Vietnam Miniatures Rundown

I'm going to be running several games at Huzzah using 15mm miniatures. At the moment there are a number of good sources of figures but postage and unexpected sales have propelled me towards a few brands.

A local store ran a huge sale on Battlefront miniatures recently following the demise of Flames of War at their site. I picked up some NVA regulars and American airmobile infantry. The American troops are decent. The pack has a good variety of poses and the sculpts are characterful, especially considering the scale. I sped through the painting process in order to generate a platoon quickly and with that level of care the minis still end up looking pretty good.

The NVA regulars, on the other hand, are embarrassing. There's far more flash than a 15mm figure from a major player should have. The poses are odd or unrealistic. Some of the body parts are bizarrely proportioned. And the insignia on the helmets are scaled to look like miner's headlamps. I think these were early works in the line but Battlefront should have pulled them and replaced them with something less horrible.

Finally, I picked up some Battle Honours/Quality Castings 15mm VC. These figures are smaller than the Battlefront types and don't attempt any real facial features. They are also a little more stylized in their poses and remind me of the Peter Pig house style. That being said, they do the job well and look good on the table. I'll be looking for more of these, especially for NVA and VC troops, who should be slighter than their American and ANZAC opponents.

I would have liked to use Peter Pig figures but the postage from the UK is crippling, especially if I'm going to be fielding a company per side. Brookhurst Hobbies carries that line as well but it remains expensive. I will use Peter Pig for civilians as their selection is better than any others. Flashpoint Miniatures carries a Vietnam line but their military figures seem no better than Battlefront's and their civilian selection strays away from straightforward farmers and bystanders.

Search and Destroy for Huzzah!

As both my readers will recall I recently ran a game of Charlie Company with the idea of either starting a campaign or running a game at Huzzah!, or both. That project lurched a bit as I tried to find some way of making squad level action relate to Vietnam specifically. Gaming the period really seems to beg for an entire company being present. With that in mind I started looking for another rule set.

Search and Destroy was published by SPI in 1975. Gamers of a certain age are now getting misty eyed and remembering flimsy flat plastic boxes, counters, and rules headings arranged in helpful numeric form ("[5.36] Under certain optional rules "Killed" or "Wounded" markers representing..."). Good times. But thanks to the modern magic of the interweb and the folks at Board Game Geek the rules and accompanying articles in Moves magazine are still available.

Search and Destroy is a board game in which each counter represents a single squad. Typically two companies will face off. The goal of the game is to score points- the American scores by collecting hidden caches of weapons and records, and by not being decimated in the process. The NVA player wins if they inflict casualties on the Americans and defend the caches.

Analog Game Tools

The designer took those basic criteria and made them period appropriate. Americans score fully if they can confirm the casualties, either being inflicting them at close range or through after action policing. The Americans score less if the casualties are inflicted through air or artillery, and further, the NVA Get points each time air and artillery are used. In essence, the American player can score a military victory with lavish air and artillery and still lose politically- and politics is the currency for victory in this game.

There are some further design tweaks. The NVA operate in blinds and until they are "searched" the American is unsure whether a counter represents decoys, troops, or peasants. NVA can also "hide" which essentially turns a known unit back into a blind. And as one could imagine killing peasants is politically damaging to either side.

The end result is that the Americans command a huge amount of firepower but have to be cautious in how they use it. The NVA can use hit and run tactics but in the end have to defend or distract to protect their weapons caches. The rules include fixed wing and rotary air, helidrops, antiaircraft fire, interrogations, and medics. I'm looking forward to playtesting them and running the game (hopefully) at Huzzah!.

For more information look on Board game Geek for more reviews, lists of related articles in Moves, and some helpful images. Phil Kosnett's article in Moves #23 is pretty essential, and has some critical errata.

Time for Huzzah! in Portland, Maine

It's that time of year when a young man's thoughts turn to game conventions and the game convention my thoughts turn to is Huzzah!

I've been attending Huzzah! since 2010 and it's been consistently my favorite wargaming convention on the East Coast (I do have to put in that caveat because of Milleniumcon in Austin, which was good fun as well). Huzzah! offers a mammoth number of games all put together with the highest attention to table and miniatures quality. Maybe more importantly, the people attending are very good sports and the gaming is typically fun and good natured. It is sad to even have to touch on that topic but some cons seem to attract prickly folks.

They sunk my battleship

This year is looking to be a lot of fun. I believe the Fletcher Pratt Naval Game will be played again, which features an entire ballroom as the playing surface(!). Boston Trained Bands is running the "too strange not to be true" Battle of Fishguard 1797. There will be the yearly Aerodrome game, which features some insanely fun but quite accessible WW 1 air combat.  Also look for game systems like Force on Force, Battlegroup Kursk, and Commands and Colors with miniatures. Finally, there will be a board gaming component that's looking to feature some pretty exceptional games.

This convention is top notch, and it's held in Portland, Maine, which is a great city to visit. I just can't recommend it more highly.

Takenoko - Another Decent Family Game With Some Depth

I have an odd perspective on Takenoko and it is hinted at in the post's title. Takenoko is a decent game. My wife tells me to never describe her cooking as "decent" and I certainly will not in the future. But the publishers of this game haven't made similar character building suggestions so there we go.

In Takenoko the players compete to grow and harvest different kinds of bamboo. Through the game you are dealt cards which give you a secret victory condition - "harvest three green bamboo plants for 3 points," for example. Other players may be trying to grow two yellow plants next to each other, or plant a row of red bamboo plots. You lay down a plot of land by placing a tile on the table. The tile will grow a color of bamboo. You can cause more growth by moving the gardener to the spot. You can harvest the bamboo by moving the panda to the spot.

Super Cute

Takenoko does have several things working in its favor. The plastic gardener and panda are super cute, as are all the art and graphics. The rules are straight forward. Some of the icons are not as self explanatory as we might expect from a 21st century game but still the game is easy to pick up. The rest of the components are hefty and the bamboo is made of wood and is quite pretty.

Takenoko's best feature perhaps is that there is some decent tactical depth to it's play. It can pay to chart out the panda's and gardener's likely paths of movement. There are times when it is better to grow and other times when you are better served trying to lay plots of bamboo. You can score in three different ways and there are fun and interesting choices to be made along the way.

That being said, it is also a game with a plastic panda and cute art and simple rules. This game would be completely appropriate for younger players and casual non-gamers.

I suppose my mixed feelings about the game stem from my total lack of interest in bamboo and the subtle art of its cultivation. I have the same feeling about Power Grid. Great game system but the theme leaves me cold. In the end I need some sort of narrative to feel excited about a game and Takenoko does not deliver that. However, it has ooodles of good qualities so if this is not a deal killer for you then it's a game well worth considering.

Charlie Company After Action Report

We ended up playing the two scenarios over roughly two hours, which for wargames is almost lightning fast. The rules themselves are pretty minimal and the players started up with only a brief tutorial.

Battlefront US

The first game was based on Mines and Men. The players start on a road having just taken two mine related casualties. To the left are rice paddies and then a small hamlet. On the right are fields and then a tree line. As the turns progress the players begin to take sniper fire from the tree line and small arms and light machine gun fire from the hamlet. The players need to protect the wounded and deal with the attack.

Quality Castings VC

This game ran smoothly and the players had fun. They got to experiment with mortar fire, medevac, and fire and maneuver. They also got to fire bazookas at hooches and in the end drive an M113 ACAV through the hamlet. The enemy force was VC and more pesky than flat out dangerous. The players did think to avoid driving across the mine-filled field and the outcome matched the historical notes, with organized regulars advancing to the hamlet and vehicles providing the punch required to rout the attackers.

The second game demonstrated some of the difficulties with Viet Nam gaming. The players were tracing a trail up the Ngok Kom Leat range prior to the battles at Dak To. In the scenario the second platoon stumbles into a NVA company and has to pull back in an organized fashion and call in artillery and air support. None of the players had that reflex to pull back and drop supporting fire and so I had to step in and suggest that this might be second nature to soldiers in 1967. The players felt that if their mission was to follow a trail then they should absolutely follow it even as bullets begin to fly. It's striking and reminds one that skills learned in Napoleonic and Second World War gaming may not apply here. They players reluctantly pulled back, weathered two human wave attacks, and then sat back as Company B at hill 823 took the worst of it.

Flashpoint Hooch

The game system as a whole worked well. A squad of Americans has fair firepower but not enough to deal with entrenched enemies. That's appropriate. VC fire causes damage through attrition, NVA fire is more likely to quickly devastate a unit. Air support is quite spectacular but tough to use at close range. IN sum I felt the game design was sound and period appropriate.

My main concern is that to play Viet Nam you either have to think period appropriately or spend several games being decimated until you learn. The latter is probably historically accurate and educational but demoralizing and time consuming. Weekend gamers may not be up for several sessions of calamity even if they learn from it.

Overall we were pleased with the rules and the games. I'm not sure I'd run this with casual gamers but for people with an interest in the period Charlie Company is well done.

Charlie Company After Action Report

So after some months of painting and planning we had our test run of RAFM's Charlie Company rules. We had a good time and I was happy with the rules.

Initially I had liked these rules for a number of reasons. For one, they are designed to take into account the fact that free world forces rarely saw their opponents. Opposition forces in Charlie Company are identified by muzzle flashes and the miniatures may never appear on the table. Further, I like the fact that opposition forces are run by the game master. The Viet Nam conflict is marked by free world forces searching for targets or being attacked in static bases. If a human player is in charge of NVA or VC units there is really no reason for that player to ever end up in a less than ideal encounter.

I did have some concerns with the rule system. They are based on one player running a squad or platoon. There is some question about the depth of decision making a squad leader would be expected to make. A platoon leader might have more autonomy but it seems like the company is a good level to control in this theater. I also wondered how well the rules would portray the war itself- would they just simulate a postwar/modern battle or would they carry period flavour?

For the purposes of the game I ran two historical encounters. The first was from Small Unit Action in Viet Nam: Summer, 1966, the chapter called Mines and Men.  The second scenario was based on Three Companies at Dak To, from Seven Firefights in Vietnam. This is also available online. The former involves three squads and some armor fending off a weak ambush by Viet Cong. I was hoping to use it to teach basic rules and give the players a sense of the game. The Three Companies game involves a platoon stumbling into an aggressive company of NVA regulars. This was designed to illustrate the value of a quick withdrawal followed by lots of air and artillery support.

Preparing for the games was very satisfying. It's very striking that we engaged in a huge undertaking not too long ago, one with a terrible human and financial cost, and one that changed our country dramatically, and that it's largely forgotten today. People remember The Doors, a band with maybe two good albums to their name, but they're forgotten a ten year war that had mammoth ramifications, both on a macro and a micro scale. The emotional impetus to forget the conflict makes sense, but the success in execution is amazing. And the price paid by vets and by future generations who repeat the war's mistakes is far too high. For the Dak To scenario I was able to find military maps of the area and view it on Google Satellite. There are veterans around us today who fought and sacrificed in those forests (veterans of two sides I might add) and I can say "yeah, I know you did that, I know when, and I know where. That experience isn't forgotten. It's not been erased."

Next- the game and after action.

Bang! The Dice Game

I think one of my first posts ever was in regards to the game Bang! It's strange to be writing about an expansion to a post made literally years ago. So much has changed personally and professionally it feels like another life.

However, as this is not Dr. Fischer's Introspection Night, let's talk about Bang! The Dice Game. In this game each player takes a role- sheriff, deputy, outlaw or renegade. Your victory conditions will depend on your role. The outlaws win if the sheriff dies. The sheriff and deputy win if the sheriff lives. The renegade has to be the last player standing. And with the exception of the sheriff, everyone's role is secret.

Two Wounds Healed

The game itself involves rolling five dice and potentially then re-rolling them once or twice. The results may allow you to "shoot" other players, heal yourself, or take damage from dynamite or arrows. The more you re-roll the better you can fine tune your results, but also the risk of arrows and dynamite increases as well. This simple system makes Bang! The Dice Game a "push your luck" game combined with a "hidden victory objective" game. Finally, the whole thing takes about twenty minutes to play.

Those qualities hit all my favorite spots. I like push your luck, I like hidden roles, I like rolling dice and I like a quick game. Bang! is just tactical enough to reward some thought but it's hardly a brain burner. If you win you feel clever but if you lose it's hardly crushing.

Other highlights- it's affordable, it's appropriate for younger players and non-hardcore gamers. There's lots of good natured yelling at the table. It's portable as well. Basically a nice, light family game.