T-72B

"Know your T-72 Variants, Kommeraden. It will protect you from Capitalist Autists"

In Team Yankee

All comments are thus far preliminary until the release of the Warsaw Pact Book in 2022.04.11 and further playtesting. Expect heavy editing

Soviet

The stats for the T-72B have officially been leaked, and they aren't half bad! For about 6 points per, you get a tank with the armor of an Abrams and the classic 125mm 2A46M cannon we all know and love. Lets walk through it!

First is the armor. Armor is the reason you take this thing, and it's pretty durable for a 6 point tank: Front armor 18, side armor 9, and ERA give it great resistances to NATO's second line equipment and even some of the more modern kit on the market. From the front you can effectively ignore the 105mm cannons mounted on the Leo 1, M60, Abrams, Merkava, and more. You get a decent (3 to tie) save against AT21 MILANs and TOWs, though you shouldn't rely on it more than you need to. The real place this tank sticks out is its Kontact-1 ERA. This makes it the cheapest tank in the game to have side armor 16 vs HEAT weapons, something that can come in particularly useful when you need to push some stubborn Brits off an objective. You don't have a great assault value in this regard, but you can bring the numbers to make up for this and, if supported by your commander, you have a good chance of outlasting your opponent.

All that said, don't get too cocky about your survivability. This is, after all, only a 6 point MBT, and recent updates have made FA 18 worth a lot less than it used to be in the glory days of 2016. The US can bring unholy levels of AT23 firepower that you're only tying on a 5, and many other nations can spam enough AT21 missiles to put a dent into your forces quite quickly if you aren't careful. This is where your relative cheapness comes in, but you aren't a T-55 player, so you can't rely on that to carry you. Use smoke and terrain to keep your tanks alive so they can do their job. But of course, you're a Soviet player, so you already knew that, right?

The second important aspect is firepower. This is somewhere else the T-72B mimics the T-80. You have the classic 125mm cannon, equipped with depleted uranium sabot (AT22), HE-FRAG (Brutal, 2+ FP), and even AT-11 Sniper missiles (AT22, 48" range HEAT & Tandem) if you please. This cannon is still very powerful, capable of dealing with 80% of the tanks in the game should it hit. The critical weakness here, indeed the critical weakness for all soviet tanks, is the RoF 1. This is the main reason you get the armor and firepower of a Leopard 2 for half the price. You will need to mass tanks to get the firepower you need to win tank duels, something that isn't terribly easy to do at 6 points each. As such, it may be worth it to pair it up with cheaper IFVs and missile carriers to augment your low RoF. The missile is an extra point per tank, making it rather hard to justify. On one hand, it gives you +1 AT at range, and lets you outrange everything else in the game (on the move, no less!), but the range advantage doesn't come into play much and a point per tank adds up quickly. If you bring them, you better have a plan. We only mentioned Tandem for completion, it's currently useless.

Mobility-wise, you have a T-72. 10" tactical, pretty decent dash speeds, and a 3+ cross that always fails when you need it. Nothing to write home about, but hardly terrible.

This thing is looking like the armored yin to the T-64s speedy yang. For a similar cost, you sacrifice a 14" tactical for somewhat better chances against midrange AT and immunity to 90% of the infantry rocket launchers in the game. This lets you focus more on getting decisively engaged rather than outmaneuvering and surprising the enemy, tanking rounds with your numbers and armor and assaulting to bully your enemy off objectives. It will most likely do best against the mid to higher end tanks in the game: Abrams, Chieftain, T-64, and Leopard 2. However, you lack the mobility, numbers, or armor to take on the super heavies (M1A1, Leopard 2A5, or Challenger 1). You'll also struggle to deal with tank spam.

East German

The People's "Super Dolly Parton" Deutch Tank

Your initial batch of 3 tanks costs 13 points and each tank after that costs an additional six points. Missiles for the whole company at 2 points total. With point costs like these, why would you ever run Soviet T64s?

Polish

Now with missile capability!

You're initial company of three tanks cost 15 points, with each additional tank being six points. Missiles can be outfitted to all tanks in the Company for two points total.

Czechoslovakian

Mind the watermark

The stats for the T-72B have been leaked, and they aren't terrible! Much of what was said above applies here as well, but the T-72B fits into the Czech list a bit differently. Leaks indicate 4 are 17 points, intuition says they'll be 5 points per additional tank with 3 costing 12 points. 10 T-72Bs are 50 points, indicating that the Czechs don't have a fully linear points progression on them.

Play testing is needed, but preliminary assessment indicates these tanks do not play towards Czech strengths. They are too expensive to spam and the lower Czech stats really start to clash with the strengths of this vehicle.

When your tanks cost 1-3 points, and usually explode in one hit from anything that pays attention to them, the Czech 5+ remount is largely irrelevant. If something survives and the crew actually get back in to your 1 point tank that's just a bonus. When the tank is worth 5 points or more you begin to care if it spends several turns doing nothing because the crew refuse to get back in. Armor 18 also means you'll be tying and bailing more often, making you regret being a cheapskate and not just taking the Polish or Soviet versions.

Additionally, while you do have side armor 16 against HEAT, giving you survivability in assault, the poor counterattack value means that these can't function as real assault tanks, since they'll more than likely be counterattacked off the objective they were trying to push, potentially losing some bailed tanks in the process.

A single unit taken as the third optional company in a T-72M Battalion, or as a black box choice, is probably fine. If you want to run more than that I would suggest a different nation.

In Real Life

The T-72B is an upgraded version of the standard T-72 featuring a number of improvements meant to allow the tank to stand alongside the T-80 at the forefront of armored spearheads. These include an upgraded version of the 125mm main gun along with an improved stabilizer, sights, and fire control systems, the addition of appliqué armour in the front of hull, improved composites in the turret armor and Kontakt-51 Explosive Reactive Armor.

Currently large numbers of T-72B are lining the sides of Ukranian roads as burned-out husks. Despite all the upgrades, the T-72B is faring no better than Saddam's 'Lion of Babylon' T-72M against the sophisticated anti-armor weaponry of NATO. It’s been seen almost exclusively in the hands of Russians or their puppet militias, a few models have even been spotted without their ERA attached (or literal plastic rags being in the ERA bags), a horrifying prospect to any tanker in an environment crawling with anti-tank munitions.

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

Polish Forces in Team Yankee
Tanks:	T-55 - T55AM2 - T-72M - T-72B
Transports:	SKOT-2A - BMP-1 - BMP-2
Troops:	Zmotory Kompania - Hind Assault Landing Company
Artillery:	Dana SpGH - BM-21 Hail
Anti-Aircraft:	ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-13 Gopher -SA-8 Gecko
Tank Hunters:	Spandrel
Recon:	BMP-1 OP - BRDM-2
Aircraft:	MI-24 Hind - SU-22 Fitter
Soviet Support:	SU-25 Frogfoot

Czech Forces in Team Yankee
Tanks:	T-55 - T55AM2 - T-72M - T-72B
Transports:	OT-64 - BMP-1 - BMP-2
Troops:	Motostrelci
Artillery:	2S1 Carnation - Dana SpGH - RM-70
Anti-Aircraft:	ZSU 23-4 Shilka - SA-8 Gecko - SA9 Gaskin - SA-13 Gopher - M53/59 Praga
Tank Hunters:	Spandrel
Recon:	BMP-1 OP - BRDM-2
Aircraft:	MI-24 Hind - SU-25 Frogfoot - SU-22 Fitter