Afghansty Air Assault Company

Nobody, but us! “Where are the bloody tanks???!”

"They wield any weapon with ease, the flag of victory is the most important of all!"

– Alexander Buinov, VDV (Hello From the Sky)

In Team Yankee

the Stats

The VDV were the Soviets' response to the question "why are your infantry so crappy?" to which they broke their vodka bottles and shived the questioning wargamer cyka. With your expected Soviet morale and assault, they also have a 4+ skill which is particularly unique for Soviets who typically have 5+ skill. Unit sizes are somewhere between NATO infantry and your unshaved Gopnik hordes unstoppable all-volunteer crusade. Their loadouts allow them to take on all but the latest NATO tanks (curse you, Chobham!). With 4+ assault, 3+ morale and decent unit sizes, they are one of the only infantry units capable of beating dug-in British infantry in assaults alongside American Airborne: they are also the only PACT infantry with assault ratings better than 5+.

Most notably, the VDV can only be bought from an Air Assault Battalion which disallows anymore than a single company of tanks. These units will form the bulk of your force, supported by Hinds.

Afgantsy formations are special because you can bring twice the normal number of Hinds to the field. When running the full 12 you often won't need many other anti-tank units. At point levels less than 100 points this is often enough to swarm and destroy enemy AA, but these lists are very vunerable to manpacked guided missles when playing against mech companies.

If you loiter your aircraft until your infantry can clear the enemy AA, or failing that bring the hinds on table just as you are about to assault, you can really cause NATO some problems even without the aid of heavy armor.

Funnily enough, an Afghansty List could represent a Naval Air Assault Battalion due to the similar levels of training possessed by the Naval Infantry! Just throw in more BMPs and tanks in your support slots.

Now available as a black box support option, a single medium/large VDV platoon is a choice option for Soviet players looking for a brawl up close wihout hinds.

IRL

The Afgantsy Air Assault Battalion allows you to field elite veterans of this conflict the airborne troops of the Воздушно-десантные войска (Vozdushno-desantnye voyska, 'Air-landing Forces') or VDV for short. Basically, the Afghan war veterans of real-life history are being brought to the North German Plains by Soviet Command as an air-assault spearhead force.

Their contemporary descendants now do battle (sometimes with each-other) in Ukraine however (excepting a comparative handful of ageing Ukrainians who have returned to service) they are not Afghansty veterans.