Team Yankee - US Oil War Task Force

It has been ages since I last painted up a 15mm army and now with the release of Oil War supplement for Team Yankee, I thought it about time I get another reinforced company onto the gaming table. As a former member of the 82nd Airborne, I kind of already knew what my main force would be but needed some "shtick" to get them to the middle east. So have them jumping into Syria and link up with an advance force of Israeli tanks.

I plan on painting up two full strength platoons of paratroopers, sans helicopters (no blackhawks, no helicopters!) While they may not be that great stats wise, I had to have at least a platoon of Sheridans, as they look really cool! To fill out the company, I obviously had to have a TOW platoon; and for AA defense a small Stinger section.

The new Israeli Merkava looks too good to pass on, so decide to support my airborne troops with a very small formation of Merkava 1's. While the Merkava 2's would have been nice, I settled for five almost as expensive Merkava 1's. Along with a few M113 recon tracks, this little force was still almost half of my point total!

Below is my 70 point Airborne force, which is the level we normally game at. I have ordered most of everything but I do already have a boxed set of Sheridans, so I'll start putting those together this week.

I am still debating on whether to paint them up in the Winter MERDC scheme. Or if I should be "bold" and do them up in the Desert Gray MERDC camo scheme. The latter scheme is what all our jeeps and tanks were when I was in, but I think the desert scheme will blend a little better with the Israeli force, so am kind of leaning towards it. Also I don't see that schemed used, so it would be "unique" in our gaming area.

US Airborne Company 37 Israeli Advance Force 32 Co HQ Merkava Tank HQ M16 Rifle Team 1 1x Merkava 1 6 Rifle Platoon Tank Section 7x SAW Teams, 1x Dragon Team, 8 2x Merkava 1 12 2x M60 LMG Teams (+2), 1x Dragon Team (+1) 3 Tank Section Rifle Platoon 2x Merkava 1 12 7x SAW Teams, 1x Dragon Team, 8 2x M60 LMG Teams (+2), 1x Dragon Team (+1) 3 Recon Section 3x M113 2 Tank Platoon 4x M551 Sheridan Tanks 8 Jeep TOW Platoon 4x Jeep TOWS 4 Jeep Stinger Section 2x Jeep Stinger 2

As we did not get the Humvee until summer of '86, I am going to go with Jeeps for the TOW platoon (that's what I had as a 11H TOW gunner in the 1st/505th) and jeeps for the Stinger (redeye) platoons as well. I'll do a little conversion work, but thinking of just using a jeep on a large stand with a stinger team next to it. Still not sure on whether I will just proxy the models (Jeeps vs Humvee) or use the the stats as well (Unarmored Tank Unit vs Armored Tank Unit). Let me know what Data Card you think I should use in the comments below.

LEFT - Using a Jeep as a Humvee     RIGHT - Using the Israeli jeep stats

And this would be the Stinger section (BTW I'll put in pictures of the jeeps I paint up)