Seven Days to the River Rhine - review
My thanks to Andy GPT for the following rules review, written in April 2023. Andy has also provided a link to some free Team Yankee scenarios along with instructions on how to adapt them for Seven Days to the River Rhine.
A number of people were asking Pete and myself about the Seven Days to the River Rhine game we played at the club on Sunday 2nd April 2023 so rather than write a battle report I thought I'd just give a brief review of the rules and where to make a start.
The rules are from Great Escape Games and they are a virtual carbon copy of the earlier WW2 rules "Iron Cross". For as little as £8 you can be ready to go!
https://www.greatescapegames.co.uk/onli.../seven-days/sdttrr
I bought the book and the cards for £15 but just the pdf will suffice as you can download free (alternate) cards from the various extras available on the FB page (Files section):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/322288738401773
In the files section are spreadsheets for army construction, extra data files, scenarios, etc, etc. There are no supplements/scenario books - that's it! More importantly, for those of you who invested in Battlefront's WW3 Team Yankee, you are pretty much ready to go. In fact, throughout the rulebook, the author uses BF vehicles, terrain and figures. The 15mm stuff is actually really good value and excellent quality - many of the plastic box sets come with extras for making variants of the vehicles (Wayland Games does 20% off with free postage). A typical 600 point 7dttrr will consist of about 6 - 10 tanks, 3 - 5 APCs, a couple of recon AC, and 3 - 5 infantry stands. Most TY armies are way bigger than this.
7dttrr covers the era of approx 1980 - 1990 but some have done beyond (Desert Storm) and some before (Arab-Israeli) this with simple adaptations to stats and army lists. Battlefront's TY goes beyond 1990 but we need to remember this is essentially 'historical fantasy' so if you want Polish fighting Soviets it really won't matter to the game.
The game itself is controlled by command tokens to activate units. A unit may be activated any number of times but you will lose the ability to activate all your units and activation becomes harder. Your opponent also has the opportunity to react and interrupt by playing tokens but nothing is guarranteed. Consequently it is a fast flowing skirmish game with no turn identical to any other. It probably represents about 10 minutes 'real life'.
I have a Russian army completed and a NATO army on order. Pete has East German and is also building a West German force. If you are starting from scratch you should be able to get the rules and a playable army for under £100. Plastic Soldier Company does some plastics for this era. e-bay throws up bargains every so often, just type in Team Yankee.
Unlike TY you don't actually need artillery but these can be made into objectives. And talking of the latter, there are scenarios in the rulebook but I think the WW3 Team Yankee ones are superb as they have been playtested and competition tested for over 20 years. The senarios are free and you view and download a copy using the link here. I have also included a word doc of how to adapt them to 7dttrr which is available here.