T55AM2

She's old but has a certain beauty.

The feared muscle behind the Warsaw Pact during the 50s and 60s, the T-55 is an aged tank in 1985. The T-55AM2 however, represents a comprehensive upgrade program to attempt to bring the chassis to the modern era. The glacis was thickened, distinctive "horseshoe" brow armour was added to the turret front and a smoke launcher to increase survivability. A laser rangefinder, wind sensor and a ballistic computer were added to increase gun accuracy. Finally new gunner optics were added to enable missiles to be fired from the D10T 100mm gun. The T-55AM2 upgrades were the first prong in East Germany's plan to modernize the panzer of the Volksarmee (the second being further procurement of T-72M).

In Team Yankee

The Stat Card

The T-55AM2 combines sturdy armour and a moderately powerful gun with bargain basement point cost. While NATO tanks and ATGMs can penetrate the T-55AM2, most other enemy assets on the battlefield cannot, this makes the T-55AM2 a priority target as they close the distance with the enemy, tying up enemy anti-tank assets that may otherwise be shooting at something else. The D10T 100mm can't frontally penetrate the NATO MBTs but can be dangerous if you can enter a melee where the gun can be brought to bear against side armour. The slow firing rule discourages firing on the move, once your T-55s have reached an advantageous position you'll want them to keep them stationary to fire. Dash mobility and Cross-Rating is sub par, however the poor cross can be mitigated using Movement Orders which synergizes with the NVA's superior skill rating over the Russians.

Two schools of thought have emerged when including T-55AM2s in a Volksarmee force. The more instinctive approach for horde force players is to take multiple large companies of tanks to push down the field in a wave. Simply providing more targets than the NATO opposition can hope to kill, until you can enter a messy melee fight or tie up objectives all game. But alternatively, due to a quirk in points costing, a minimum strength T-55AM2 Battalion of 9 tanks (1+3+3+3) can be taken for 7 points, making each tank cost less than a single point. While these small companies can be erased by NATO tanks in a single salvo, they can operate independently (rather than an unwieldy mess of a 10 tank parking lot) and, when taking multiple minimum strength T-55AM2 Battalions provide extra command tanks to issue more orders.

IRL

See the thing about the Soviet Union is that when your large enough to reach from one hemisphere to another equipping all of those soldiers can be a a pain in the ass. As such the Soviet Union tried to keep it's old equipment and just passed them down to less important units. Soviet proper got the good shit, second line units older equipment, warsaw pact nations got stuff a generation behind, and so on, (this is why the East Germans in team yankee use the much older T55AM2 while the Soviets proper, don't) Hell the T-34 was still used by the soviets up until the 1960's. This is why when you look up soviet equipment you sometimes find lists of at least five different types of machine all doing the same thing. The T55am2 was an attempt to get more life out of the ageing T-55, and make it more able to fight the then modern Nato tanks like the M1 and Chieftain MBT, which by that point it was something like two tank generations behind. It's IRL performance would have likely be similar to it's game performance: not very well, but there would have been a lot of them!

East German Forces in Team Yankee
Tanks:	T-55 - T55AM2 - T-72M - T-72B
Transports:	BTR-60 - BMP-1 - BMP-2
Troops:	Mot-Schützen Kompanie - Hind Assault Landing Company
Artillery:	2S1 Carnation - BM-21 Hail - RM-70 - 2S3 Acacia
Anti-Aircraft:	ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-13 Gopher - SA9 Gaskin - SA-8 Gecko
Tank Hunters:	Spandrel
Recon:	BMP-1 OP - BRDM-2
Aircraft:	MI-24 Hind - SU-22 Fitter
Soviet Support:	SU-25 Frogfoot