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With the world the way it is right now (as of writing it is currently January 2022), with Russian forces massed on the Ukrainian border and with NATO in heavy talks about retaliation and mobilizing their military forces, it seems like the right time to review World War Three: Team Yankee.

The Premise of World War Three: Team Yankee (The Lore)

The game was originally simply titled Team Yankee, and I’m not entirely sure of the reasons for the addition of “World War Three”, if it was a marketing decision or an intellectual property one. The game was derived from a novel by Harold Coyle titled Team Yankee which presents the Cold War in the late 1980s (the book was published in 1985 and there’s some indication that the book takes place in 1987).

There is no large explained origin of the NATO vs. Warsaw Pact war that takes place in the book, although it is said that it begins in the Middle East over oil. Regardless, the book takes place where East Germany meets West Germany, with military buildup on both sides. It is a tank book, and Team Yankee is a tank company. Therefore, the game is a tank game. Sure, it has its supporting characters, but this is large-scale tank battles where the little units harass and harry and the main battle tanks rip apart everything on the battlefield.

Now this isn’t to say that there’s not a lot of lore. There’s actually a ton of lore, if you want to call it that, in World War Three: Team Yankee. There have been whole books written about how to fight in the Middle East, and how to fight with troops from Scandinavia and troops from just about everywhere. While the war may have started in 1987, the game doesn’t begin and end in 1987. For a full rundown of all the different armies that are available to play in World War Three: Team Yankee, read this article.

This is especially important because we see the transition from older equipment to newer equipment. For example, the starter set for Team Yankee originally (possibly still?) has American M1A1 Abrams fighting alongside M-60 Pattons, which was something that yes, happened, but by the late eighties didn’t happen very much. And the starter set doesn’t even have the M1A1 in its most powerful variant–in later boxes you get a much better gun on the thing and it becomes the Abrams that we have come to love and respect.

World War Three: Team Yankee Gameplay

The first thing to understand about World War Three: Team Yankee’s gameplay is that it is based almost entirely on the Flames of War gameplay, the flagship WWII product of Battlefront Games. Yes, as Team Yankee has grown it has expanded (obviously, Flames of War didn’t have any helicopters, for example) but the game *looks* the same in that it’s 15mm scale, mostly with vehicles and a small amount of infantry.

The second thing to know about the gameplay of World War Three: Team Yankee–and my favorite aspect of the game–is that it is quick and brutal. The turns move quickly, the fighting happens quickly, and there’s no tank that counts down its 12 or 15 wounds as in other wargames. In this game, guns have an attacking value and tanks have armor (front, side, and back) and if you kill a tank you kill a tank. Don’t get too emotionally invested in any of your vehicles because they will disappear in a single roll of the dice.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. As the game expands they add more and more units, as any typical game company does (though they handle rules creep better than some, but we’ll get to that in a minute) and we get different vehicles that have different capabilities. There are mechanized artillery and rocket trucks and anti-aircraft batteries and anti-aircraft radar vehicles and scout vehicles and nearly any type of vehicle you can think of. They all get their moment in the sun, so they all have to have rules for them. What is nice–what is very very nice–is that the rules doesn’t seem to bloat because each unit’s entire stat sheet is on a card that is no more than 2″x4″.

But to rules bloat and unit expansion. Where some companies (Games Workshop we’re looking at you) release new models with new rules that require errata and new codices and campaign books, that is not the case in World War Three: Team Yankee. In Team Yankee, they release a rules book that lists ALL of the units in it that have come out–and that are GOING TO come out–and give the rules. So there may be a wait for the release of a particular unit in the game, and Battlefront may make some fanfare about the new unit, but the rules for that unit have been in your book the whole time. This is neat.

One last thing about gameplay: they have a mechanic that I like much better than your Warhammer 40ks (but which is somewhat similar to Bolt Action). When you shoot a unit, you determine whether you hit it based not on how experienced and good YOU are, but on how good and experienced the TARGET is. So whether this refers to the quality of the vehicle’s ablative armor or whether it refers to the tank commander’s veteran status, it still means that an experienced unit is more survivable than a new unit.

The Hobby Aspect of World War Three: Team Yankee

There are pluses and minus here. First the pluses:

There are so many cool units in this game. You would not imagine the types of military units that NATO and the Warsaw Pact were using during the eighties, and some of them are wild to paint.

On the Soviet side I love the TOS-1 Thermobaric Rocket Launcher Batteries, the 2S6 Tunguska AA Platoons, the BM-27 Hurricane Batteries, and so much more. On the NATO side, the M48 Chaparral SAM Platoons are awesome, and one of my personal favorites is the M247 Sergeant York AA Platoons, which do not look like a vehicle that actually existed, but I looked it up and they did.

I also love the books’ guides on how to paint the various camouflage patterns of the vehicles. It gives an air of authenticity that makes it more immersive, and that feels good.

It’s also good to be able–because this is a 15mm game–to field entire tank companies on the tabletop. You move tanks as platoons, not as one tank moving here and one tank moving there. It’s more strategic, more top-down.

One further thing I love about the game is how easy and inexpensive it is to start. The starter set has two totally playable forces out-of-the-box at an incredible deal (less than $60! total), and each nation has their own starter, including the British, the Americans, and the Soviets. (On the other hand, while it is inexpensive to start you can blow a LOT of money buying all of the fantastic additional models. Not that I did that and got in trouble with my wife.)

The downside of all of this is that you lose a little bit of flavor. Because the tanks are so small, painted in matching camouflage, and don’t survive very long, you rarely get to have a leader of note. Yes, you can choose a tank to be your commander, but it wouldn’t be painted any differently. None of them would be painted any differently unless you get a very fine brush and paint kill rings on the guns to show their veteran status.

I think that the pluses are great, but the minuses are so heavy that it’s hard to give the hobby side more than a middling grade.

World War Three: Team Yankee Review

Lore: I’m going to have to give this one a 7/10. There’s something iconic about the Cold War setting and seeing it playout, sans nuclear weapons, is something delightful. I’m deducting a few points because it is played at such large scale that you lose some personality. But the history–and the What If? is great.

Gameplay: I love the gameplay of World War Three: Team Yankee. I’m going to have to give this one a solid 8/10. Fast, deadly, easy to learn yet endlessly replayable.

Hobby: I’m dropping this to a 5/10, and the 5 is almost entirely for the sheer delight of collecting the models, not because of painting them.

 

What do you think? Have you played World War Three: Team Yankee? What’s your review?