaining fire missions to even the score a bit.

Horrifyingly, the mission falls short – and scores a direct hit on the American squad advancing up into Objective Log! The tanks will have to do the rest of the work as I will need the infantry that are still alive to assault Hill 214! This is getting bad.

With the coast clear, the Americans maneuver a platoon of M1s up onto the hill and begin methodically knocking out targets. It’s risky because there are still RPG teams afoot atop Objective LOG…

The Soviets draw a chit and it moves them over their Breakpoint – of 53 (I incorrectly reported this as much higher in the last installement). Presumably, since the Soviet motor rifle company has seen 2 of its platoons destroyed and hears the “high pitched whine” of turbine engines atop Objective LOG, it retreats from the defense of Hill 214 – to say nothing of the T62 company waiting for the word to ambush. And thank goodness, too, because Team Yankee was NOT relishing the idea of doing this all over again with only 2 x Dragon Teams and 1 x single infantry squad. Not to mention the fact that all of the M113s were knocked out. And there was only 1 Artillery fire-mission left. Ouch!

All in All, the Americans lost almost an entire mechanized infantry platoon and the remaining elements of the platoon are certainly non-mission capable with no more functional APCs.

The Americans also lost 3 M1 tanks during the battle, including CPT Bannon’s (although that was to mechanical breakdown). I am assuming the Americans will probe and redeploy onto Hill 214 without firing a shot, and the story can continue on in the novel almost as it occurred in Coyle’s story – except with far fewer infantrymen.

Well this was an adventure and it was alot of fun recreating battles from books I’ve read. I would love to get some more cold war armor and Cold War battles onto the table as the Angry Dachshund is halfway through “Cold War Month”. Stay tuned for more armored action.