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Finished the book “Bury Him” (which didn’t really contain much in the way of combat), and started a new one “Marines in Hue City”, which has some very good blow-by-blow accounts of the city fighting in Hue. City fighting has been one of the aspects I’ve been meaning to try out, to see if the rules can handle it without any extra rules.
I will type up an “Allied City Fight List”, which will contain US Marines, ARVN, and some of the vehicles used by marines in Hue, such as the M50 Ontos, M42 Dusters, and suchlike.
I did a small scale playtest of a city fight tonight, just to see how it would go. Just using the small table in my room, and using yellow paper squares as buildings:
Start of the test – NVA holed up in buildings as Marines attempt to advance. an NVA heavy machine gun is well placed to cover the road, and RPGs await any tanks that get too close…
The US get the initiative, but the infantry aren’t able to detect any enemy forces. Neither is the M48 tank, but that’s expected – detection for tanks is harder, so they need to rely on infantry to be their eyes.
The NVA HMG opens up on the squad taking cover behind the M48 tank, suppressing them.
The US aren’t able to work out where the fire is coming from, and attempt to bring infantry out into the street to pinpoint where the fire is coming from, now that the only squad with a sight to the street are suppressed, making it even more difficult to detect anything. The NVA HMG quickly sees the US forces crossing the open ground, and is able to suppress almost the whole company, as well as inflicting some casualties on the squad behind the tank, and the squad to the left. The left hand US squad becomes combat-ineffective due to casualties, but during the fray the US M60 106mm recoilless rifle has been able to set up in the street, even if they get suppressed doing so…Now that the HMG has been firing for a few turns, the 106mm recoilless rifle crew are finally able to detect it, and they quickly relay the information to the tank crew. The recoilless rifle crew are still suppressed, but the tank isn’t, and fires the 90mm cannon into the building, suppressing the HMG for a turn.
It looks like the tables are turning, as the M48 tank is now able to continue pouring fire into the building with the NVA HMG, and is able to suppress it and cause some casualties. The M60 recoilless rifle crew get back up, and are able to get a round off at the HMG as well, which does enough casualties to destroy / incapacitate the HMG.So all in all not a bad playtest, it seems detection is really hard in the city, but once you know where the enemy is you can eventually take them down. It also looks like infantry play a vital role in directing fire from support like tanks, which is in line with what I’ve been reading so far.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Now that we’ve passed the busy holiday period, I have a lot more time on my hands to work on this game!
I’ve been doing some small-scale testing of the Helicopter rules – making sure detection and attacking from and against helicopters is working well.
I put my nice game mat on the small table in my room, so while it may be my own personal hell of small-scale playtesting, it can at least look nice(er) in photos.There were some clarifications needed – some old rules that didn’t fit with the new cover / damage system, and so I’m straightening those out.
I also typed up the “Troop Quality” section of the rules defining what the qualities mean, what real-world troops they describe, and the in-game effect of each of the 4 qualities.
I finished reading “Marines in Hue City: A Portrait of Urban Combat Tet 1968”, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and would recommend to anyone interested in the subject – quite a good overview of the city fighting from both the US marine and some of the ARVN side too. Lots of photos too, which help to back up the text.
Next up I’m reading “The Gunpowder Prince: How Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir Baig Saved Khe Sanh”, which is an almost complete change of pace from any of the Vietnam books I’ve read. So far the Cambridge-educated Pakistani immigrant with a British accent, known as “Harry” seems completely out of place in Khe Sahn among the US Marines, and yet, with his knowledge of French he is able to read the same books that NVA General Giáp was able to, and use an experimental electronic intelligence network and his extensive knowledge of NVA operating procedures to interdict NVA forces and staging areas with artillery. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out, although I’m not sure how useful it will be to the game.
Hope you all had a good festive season, I’m looking forward to some larger scale playtests once the helicopter rules are running nicely.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
On holiday at the moment, so not able to do any playtesting, but I am able to get some good reading in. Low Level Hell is giving me some good insights into scout helicopter tactics and ability, while Jungle Dragoon (memoir of an armored cavalry platoon leader) is showing me the mechanized / cavalry side in more depth. These are both newish areas for me to delve into more deeply, and I’m taking notes as I go.
Am interesting mention of RPGs going right through M113s from the Jungle Dragoon book:
Looking forward to getting back into playtests when I return!
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Well I’m back from our 3 week holiday, and managed to finish reading Jungle Dragoon while I was away:
I’d definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes first-hand accounts of Vietnam, its straight-to-the-point, and full of tactics and action.
A few things were eye-opening to me about Armored Cavalry units:
- Crews can and did dismount to conduct patrols, ambushes and even attacks on foot. Often a single crew member was left behind to man the .50 cal.
- The M113 Tracks were fairly maneuverable and light, while the M48s were heavy and hard to maneuver (I kinda already knew this, but I think I will implement Tracks having fewer limitations on movement, while tanks retain a more “Clunky” movement system.)
- Tracks could be set up around a disabled tank, and then the crew dismounted (except the .50 cal gunner) in order to create a larger defensive position – tank in the middle, then track around it, then the crew / infantry squads on the outside.
- Tracks and Tanks regularly fired everything they had while moving, if in a dire situation and needed to try to break out – this will be implemented, allowing vehicles to suppress targets while on the move.
- Armored Cavalry would often plan bait attacks where a single platoon (perhaps 3 or 4 tracks and a tank) was sent out, after much noisy helicopter “recon” of an area (alerting the NVA/VC of an upcoming attack). The single platoon would be the bait, while heliborne troops and the rest of the unit were waiting nearby. As soon as the small unit started taking fire, the rest of the company would be mobilized to attack. The small unit would take high casualties, but usually the much larger NVA/VC force would take even more casualties once the rest of the company and the heliborne troops arrived. This would be implemented by allowing Cavalry to have heliborne troops in reserve that could be called up at any time, without any friction, as every would be waiting for that radio call of contact, and then quickly scramble to the rescue.
- M42 Dusters and Flame tracks occasionally taken
- Tracks were used to “clear” areas around Night Defensive Positions – running down the surrounding bush (when possible) to give better fields of fire if attacked.
I don’t know how true these are of Mechanized units as well, but I’ll definitely implement quite a few of these ideas, while still trying to keep things as simple as possible. The idea that Armored Cavalry were a lot more flexible than just “some tracks and tanks”, especially the fact that they dismounted their crews, I think will add a lot more depth to how they are played on the tabletop.
Today I continued my work on the helicopter damage tables, and I will conduct some small scale tests on helicopter damage, as well as start looking at how Vehicles function in the game over the coming weeks.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Working away on helicopters and how line of sight works to and from them. I’ve been struggling a bit with this over the past few days, so today just put together a quick image to try to organize my thoughts – once again, its never as complicated as I thought it was:
- Helicopters that are high and fast (called “At high speed”), have line of sight to any units in a forest, although detection is more difficult due to the cover.
- Hovering helicopters have line of sight blocked by 1″ or more of forest, just like infantry, unless they are within 3″ of a target, in which case they have clear line of sight (no cover from the trees) Infantry on the ground also have clear line of sight to Hovering helicopters within 3″.
I’ve set up the testing table, and am working away on testing helicopters vs. infantry to make sure the systems of detection, attack and damage are feeling right.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Had a real life playtest today, first in a few months. Went very well:
Game start – 2 US platoons enter the area, with a Cobra overhead for cover
A heavily armed NVA platoon ambushes both platoons, attacking the squads out of cover
Both US squads take casualties and are suppressed, as RPGs and LMG fire tears out of the treeline. The Cobra overhead needs someone to pop smoke to work out where the enemy are – its too close and too many friendlies nearby!
Green Smoke! The US call in reinforcements, and 3 M113s arrive to help out
Unengaged US squads flank the NVA through the jungle, catching them unaware and suppressing the right-flank unit. Meanwhile the US units in the forest open up on the NVA, suppressing the other squad. A second NVA ambush is sprung from the top-left of this image, although only armed with AKs…
The US fan out, bringing a mortar squad up and zeroing in on the NVA position – combined mortar and small arms fire causes the NVA to retreat. Meanwhile the US on the top left move to engage the 2nd ambush position.
The NVA Platoon HQ melts into the forest, dragging the casualties with them… (an “Asset” used by the NVA commander)
A third NVA ambush position opens up on the right flank US platoon, with snipers taking out that units RTO. the radio is soon back in operation, however.
The M113s move to flank the top-left NVA ambush site, causing massive casualties with their .50 cals and wiping out an NVA squad
The cobra makes rocket and minigun runs on the 3rd NVA ambush position, forcing a squad to retreat among heavy casualties.
The top-left NVA unit is crushed, and the HQ retreats, attempting to drag the casualties with them…
In the confusion of tracking down the fleeing NVA, the cobra mistakenly fires on a friendly HQ unit, badly damaging them (essentially wiping them out) – call them off! call them off!
On the top left the NVA HQ is captured, as they attempt to flee from the M113 .50 cals, right into the US infantry behind them. A heavily armed NVA squad is able to get back into the fight, having retreated earlier, but its too late – the US have secured a minor victory, the Capture of the NVA HQ and the various casualties not recovered by the enemy putting them ahead of the NVA, who gained points for US casualties and the wiped out HQ unit.Overall a good game, things were working fairly well. we decided it needs to be easier to destroy units, especially at very close ranges, and I took an entire A4 page of notes for things that need to be clarified and/or fixed.
So good progress, will have another playtest in a few weeks – which is also good incentive to keep working on the rules and trying to wrestle this game into something fun on the table.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Over the last 6 months I haven’t been able to do very much on this project due to starting a new job, as well as doing my honours music degree, and working doing game music… thankfully my honours work is coming to a close, so I’ll have some time to continue writing and playtesting.
I have still been reading about Vietnam, starting a few books that I didn’t find too interesting, or from angles I’ve already read widely about: Things I’ll Never Forget – regular grunt stuff, Open Wound – more grunt stuff, then I realized I needed to read more company commander books, so I found Your Sons — My Soldiers — Our War: A Vietnam Commander’s Struggle by George R. Mauldin, who served 2 tours in Vietnam.
This book is great, and jumps straight into the action with an assault on some islands in the wetlands. It clearly details the units involved, their positions, and command decision. It was clear enough that I could “storyboard” this first battle and see who went where and what happened in each bound of action. Storyboarding was something I’ve learned from reading Philip Sabin’s Simulating War, which I picked up a few months back.
An interesting excerpt about probing fire:
“Unfortunately, men, we were inserted late today by helicopter. Therefore, any Viet Cong guerrillas within a large radius know that we haven’t had time to move very far from our insertion point. Some of you are just as experienced at arriving at these judgments as I am; however, I’ve got to say it my way, and I want you to do it my way. It’s quite predictable that we’ll receive probing fire tonight, and the VC might shoot some mortars at us. The probing fire will be directed at us to provoke us into returning the fire. If we sucker for their tactics and return the fire, they’ll know exactly where we’re located. And with that knowledge, they’ll have a distinct advantage over us, both tonight and tomorrow morning when we break camp. If they have the upper hand, they can avoid us completely; they can put their snipers in place to pick us off when we leave the area; or, they can assault us before daylight. If they shoot probing fire at us, no one, I mean no one, is to shoot back unless he can see the muzzle flash. Is that clear?”
Would definitely recommend this one if people are interested in Vietnam commander perspectives. I have another commander’s book I purchased which is waiting for me to read once I finish this one.
Rule-wise I’ve done a few small playtests – at one point I wanted to kind of start from scratch just to get back into the game design process, and did some fooling around with making up a ‘simple as possible’ detection and attack system, as well as trying out activation by randomly drawn playing cards. Rest assured these were just tests to see what was possible, and to get my brain back in the game! I haven’t changed any of the actual game systems yet, was essentially just sketching.
My plan when I get back into the project is to simplify some of the options down a bit, there are a few too many movement options for example that aren’t necessary. I’d also like to experiment a bit with the activation system, and maybe have it a bit more chaotic.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want the game to do, and I want something that is fairly chaotic and fun – so I may make use of the “enemy gets to control your unit” feature a bit more to simulate the dangers of friendly fire and the friction of poorly trained units not wanting to do what you want them to. Fun systems like that (which are already in place for the helicopters) add great variety to the gameplay and make for realistic friendly fire and friction situations without needing to randomize or use tables to control unit actions.
Essentially I will try to simplify as much as I can of the rules without removing historical flavor, so players can do larger games and focus more on the tactics than the rules. I’d like to have moments of “GET TO THE CHOPPER!” and of the VC / NVA frantically trying to recover casualties and melt into the jungle after a successful ambush.
Definitely looking forward to getting back into playtesting, cleaning up the rules, and experimenting with simple and fun systems to represent real history. Hope all of you out there are staying safe and getting some games in!
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Finished off Your Sons — My Soldiers — Our War, which was a pretty good read. Now on to Comanche 6:
Another book from the company commander’s perspective, so that’s always good – hopefully get some more good insight out of this.I’ve now finished off my university work for the year, so actually have time to get back into this project!
First order of business is to get the game running with as simple as possible rules – get a good core running, and clear up my line of sight, cover, movement, attacking rules. I’ll also tidy up the rulebook and get rid of some of the extra actions that aren’t really needed for games, such as conducting cloverleaf searches. They tend to add too many options for a player, but I may add them back in once the basics are solid. Ideally the movement, attacks and assets (such as artillery / air support) alone should create an interesting and challenging game, and the extra details should just add to the ‘flavor’.
Once the game is running smoothly with basic rules, I’ll start thinking about how I’m going to mix things up, throw a bit more chaos in. I’ll likely experiment with random events (52 different events that relate to a pack of playing cards?), friction via activation (perhaps uncertain activation), and maybe even a real-time movement phase (although this probably won’t work with the hidden movement mechanics where one player needs to turn away from the table).
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Made some good progress over the last few days, I had a review of the rules, and almost everything is looking pretty solid. There are still some sections highlighted for edit or removal, but the core of each section (infantry, helicopters, vehicles, terrain / fog of war, assets / support, army lists) is there and pretty much ready to roll.
I’ve been examining the activation system carefully, as I think it feels a bit static, where units essentially:
Roll to activate (either succeed or fail) – > Roll Detection – > Then do 1 action (move, attack, assault, dig in, etc.)I feel it would be better to have some flexibility, such as moving, detecting and attacking in any order. When I was playing around with activation via playing cards, I enjoyed having a pool of actions for a platoon that could be used on any squad or squads, so they could move multiple times, attempt detection multiple times (and at that stage attack multiple times, but I quickly discontinued that rule!).
This allowed you to focus on one squad doing some kind of massive outflanking maneuver, or get your whole platoon to move, but not as far, or a balance between the two, so gave some good flexibility and made activation a bit of an interesting puzzle itself. I feel its important that the basics of moving and fighting infantry is an interesting and engaging game in itself, and vehicles, helicopters and support should just be an extension of this, rather than a way to try to make the game better.So I’ve been experimenting with ways to make this kind of flexibility happen and how I can have it scale with troop quality and platoon size. Lower quality troops should be less flexible, and/or have less action points (or command points as some rules call them), while better quality troops would be much more flexible and able to do more.
This could also be a way to set the NVA/VC forces apart from the US et al., to make the NVA/VC a bit less flexible than the US.
I tried a few options here, and wasn’t really happy with any of them – looking at rolling dice to generate action points (hard to get it to scale with platoon size without using lots of maths), using playing cards to generate action points (required a massive lookup table that was completely unwieldy – see below!), and a few other ideas like each base generates X action points or somesuch.
A very unwieldy lookup table for activation based on quality and unit size…
At this stage I’m thinking that I can just do a small change – allow units to detect, move and attack in any order, and then let a HQ unit provide additional actions at the cost of a skill check (which will reflect their quality) They could potentially keep rolling until they fail. This way units can still do things, you don’t need randomized action points, and you can still send a unit on a crazy flanking mission, provided you can keep succeeding command checks.
Granted, outflanking already exists as an asset which an HQ unit can make use of, so maybe this whole train of thought is superfluous, and all that’s needed is some flexibility on detection / movement / attacking… but I’ll have a playtest and see what feels good and engaging in game, as that’s what’s really important!
Also had a quick game with my Fiance in the weekend, she was able to conduct a textbook ambush as the VC, inflicting casualties (the red markers) causing a US squad to retreat through an HQ base, disordering them…
We just used the old rules so she’d have a reference point to help me with discussing how the activation system could work.Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Nice idea madman, there’s definitely lots of ways to handle this!
Over the past week I’ve made great progress – had a bit of a breakthrough with regards to both activation and casualties.
I recently watched a GDC talk about game design, and one of the main takeaways for me was that As you approach the end of the game, drama should increase. This is akin to film and stories, that there is usually a climax at the end of the film, and that drama there should be at an absolute peak. This is the moment where the last squad is heavy bloodied, one guy is carrying his wounded buddy and yelling GET TO THE CHOPPER! as hundreds of VC close on their position…
With this idea in mind, I designed my activation and casualty systems to attempt to capture this kind of drama, as well as make things more fluid on the tabletop (more movement and outflanking, and closing with the enemy to really finish them off).I’ve done some testing and typed up a 3-page “core” document, just covering infantry (and without any special terrain point / fog of war rules).
Typing up this core is something that I would always start a game with, (and indeed, did start this game that way, back in 2019) – but because so much has changed since the initial version of this game, I felt it was important to do it again. Not too much has changed, but this small re-type allowed me to focus on the important parts without having to make lots of decisions about legacy rules and options. Opening the original game document was a bit overwhelming at times, there’s so much in there. So its important to me to have a very clear core foundation of rules that I can then build on and re-introduce the rest of the rules on top of.
Without a good foundation, this game isn’t going to work, and so that’s what I’ve been focusing on over the past 2 or 3 weeks.
You can check out my 3 page “core” document here if you’re interested:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/68bjb65xpwq5bak/November_2021_Re-Write_3.pdf/fileActivation
I think I’ve solved my activation issue. A Platoon will still roll a skill check in order to activate, and double 1’s will still be a mishap for poor and average quality units. If this activation roll is successful, the Platoon will generate a number of action points (AP):
This was a super simple system that allowed me (and the players) to not have to do anything beyond placing a D6 with the 6 facing up next to the platoon. By keeping this simple and not having to look up anything, or roll any dice to generate a number of AP, I allow the players to focus on the decisions they want to make, rather than how many decisions they’re allowed.
I also tried out a system where the number you roll over your activation check number is how many actions you get, but this ended up giving only 1, 2 or 3 actions on average, which just wasn’t enough, and I didn’t want to add any more maths to correct those numbers.So now we have each platoon getting 6 actions, and these actions can be used on any squad, in any order. Most units can do things in any order (move, detect, move again, detect, attack, etc.), but once a unit attacks, it can no longer do anything else. This would represent units getting target fixation and the time it takes to actually get a unit to CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE!
To differentiate the more rigid command structure of NVA/VC units, I decided to keep them in the old style of “detection first”. They still have some freedom, but as soon as they undertake any non-detection actions, they can no longer attempt detection. I also applied this to Poor Quality units, as this will make all these unit types just that little bit less flexible and static.
This system is working nicely, as the less squads you have in your platoon, the more actions those squads can undertake, so it kinda balances out casualties, and represents commanders only having a certain amount of attention, so they can’t command 100 men as well as they can command 10.
Casualties
I came up with a counter-intuitive system for casualties, after trying out a bunch of ideas.
My main idea was- The more damage a unit takes, the less likely it should be to get removed from the game
This seems completely backwards to how most games do it, but hear me out. As a unit takes more casualties, the ones left alive will be taking more and more cover, trying to survive, until eventually you have 1 or 2 guys left, hiding under a dead body or some bush.
This also gives two good results: one is that drama increases as you reach the end of the game, as units with more casualties actually become harder to destroy.
The other is that once a unit has taken casualties, you can’t just keep shooting at them and expect them to die, you have to close with them and destroy them from close range, which encourages movement and outflanking rather than static shooting from a distance.I tested out this core system today, and it seems to be working great. Here’s the run down of the quick playtest I did:
2 US platoons (bottom) vs 2 VC Platoons. US advance up to the treelines, while VC are waiting, hidden.
left-hand US platoon is able to spot only 1 squad of the left hand VC platoon, and open fire, but with no effect.
VC platoon on the right attempt to detect US platoon after it has moved up to the opposite treeline, but are unable to.
US platoon on the right send a single squad to crawl across the open ground, they inch forwards, attempting detection as they go, but don’t find anything (even though they’re within spitting distance of a VC squad… the VC must have been well camouflaged and had excellent fire discipline…)
Thinking everything is fine, the right hand US platoon sends 1 squad walking in the open towards the VC platoon on the opposite side of the clearing. In a regular game, the VC would often be hidden under terrain points, so the US wouldn’t actually know they were there. I role played this, because its not a move that a rational US force would take if they knew VC were watching the open ground.
No surprises, the VC open up on the squad walking in the open, taking advantage of opportunity fire.
On the left, all 3 lightly armed US squads open fire on the 1 detected VC squad, and are able to knock out the RPG team. The squad is now suppressed.
The left hand VC platoon returns fire with AKs and RPGs, and annihilates one of the US squads. Meanwhile the US HQ unit attempts to outflank the rest of the VC platoon, moving multiple times and then hiding in the bushes nearby, in case the VC attempt a counter attack.
I went for a few turns after this, and it was enough to be a good proof of concept. It felt fluid, exciting, there were lots of options for the commanders, and it was all based on dead simple mechanics. I especially like being able to get a squad to crawl up slowly, while the rest of the platoon waits, in order to reconnoiter an area.
I will next look at trying out Recon by Fire / Probing fire, and maybe some suppression fire mechanics to make sure everything is looking good before I start adding in support and weapons like mortars and suchlike.
I also have a playtest / ideas session organized for tomorrow with my old friend, who has helped me with many rule sets in the past and is very knowledgeable on military history and game design, so I’m hoping to see what he thinks about the activation and casualty systems.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Good progress over the past few weeks – my friend Eugene and I had a very good playtest, and his keen eye for what the game is and what it needs to do helped a lot. Eugene was instrumental in helping with some of my earlier games, namely our WW2 ruleset, and has a broad knowledge of history and warfare.
We cleaned a few rules up, and discussed what the game is designed to do and how to best get those results. After going through the core mechanics, we had a small playtest, and will do another in the next week, this time with the fog of war mechanics in place.
The playtest went well, with almost no changes to the activation system, just a few tweaks to casualties and retreat checks.
Since then I’ve been going through the rules with a fine tooth comb, from the first page and clarifying each section, trying to remove unneeded rules and re-type some of the sections that have had major changes such as the Casualties and Retreat mechanics, which are now use an almost identical system of “instantaneous fire” – where a large amount of fire in an instant can be lethal (such as an ambush), but a large amount of fire spread over several turns will simply cause a target to take more cover, and be less affected in the end. This applies to retreats as well – so a withering fire that suddenly occurs is more likely to cause a unit to break, as opposed to a small amount of fire that carries on for multiple turns.
I’ve gone through almost the entire core rules and infantry section, and am currently up to some of the mishap rules such as becoming “out of Comms”, or “lost”. I have some tough decisions ahead as to whether these mechanics should remain in place, or if they detract from the gameplay.
Eugene seemed to think this game was more about generating narratives than your average “my army list vs your army list”, which I think suits the period nicely – I always wanted to create tension and have the game create stories for the players, rather than being a simple “lets see who wins” affair, although certainly it could also be played competitively.
I typed up most of the Allied City Fight list, designed for Hue battles:
As well as doing the stats for vehicles like the Duster and Ontos, and statting out their weapons. The Ontos required some special rules to cover the crew needing to dismount to reload, as well as the smoke created when firing.
I’ll need to test these points values out, especially some of these vehicles to see just how powerful they are… the Ontos can put out a LOT of firepower… 6x 105mm Recoilless rifles firing all at once – don’t want to be on the wrong end of that (and NVA supposedly would flee just seeing one of these…)Aside from that, my book Comanche Six: Company Commander in Vietnam is going well – there was an interesting tactic where the US were sweeping a bunker complex used by the NVA – they found a .50 cal in a bunker complex, and so after taking it, they rigged the entire area with trip flares, then set up a mortar team overwatching the hill with the bunkers from their NDP. The Mortar team had zeroed in on the area of the bunkers, and one man from each mortar had to stay awake all night, ready to fire should there be any trip flares triggered…
The NVA showed up later on looking for their gun using flashlights, and the mortar teams instantly opened up. They didn’t go back to the area to check for bodies howeverTom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Had a good playtest yesterday, the core seems to be functioning well, as well as mortar and hidden movement mechanics. We did some small tweaks to make units easier to remove from the game via casualties, but I’m re-thinking this today. While in many wargames you’re used to seeing enemy units removed as an indicator of your progress, in this game its more about inflicting casualty markers (and how the enemy deals with those markers) rather than wiping units out. You can still wipe out units with enough firepower, but the norm should be units taking casualties and trying to evacuate them, and (for the NVA) prevent the enemy getting a body count, or (for the US) evacuating wounded / recovering bodies.
Here’s a photo – probably not much to look at as its just infantry carnage…
I also noticed yesterday there was a lot of busy work with the casualty / retreat system, placing markers, making checks, removing markers – so I’m doing a bit of ‘start from scratch’ brainstorming to see if I can simplify these mechanics. The game should be about tactical decisions rather than spending time resolving casualty and retreat checks – that kind of resolution should be almost automatic.
So I’ve opened a blank word file, and am typing up ideas and simple sentences about want from the game, as well as tying out simple mechanics.
it looks a bit like this:
I have two main factors I’m trying to balance:
Intensity of incoming fire
Quality of the troops under fireI feel like retreat / suppression and casualties should be much more likely for poor quality troops, and could happen at any time, even if poor quality troops are in a heavily fortified bunker.
As the rules currently stand, cover completely prevents you from retreating, and makes it harder to cause casualties and suppression. While this is fine for average and good quality troops, I feel like poor quality should have a chance of retreating regardless of what kind of cover they’re in.And so I’m trying to think outside the box and come up with a simple and effective casualty/retreat/suppression mechanic that allows for troop quality and intensity of incoming fire. It might seem like a lot to put together, but if I can find an elegant way to handle this, the game will suddenly flow much better.
Next playtest we plan to introduce helicopters and the support assets such as artillery and air strikes, so having these casualty mechanics sorted by then will hopefully help a lot as we add more complexity and facets to the game.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Last week has seen good progress, I’ve solved the casualties / retreat / suppression issues in a simple way that allows cover and quality to make a difference, and so lower quality units can retreat regardless of what kind of cover they’re in.
Essentially when an attack is made, a number of D6s are rolled, depending on the weapon. We compare the result of the D6s to the Infantry Attack table (shown below), which will cause suppression / casualties / retreat, or combinations of those effects. Previously I had factored in cover here, which would ignore results of 6 or 5 and 6 for heavier cover. Now cover no longer applies here.
When a unit takes a “Casualties” or “Retreat” result, they must make a skill check (one for each) group of results, which is modified by their quality and the cover they’re in, as well as how many of these casualties and retreat results they received from the current attack. If they fail, they start losing bases on the table, and/or being forced to retreat.
This way the system functions using the usual skill check / difficulty system that already exists in the game, and allows quality and cover to make a big difference to casualties and retreating, but we still get more random results from the initial D6 rolls on the infantry damage table.
The system is done in a way that multiple markers don’t need to be placed, but rather a single marker on the task difficulty table is moved left or right depending on the modifiers (shown below)
With that hopefully solved, I moved on to cleaning up the rest of the infantry rules, incorporating the edits from the playtest, and then moving to the Support Asset systems. These systems required a bit of re-typing and organizing all my notes (as well as a bit more research on NVA / VC battle tactics)
I came up with this for the NVA (note there is a separate sheet for the VC, with booby traps, more reinforcements and less ambushe)s:
And this for the US (which has since been filled out / complete):
These sheets will allow a quick reference for assets and their effects in game, so players don’t have to sift through a bunch of pages to find the artillery rules.
With the assets mostly done for the purpose of playesting (still ARVN and ANZAC asset sheets to fill out, but can leave those until later), I tidied up the recon / LRRPs / SAS rules, and reduced some of the clutter there.
Next up – Helicopters!
Progress so far:
- Core Rules ☑
- Infantry ☑
- Terrain Points / Hidden movement ☑
- Support Assets ☑
- Recon Squads ☑
- Helicopters ☑
- Vehicles ☐
- Scenarios / Missions ☐
- Playtesting / filling out ARVN / ANZACs ☐
- City Fight Test ☐
- Tidying Up / proof reading ☐
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Good progress over the holiday period, I’ve finished looking over and re-typing the helicopter and vehicle sections, and done some small scale playtests of helicopter and vehicle damage / detection / line of sight, so that all seems to be working nicely.
Photos of playtesting:
Cobra attack runs and attacks against Cobras:
I’ve also tried out hunter killer teams (1x Loach and 1x Cobra) and they operate together nicely.
I put some time into making sure the Loaches worked correctly, as they operate differently to the two modes of flight assumed in this game. I assume helicopters are either “High and Fast” or “Low and Slow” for simplicity, meaning you don’t need to track altitude or speed. Essentially helicopters moving more than 4″ are assumed to be high and fast, and don’t need any marker (and also receive reductions to damage), while helicopters moving less than 4″ are considered to be “Hovering”, and place a “Hovering” marker.The only problem with this is that Loaches tended to fly low and fast, and their pilots learned to very quickly asses situations. Actual hovering on the spot was usually fatal for a Loach in close proximity to the enemy. And so I allowed them to move further while hovering, and take the reductions to damage as if they were “high and Fast”.
More small scale playtesting – looking at dropping troops and ground fire vs. hueys. Line of sight to Hovering helicopters is blocked by terrain features, and so they can hover down low and use stretches of forest to give themselves cover from known threats.
While looking at helicopter line of sight, I used this time to make some example images for line of sight and cover in general, especially jungle terrain:
This image is accompanied by example text describing the situation of each unit both to and from the US squad, and showing players the best positions to fire out of forest in order to get cover and not give the target any.My current work is the vehicle damage system, which was incredibly simple (and brutal), whereby units simply rolled a number of D6s against a vehicle damage table, so 1 dice roll could destroy / immobilize / disorder the vehicle.
This seemed to work ok (although led to a lot of destroyed vehicles), but incorporating cover into the system proved problematic. Usually in games in the past when I had a damage table and needed to incorporate cover I would simply just implement a -1 or -2 modifier to the roll on the damage table, however I decided early on that I didn’t want to use modifiers to dice rolls, and instead rely on the Skill Check and Task Difficulty system, where the target 2D6 roll increases or decreases based on modifiers (you can see this system in the post above (Task Difficulty Table).At this road-block I thought about a few options for quick and simple fixes, but eventually decided I should have the vehicle damage system be identical to the Helicopter damage system, which has large parallels to the infantry damage system. Having just the one system for all three is the most logical choice, and it works well for infantry and helicopters.
Upon implementing this kind of system I had a few issues however – firstly it makes it much more busy work (need to roll to hit, then make a damage check based on how many hits were inflicted, cover, troop quality, etc.), then roll on a damage table, and secondly because it made vehicles really hard to destroy. Vehicles are already immune to small arms fire, and so require an RPG or large caliber HMG or suchlike to damage them, so having all these extra stages to get through made it really difficult to actually bring one down.
So I’ll need to re-think how I’m going to handle vehicle damage, I can tweak the numbers (make it easy to hit, and make the damage check more likely to inflict damage), or I could omit some of the stages, maybe just assume hits and then go to a Damage Check (which would allow us to immediately take cover and attacking units troop quality into account). I’ve been doing a few small scale vehicle tests and will continue until I find something that flows nicely and Isn’t too much work.
One one hand I’d like vehicles to not be the focus of the game, and be relatively flimsy, but on the other hand mechanized players would probably like them to be a bit more robust, and certainly tanks should be a nice stonewall to hide behind in things like city fights. I will need to find a balance here that feels right.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
If anyone knows where to find images of VC or NVA with 57mm or 75mm Recoilless rifles – I’d love to be directed to some good photos… I’ve scoured through google image search (both on English and Vietnamese google, using google translate to search in Vietnamese…)
If you’re interested in what came up on Vietnamese google image search, with a more general Vietnam war search:
Check this OutMade good progress over the last few days, I’ve solved the vehicles issue (simply removing the “to hit” roll, and going straight to a damage check), and had a good small scale playtest with 3 M113s and 1 M48 vs a VC Platoon with 2 RPGs. The Vehicles were able to inflict significant casualties, but were unable to dislodge the VC completely, and RPGs continued to rain down on the vehicles, destroying one M113, immobilizing another, and immobilizing the M48. It seemed a pretty even affair, although I think the VC would have come out worse off from victory points.
I’ve spent the last few days typing up quick reference sheets for the important parts of the game:
-Infantry
-Skill Checks / Detection
-Terrain Points (the fog of war system)
-Helicopters
-VehiclesSo that now all the information you need for each of these systems is pretty much in one place.
I’ve also typed up a “guided tour”, which outlines a good way to ease into the rules over the course of the first few games, telling players what to focus on when learning the infantry rules, then fog of war rules. This way players can get to grips with the rules correctly, and understand some of the differences to other systems which have quite a large impact on gameplay if done right.
For example, when failing a detection roll, the target is considered “undetected”, and you can’t try to detect it again until you are within 3″. Small details like this make a huge difference, and so I thought it was a good idea to lead players through these details, as I would when introducing the game to someone in real life.This game has 3 main interacting systems – infantry rules, fog of war rules, and helicopter rules (vehicles function almost like simplified helicopters rules-wise) which on their own are fairly straight forward, but when combined could be a bit overwhelming to start with. Hence the idea of a guided tour to start with.
I’ve also been typing up the Asset Mishap table, for the things that can go wrong if you roll double 1’s when attempting to call in support… you can see the allied one below. I had quite a lot of fun typing these up, and wanted a bit of comedy for some of them, such as failing an “Initiative” asset and being chewed out by command.
So for example, if you’re trying to call in artillery, and you screw it up, the rounds are targeted at YOU, and then scatter away, rather than scattering from your target. Could create some realistic SNAFU situations.The Communist mishap table is below, you can see I’m still filling this one out:
Since most of the rules are all sorted at this stage, I’m just typing up the last of the Support Asset system now – going into a bit more detail about how artillery works (beyond the basics of the quick reference asset sheets), and re-writing the sections about calling in medevac and requesting extraction.
Hoping to have a large scale playtest either this weekend, or next week.Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
The rules are all typed up now, and we’ve been doing some playtests, both in person and via Tabletop Simulator. Taking lots of notes!
game start – 2 US platoons on foot, with 2 Loaches scouting ahead, flying fast and low
One of the Loaches discovers a large VC force and is taken under fire, hitting the cockpit badly and knocking out radios and disordering the pilot. As night is falling, he has to RTB. Meanwhile the US rifle platoons are slowed by booby traps in the open rice paddies, one squad being wiped out completely (did they cluster around a 500 lb bomb or something!?)
Towards the end of the game, night falls and the VC launch large scale harassment mortar attacks on the last known US position, while moving reinforcements to engage.
A VC ambush springs out of the treeline behind the US night position – they weren’t well prepared (and I still need to work out the rules for setting up NDPs – night defensive positions). The VC ambush causes significant casualties, but a nearby platoon is able to get air support from an AC-130 spooky – the miniguns rip through the night and badly damage one of the VC squads. To add to this, a heavily armed US squad ambushes the ambushers – perhaps they knew the VC were there the whole time and were just waiting for them??The game ended as a draw due to casualties – as the US were not able to extract them during the night (does anyone have more info on getting casualties evacuated at night – was this done with helicopters? or did you generally have to wait until morning?)
A tabletop simulator playtest – US airmobile insertions under heavy mortar fire…Things that seem to be working very well:
Helicopters, helicopter damage
Detection, fog of warThings that needed some work:
Assets
Night Fighting
Large groups of Mortars attacking
Booby TrapsThe infantry attack system is working OK, but I still feel like its slowing the game down a bit… which makes me seriously think about simplifying it.
I feel a bit like Bernie Sanders in this meme:
So I may jut strip it back to something more similar to the helicopter or vehicle damage systems.
Infantry Damage at the moment:
-Roll D6 for each weapon, table will give results of Casualties, Suppressed and/or Retreat
-Make casualty and/or Retreat checks, modified by how many results of each.Helicopter damage
-Roll to hit (4+ on D6)
-Damage check based on how many hits
-If failed, roll on damage tableVehicle Damage
-Make a Damage Check, modified for difficulty depending on how many weapons are attacking
-if failed, roll on damage tableSo I’ll see what I can come up with to really strip this back for infantry, and see just how few rolls and rules I can use to get the results I want (which is: fast play, units don’t generally get wiped out straight away, casualties are important to try to evacuate, units get suppressed or retreat under heavy fire, even if there aren’t any casualties)
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
A week of good progress, did some small scale testing of infantry attack mechanics, and simplified my attack table down, so it doesn’t give multiple results – just 1 result per dice roll. Cleaned up the casualty marker system too – you now only place a marker if you lose a unit.
This is what the old and new attack tables looks like:
Had a good playtest yesterday, we did a “cat and mouse” battle where both sides are hidden under the terrain points, and must attempt to find the enemy and get a better position for an attack. If went well and things seem to be flowing smoothly, although the new mission type threw in a few spanners.
The game saw us spending a few turns bumbling around trying to work out where the other was, I managed to get lucky as the US and get a heavily armed platoon around the back of the VC forces, and (somewhat unwittingly) left a lightly armed platoon in the center of the table as bait. Eventually the center platoon was found and revealed, along with the VC force that discovered them. Neither side fired to start with, still trying to detect each other in the dark. Since we knew something was there, my HQ whispered into the radio to get some illumination rounds on the target, and the eerie light thrown from the artillery flare rounds showed a platoon size VC force in the treeline nearest our central platoon. While attempting to close in on this VC platoon from behind with my heavily armed US platoon, that platoon was ambushed by a couple of LMGs, and bogged down trying to deal with those, so couldn’t get into position as quickly as I’d liked. Meanwhile VC mortars began opening up, but they were firing wildly and weren’t able to hit very much.
VC Mortars in the bottom left of this image.The VC eventually realized they were stuck between two US platoons – an untenable situation, and we called the game there, just as the US were about to call in gunships…
While I had done some work on the time of day system:
Adding in 1 turn of ‘dawn’ and 1 turn of ‘dusk’ to the clock to allow US to set up NDPs and for the VC/NVA to hide after night operations, we ended up scrapping this completely, throwing out the old clock marker, and replacing it with a “Night or Day” binary clock:
Which changes on a 5+ (D6) roll each turn. This worked great, and allowed the game to flow quickly between night and day operations. Upon night time taking place, we assumed that all US / Allied forces would be either hiding or digging NDPs, and so allowed them to place the applicable markers for free.I also did some tinkering with the mortar, artillery – making mortars less extreme, and artillery more predictable / usable. It seems I may have gone too far though, as in our playtest we found mortars to be not effective enough (from what I’ve read mortars tend to cause much more casualties than small arms fire in modern conflicts), and so I’ll need to rectify that.
Currently I have around 2 pages of notes to go through from this playtest and the last 2 playtests, so I’ll be working through those, and seeing where I can simplify things. The simpler I can make some of these mechanics, especially around calling in support like mortars and artillery, the better the game will flow.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
I’ve been working through the edits made during playtesting, and some of them have been quite a bit of work – re-working the terrain point rules a little for simplicity, as well as mortar and artillery rules to make them easier to use and more effective. As you can imagine, mortar and artillery support is absolutely crucial in Vietnam, so its important these systems work easily and interface nicely with the infantry gameplay.
Here’s an example of one of my pages of notes – this one in particular was quite a mission to get through (and you can see its been through the wars and survived the great coffee spill of 26th feb).
Another thing I’d like to touch on is file management – perhaps not often covered in gamedev blogs, but incredibly important if you’re actually writing a game!
This is what my Vietnam game folder looks like. I save a new version of the game whenever I make significant changes, that way I can always go back and find old rules or old ideas, or if there’s ever a problem I can go to an older version (although that kind of thing has never happened…)
Blog – images and notes for writing these blogs
COMMENTS AND EDITS – not actually much in here except an annotated version of the PDF, with lots of comments. I’ll drag all the random comments into here.
Cover – images and paint.net files for the cover page and the background images
Example – example images and paint.net files – cover examples, LOS examples, etc.
Markers & Nametags – all the game markers, and paint.net files of the marker sheets
Old – old version of the rules, going back to the original open office document I typed up. I keep all the old versions here so they don’t clutter up this main folder
Pictures – all the pictures of the Vietnam war I’ve collected. Once the rules are finished, I’ll drop the most interesting and/or relevant images into the document to fill up any empty spaces.
Platoon Roster & day-night- VC plans – image files for the platoon rosters, which are no longer used. I could move this to the “Old” folder.
Research – All the PDFs and other game rules I’ve collected as reference. A few Ospreys, and declassified US army studies in firepower and random reports on stuff like the 11th Armored Cav in Vietnam 1969 – 1970
Sound – This folder is empty – I think I used to have 2 sound files for playing at the start of each player’s turn (fortunate son and some traditional Vietnamese music). I’ll delete this folder (typing this up is forcing me to organize this folder a little…)
TTS – Tabletop Simulator files, such as individual markers exported for upload, as well as screenshots and shortcuts.Another important element of file management is backups – I personally back up my files on Mediafire, uploading the latest few versions every week or so in case anything happens to my computer such as the house burning down. It would be sad to put all this work into a project and then lose it, so I’m a big fan of cloud-based backups.
Anyway, the next week I’ll be working through the rest of my notes, in preparation for another playtest next week. These weekly playtests with my long-time wargames buddy Eugene (who helped me design our first ww2 wargame – Ostfront) have been incredibly helpful, and forced me to simplify things so they run smoother and are easier to use. We’re making good progress, and Eugene has lots of good ideas on how to simplify things, as well as a very solid knowledge of military history.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Good playtest yesterday, everything seems to be flowing pretty well, and the tweaked artillery rules are working nicely.
I took only around 4 lines of notes, so not too many things actually going wrong with the game which is nice.
US Airmobile insertion, backed up by 2 cobra gunships. Artillery prep suppressing the LZ
US Platoon disembarks, and the cobras continue to strafe nearby terrain points, although they aren’t able to detect any enemy forces.
Friendly Fire! call them off! CALL THEM OFF! – A cobra is confused by a phony VC smoke grenade, and makes an attack run against US forces, Inflicting casualties on one squad, and suppressing another – this was a VC Asset card which allowed them to take control of any allied unit for 1 turn to simulate friendly fire.
A VC LMG opens up on the squad already weathering a hail of fire from the cobra, as the US platoon commander calls in reinforcements which quickly arrive – 3x M113s.
Night falls, as the last of the platoon is inserted, and all the helis must RTB, which is exactly the time the VC choose to make their attack, ambushing from the rear of the US platoon, and causing chaos.
Close up on the action
This is a true test of US support assets, as its one platoon against 2 or 3 VC platoons. The only thing the US can count on at night for support is artillery, and they quickly react, calling in a spotting round, adjusting fire, and then Calling to FIRE FOR EFFECT. 3 VC squads are decimated in the heavy barrage.
The M113s advance up, wiping out the VC LMG position, and closing on the flanks of the VC main force.This was about where we called the game – the VC player was trying out having massive platoons, but with little heavy weaponry. It turned out these larger formations were a bit unwieldy, due to limited Action Points available to get them to move, attack, etc. and we decided to increase action points in general for all platoons, so you could get more done when you activate, and not have to wait an entire turn to be in the position you want.
All in all a good playtest – the core mechanics are functioning nicely, balance seems to be ok (game was a draw at the time of finishing), and artillery accounting for most of the VC casualties, which I think is right on par with some of the accounts I’ve read. Some tweaks to be made, but we’re getting there!
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Making some good progress over the past 3 weeks, have had another playest, clarified some rules issues, and have typed up most of the scenarios.
The playtest was a bit of a mismatch – we put very low quality Viet Cong against a US Mechanized company, with M-48s. This kind of match up actually isn’t allowed for in the rules, as the low quality VC are only available for the 1960 – 1964 period (to match against the ARVN), and the US don’t arrive until 1965.
We found out why these two lists shouldn’t go up against each other – the low quality VC, while heavily armed with RPG-2’s ambushed the US almost immediately in the game, but failed to inflict any significant damage, beyond causing an M-48 to be disordered. The US quickly reacted, funneling large amounts of firepower into the VC forces, while simultaneously ambushing them from behind. The VC quickly broke and ran, or were cut down from behind.A second VC platoon attempted to cross open ground to attack, but it was clear to us that there would be no use continuing the game after they were only able to knock out the weapon of one M-48.
The rules seemed to be functioning as intended, and we will re-try this battle again, but this time with average quality VC to see how the vehicle / infantry balance is.
VC ambush
US react
VC being quickly dealt withOver the past few days I’ve been codifying exactly how partial cover and line of sight works, and have done some example images:
Line of sight blocked: utilizing a simple “draw a line from the center of the attacker to the center of the target” system – if this line is blocked, line of sight is blocked.
Terrain and units giving partial cover:
The US Squad at the bottom of this image has a number of targets.
Target A will get Light Cover, as the field of fire drawn towards this target has Scattered Terrain in it.
Target B will get no cover
Target C will get Light Cover as the field of fire drawn towards this target is partially obscured by unit B
Target C cannot be attacked, as it is blocked as described by the line of sight rules (drawing a line from center of the attacking unit to the center of the target unit).Now that I’ve clarified these rules, and created the example images, I hope people reading this for the first time will be able to easily work any line of sight or terrain issues without any strange edge cases.
As well as these clarifications, I’ve typed up 3 more scenarios in addition to the Search and Destroy and Cat and Mouse scenarios already done.
The new scenarios are:
Rescue (rescue a recon squad surrounded by Communist forces)
Base Defense (Allied Firebase under attack – introducing satchel charges and artillery fired at point blank range with beehive rounds)
Urban Battle (a Huế 1968 style battle in the city).This leaves only 1 scenario still to type up, which is the “Assault” scenario – kind of the opposite of the base defense, where the allies are on the offensive into a heavily defended communist region.
So we’re definitely getting there, will be continuing playtests next week.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Good playtest yesterday, we tried out the US Armored Company vs more experienced NVA reinforced VC.
Game started with 2 M48 Pattons’s and 2 M113s sniffing around some terrain points, seeing what’s around.
There was a friendly fire incident where one Patton fired on the second, but thankfully there was no damage…
The Patton tanks rolled across the open field, successfully detecting sings of VC in the area (Although their exact position wasn’t known…) this caused the VC to be revealed on the table, but at this point the tanks cannot attack them as they have not detected them yet. The tanks called in helicopter gunship support, as well as airmobile reinforcements.
The VC opened fire with RPGs on the two Pattons, causing one to be disordered. Due to tracers, the tanks were eventually able to determine the position of the VC, and opened up with their 90mm main cannons and .50 cals, causing some casualties and suppressing most of the VC platoon.
2 cobras rolled in on the target and lit them up with rockets and miniguns, absolutely annihilating the platoon’s HQ and knocking out RPG gunners.
Shortly after this a second VC platoon appeared in the same area, this time at very close range and slightly behind one of the Pattons. Multiple RPG hits were scored on the Patton and it was destroyed in a massive fireball.
The remaining Patton called in artillery strikes on the treeline, and annihilated more of the second VC platoon, especially their HQ. Without an HQ, the platoon scrambled to try to establish a new command, after which the new commander decided to “melt into the jungle”, taking many of their casualties with them.
The M113s rolled over the open field to join the fray, but were hit by opportunity RPG fire, and one was destroyed, with the entire squad inside / on top perishing.
The game ended with 210 Victory Points to the US for destroying 3 VC HQs (another was hit off screen), and multiple casualties, largely from the Cobras and artillery. The VC scored around 30 Victory Points for the destroyed tank and APC and the 1 squad. All in all a heroic victory for the US.
We took a few notes, still clarifying some things, and obviously the balance needs a little tinkering. I decided that helicopters require their own detection checks, and cannot use automatically detect units that have been detected by ground forces. They will get bonuses to detection if smoke grenades are present within 12″ of the target. the cobra asset was also nerfed slightly to only be 1 gunship rather than 2.
The vehicle attack rules seem to be ok, especially with opportunity fire, although vehicles are still quite hard to destroy, even with RPGs (Although this includes actually trying to getting a hit), although better quality NVA would make this much easier. Perhaps more Victory Points for destroying vehicles might also help the balance.
At this stage the rules are mostly fine, and just the balance of the points values and the different factions assets are the main thing we’re focusing on. Due to the asymmetrical nature of the game, this will take time to really get a feeling for how the different assets of different factions function and how powerful they are.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Had another good playtest last week, I tweaked the VC assets a little, allowing them a little more movement (with a literal “Tunnel Movement” free 12″ move for an entire platoon) and the ability to pop up a small squad out of a spider hole, both of which were quite useful to the VC player, as opposed to some of the less useful assets like “fragmented withdrawal” that had a possibility of units being attacked.
The game was a draw victory points-wise, which means the game balance should be pretty much spot on.
Turn 1 – the US Marines, backed up by an LVTH-6 track, take sniper fire while entering a suspected VC village. This platoon is “good” quality, putting them a cut above the regular AS army with their mixed-in green recruits. This platoon has experience and should (ideally) be able to stand against 2 or 3 VC platoons on their own.
Loach scouting ahead, VC pop out of a spider hole and take it under fire – no damage however.
After searching the village, and finding a VC rice and weapons stash (which adds bonus victory points to the US player), the Marines withdraw slightly to set up a Night Defensive Position, as night sets in. The night is fairly quiet, but in the morning more sniper fire is received, and VC pop out of a spider hole right in front of the NDP, killing the platoon commander. The marine Platoon quickly establishes a new command, but it takes time, and prevents them from finding or suppressing the VC spider hole.
With a new commander installed, and radios back up, the new HQ calls in reinforcements, and 3x M113s arrive to assist. a VC platoon appears to the Northeast, while a second makes an assault from the village towards the marine position. A huge brawl erupts, with tracers flying everywhere as the marines desperately resist, losses are high on both sides.
One of the marine squads breaks and runs to the Northwest, with their morale degraded from small attacks over the past week (a VC asset), they are forced to withdraw under heavy fire. The LVTH-6 flanks the VC platoon, causing significant casualties, but meanwhile the M113s are beset by anti-tank booby traps. One of the M113s is immobilized while trying to navigate the mines.
The game ended with significant losses on both sides. The marines did take more casualties, but their discovery and destroying of the VC stash helped them to break even.The main changes after this game is that we won’t allow spider holes to appear within 6″ of a US HQ, otherwise the VC can just snipe them, and losing your HQ is just too disruptive (and highly unlikely that a spider hole would be right next to an HQ unit).
Other changes include allowing helicopters paid for in army list writing to return at dawn (otherwise they are just removed as soon as night falls, which could be at the end of turn 1), and a few small corrections and clarifications.The next playtest is tonight, and we’re going to try a city fight, a la Hue, so should be interesting, and completely different from these jungle battles.
Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
Playtest on Monday went well, we did a city battle, and it was chaotic, different and a little unwieldy due to both sides being infantry, and the amount of reinforcements called in. In light of this, I have tweaked the assets slightly so that reinforcements are less common. City fights are a whole different story, with NVA setting up bunkers inside buildings, and marines needing to rely on smoke and 105mm recoilless rifles to make headway. Ambushes were common, with an Allied squad appearing in the rear of an NVA buildings, only to be ambushed themselves by NVA in the building behind them… An M48 tank appeared to help out the carnage, but was immediately hit by RPG fire destroyed…
The table wasn’t pretty, but it did the job. The Carboard squares are buildings.
Aside from this, I’ve spent this week typing up the various edits needed, working through my list from the past 2 playtests. Honestly everything is looking pretty good, and I think we’re pretty much ready for release!
I spent today doing up the ANZAC and ARVN nameplates (for printing out and gluing to miniature bases), as well as finalizing the marker sheets and the latest version of the clock marker (with only “Night” and “Day” segments).
I will hopefully record an example video over the next few days, and should be on track for release within a week I think.
Only other main thing I need to go is go through the rules and replace all the instances of “Page XX” with the actual page numbers (because these are often subject to change as sections are added or removed, I generally leave this until last).
I’m going to be doing a lot of this, opening two versions of the rules and double checking all the page numbers are correct…Tom Jensen - http://ostfrontpublishing.com/
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