I hope you are all well on this warm weekend, it has been an interesting summer thus far, and with the weather of the weekend folks are looking to the skies for any signs of weather. No better time to take a jump into The Nam; we had a flurry of painting and thoughts about getting into The Nam last year so it is good to start getting metal on the table.
For our first foray, Mike selected the “Hot LZ” mission from the Nam book. Big picture, the US forces (Duncan and I) deploy 1 unit on table within 12 inches of an objective placed in the general area of the table centre. A second objective is placed in any corner by the Nationalist player (Mike). The remainder of the US forces are back at the Firebase gearing up and getting ready to board the Hueys. In this case, Nationalist forces are held in immediate scattered reserves waiting for the right time to deploy and close their trap. For this scenario the US forces are defending the objective they placed and can win by taking the objective in the table corner. The Nationalist’s are pushing hard for the centre.
Duncan and I had a US Airmobile Company with 1 x HQ element; 1 x medic team; 2 x combat platoons (riflemen with 2 x M60 teams); 4 x Hueys for transport (forces have to be airlifted into battle); and 2 x Aeroweapons platoons with 2 x Cobras.
Mike has already beaten me to the punch on this one, his battle report and propaganda piece is best read with the voice of Hanoi Hanna in your head. If I remember correctly, his force included a PAVN infantry battalion with 2 x infantry companies; HQ element; 1 x anti-air platoon; 1 x recoilless gun platoon; 3 x machine gun bunkers; and a K-3 Ironclad company of 5 x PT-76 amphibious tanks. I think the book doesn’t allow this type of support, but we made the forcelists up on the fly, and it was all good.
All in all, a frustratingly good game, some tense moments as we were trying to get a grip on handling the helos and their pros/cons. Hope you enjoy the pics…
Initial setup with both objectives in view, the centre with initial US chalk inserted and the second at the bottom right of the picture.
Mike does a pretty good job rolling for his immediate reserves and is able to deploy the bunkers and his first company (they deploy near the bottom objective). The bunkers do a good job of mucking up the line of approach between both objectives…and end up giving some pause to the helos trying to control the table.
Bigger view of the table…
We take a few hits from the bunkers, no big effects…we decided to spring the first Cobra flight behind the arcs of fire for the bunkers…and screen the Huey’s dropping our second platoon. We hit the objective and trees with a rocket salvo killing an infantry team.
Mike rolls again for reserves and brings on the anti-air platoon…the guerilla fighters rule gives Mike some latitude in deployment, the 12.7’s end up deploying across the river near a subtle hill. They quickly lay down some impressive fire and down a Cobra. The Huey’s dump the troops and get back to the staging base and the grunts start humping to the objective in line with M60’s in the front rank.
Mike brings in his K3 company and they put some main gun fire to the table centre, putting pressure on the first platoon. He also brings down the second Cobra that we had on table.
The second platoon get themselves ready to push the objective an start rushing the stream (looks much deeper than it was) and prepping for an assault. The platoon makes sure to leave clear firing lanes for the M60 teams to try to pin the NVA.
Of course, as you see in the top pic, Mike is able to down another Cobra. The second platoon rallies and preps for another assault across the stream. As the bottom pic shows, it was a very successful assault and heavily prepped by Cobra mg fire as well as clear lanes for the M60’s.
If I remember correctly, the second platoon wipes out the NVA company, and with the Born in the North to Die in the South rule, Mike successfully rolled to bring them back on as a new unit. Leading up to this assault, we also elected to split the fire of the second platoon to support both the assault and also bring the ant-air platoon under fire. M60 and rifle team fire successfully take out that unit.
Second platoon consolidating their gains.
Starting the turn with the objective in our possession, the US forces win the game. Given the losses it is a little bit of a hollow victory…and chances are that command is just going to bring the boys back to staging and Firebase. The one saving grace was that the first platoon was able to stay dug-in and gone to ground and weather the fire from the K3 company with very limited casualties.
So in the end, Mike scored 6 victory points for the downed Cobras and 2 units destroyed. The good guys ended up with 2 points for destroyed units. While we took and held the objective there was a cost.
QUICK THOUGHTS:
1. Frustrating at points because our deployment ended up hedging us into a bit of a corner with little room to move - at least not like we wanted to;
2. The ‘buckshot’ rule is pretty damned handy on the defense. M16 rifle teams are armed with both M72s and M79 bloopers. The buckshot round fired by the blooper gives the equivalent of a +1 to the rate of fire for defensive fire…which is really handy when pinned;
3. Choppers are handy, but damned fragile;
4. The wounds rule for Free Forces does make it hard to kill infantry teams; and
5. I really like the victory points tally table, and it can give a bit of an interesting spin on wins/losses
Finally, we ended up enjoying the game much more than we thought…so the painting to date has not been for naught, lol…more to follow.
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