LAV-M

On the way!

The Light Armored Vehicle-25 (or LAV-25 for short) is an 8-wheeled amphibious recon vehicle, manufactured by GMC Canada. In America, its one of the USMC's premier armored fighting vehicles, who's speed and amphibious nature, plus its decent weaponry, lent well to the marines' tactics as forward vanguards.

The vehicle is crewed by 3 people: a commander, gunner, and driver, plus it can also transport 4 fully-geared soldiers who are there to act as scouts, or to assist the LAV with dealing with targets that they are not equipped to handle. The M variant switches out it's turret entirely, for a folding roof hatch that allows it to deploy an M252 81mm mortar. This allows it to act as a mobile artillery piece, bombarding one position, then quickly re-positioning elsewhere to avoid being caught by enemy squads, or counter-artillery fire (also known as the "shoot-and-scoot" tactic). That said, the loss of the turret means that it lost anti-infantry capabilities, as it lost one of it's M240 machine guns.

In Team Yankee

The Stats

As you can see, uh... The armor is shit. Seriously. 1 armor. So basically everything will defeat the armor pretty easy, with anything AT 7+ autopenning. And like the M163 VADS, it's open-topped, so aircraft will love this. Generally, keep it damn well away from any AT and protected by something less squishy. Upside to this is that the Brutal rule doesn't apply because it still has armor better than infantry plating.

Fortunately, your LAVs shouldn't ever get hit unless something goes VERY wrong with your battle plan. As artillery units with a 56" range, you can hit pretty much any part of a 6x4 table from a terrain piece at the back. The mortars may not hurt vehicles, but will make their points back very quickly against infantry. With good positioning of spotters, your artillery will be the main thing that kills entrenched troops, especially when the Americans lack any Brutal tank cannons.

For better or for worse, you can only bring 2 LAVs at the cost of 2 points and only in an LAV Company. It won't have enough smoke shots to provide cover for assaulting units, only enough for blinding tanks or ATGMs. Expect to use these as anti-infantry artillery; you don't have enough mortars to use them for smoke.

IRL

Functionally similar to the M106, the LAV-M fills the same niche of heavy mortar carrier, but in an amphibious vehicle to meet the Marines’ particular requirements. The LAV-M is set to be replaced by the LAV-EFSS, which uses the fancy new Dragon Fire 120mm fully-automatic mortar.