Thematic vs Competitive Play: Bridging the Gap in WWIII: Team Yankee

Thematic vs Competitive Play: Bridging the Gap in WWIII: Team Yankee By Kyle Perry Thematic play or competitive play? A question that has been asked in every game. But, why not both? Can you make a list that has a thematic base but is optimized for tournament play? Well that is what we are going to try to do today, bridging the gap between thematic vs matched play. For our theme first we will look at Norway during the Cold War.

Thematic vs. Competitive Forces So what are the key components of a thematic force and of a competitive force? In thematic, you look for a real life or lore based unit to use as your frame of reference. This could be making a list that is nearly identical to a Soviet VDV battalion from the 80’s, or a US Army mechanized company from the late 70s. The main objective is to emulate the unit you are interested in and playing out how you would run the force to bring another layer of fun to your games.

Competitive plan forces tend to be lists that have a specific plan on how to win each match in attack, defense, and maneuver, with each unit having a specific purpose ahead of time. But, I would argue that you can absolutely accomplish this, while sticking to a thematic list.

Force Theme: Norway During the Cold War During the Cold War, Norway, as a member of NATO and sharing a border with the Soviet Union, near some key naval bases, was expected to face a determined Soviet invasion if hostilities broke out. As such, while US Army units were garrisoned in mainland Europe and performed exercises like Reforger, the US Marine Corps carried out training exercises in Norway in expectation to be the rapid reinforcements in the event of a Soviet attack (you can read more about the USMC quick reaction plans in Norway here). For our theme, this is a great area to explore, so we will want to build a force out of units that would have been in this region. A Norwegian company as our core, with USMC support will be a great core concept as well as a great challenge to paint up. This would, historically, have been one of the most common NATO units engaging on the Scandinavian front and has lots of historic exercises and plans to reference for thematic accuracy.

Building a Competitive Thematic List With our theme selected, the main problem we are now going to face is how to pick options for platoons that will work well together to be able to answer any situation in a game, while still working within the confines of our Norwegian and USMC force. This makes our platoon choices more limited, but not impossible to stay in theme. Since Norway is going to be our base for the formation, we have two company options, the Leopard 1 Tank Squadron or the M113 Storm Squadron. Our first choice to make this competitive is going with the Leopard 1 Squadron. We will take three platoons of four tanks each along with two tanks in the HQ for 42 points. That gives us 14 tanks with AT 19, good to deal with the bulk of PACT armor, and the ability to move around the board quickly, as well as being historically accurate in size to NATO armored companies.

With that choice done, we have to think about how to involve the Marine units. Thematically, the first units that would arrive would be Infantry and LAV units usually from MEUs (Marine Expeditionary Units) while the armor would follow behind shortly. As we go through this process, I am keeping in my mind that an MEU has arrived off of Norway with forces, so I want to choose units that will help the list and historically were part of MEUs. This is great for our list so we will add the USMC Infantry Platoon as a support option. We will take the nine stands option and add in the two SMAW launchers and two Dragon II teams as well bringing the platoon to a nice size of 13 stands. This platoon we will use to assault objectives or guard our own.

The other piece thematically of Marine forces that would be quickly available is LAVs. Each MEU had an LAV company as part of their force to provide reconnaissance and rapid fire. We can actually squeeze in an allied LAV company pretty easily. This gives us two platoons of four LAVs, two more in the HQ, and a platoon of four LAV-ATs with TOW-2 launchers for a total of only 18 points plus 14 more for the infantry. The LAVs covers our Scout/Spearhead needs, can deal with any large mechanized units, plus the LAV-ATs provide our heavy AT along with having the Hammerhead rule, allowing them to stay concealed after firing if in concealment.

With our main components built out, we need to fill out our support needs. Ideally, since we are a Norwegian force, we will try to take more Norwegian support options than Marine Corps choices. We can take the Norwegian M109 platoon of three M109A3GNs for 8 points to cover artillery needs. We will also grab the M113 OP Forward Observer for a point as well. For AA, we will definitely grab a platoon of four Norwegian NM195s which will provide a good sized AA bubble to deter hostile aircraft. Now we have two choices, we can go deeper into our theme of Marine quick reaction and take a flight of four Harrier's in support. This gives us an air contingent with a nice AT 7 Salvo from their cluster bombs and again, were the standard air support for MEUs.

To round out the force, with the last three points, we can take the NM135 Scout platoon of three vehicles with their 20mm guns to bring us to 100 points. The only other option would be, if we skipped the extra scouts and harriers, we could add in a platoon of Marine M109s with Bomblets and Minelets allowing us to go heavy on artillery.

Results So thematically, we wanted to do Norwegian forces with rapid response Marine support. This we absolutely covered and were even able to stick to what Marine units would arrive with the MEU instead of what the best units in game would be. Competitively we assembled a force that can handle most situations that would arise and be able to succeed. Tactically, the LAVs allow us to get a spearhead, putting our full Norwegian armor company in better starting positions to swarm the enemy, while the LAV-ATs cover the need for heavy AT. The Marine Rifle platoon can assault or defend any objective with its many stands and support weapons, along with artillery and air support, providing a solid force that can stand up in tournaments.

~ Kyle