"Firebase" - Another Vietnam batrep

Today Sunday we played our third Vietnam game this month (....breaking records!!),  as usual with Charlie Don´t Surf, the era rules  from the TooFatLardies factory. The scenario selected was "Firebase" included in the companion book Surf's Up.

Background

The US army has been surveying an area next to a road to build an artillery firebase, sending for several days in a row a helicopter with some engineer surveyors to find a suitable spot. The VC has been observing the US forces work with growing suspicion and has finally decided  to strike a blow, planning to ambush the surveyors party and hopefully to shooting down the helicopter too. However and unkown to them, the surveyors work ended a fortnight ago; and before sending the seabees with the bulldozers to prepare the site, a force consisiting of an infantry platoon supported by an armoured platoon in M 113 ACAVs has been detached to secure the area.

Ooops!

Angry dice hit home!

A few weeks ago, mythical blogger Fran (a.k.a.The Angry Lurker), posted a give-away prize to celebrate the second anniversary of his blog, comprising a set of special dice of its informal wargamers association called the "Posties Rejects" (now also comprising several honorary overseas members). The only thing you needed to do was to participate in the draw was to leave a comment in its blog.

Well, to my surprise I was one of the lucky chosen despite the fact that I entered my comment on the very LAST day to do it (thanks Big Lee for the remainder... I had a peak of work the previous two weeks and totally missed the original post at Fran's blog!!)

This week the dice arrive by post, and from now I'm a proud owner of this rare and limited dice collection; so many thanks again to Fran for the prize. I'm now expecting to "blood" for the first time theses six-sided guys  over weekend in the jungles of Vietnam. Keep an eye on this blog to watch their performace after Sunday.

     

Another Ooooh Shiny! Moment

A few days ago, fellow Spanish blogger Juan Mancheño (a blog really worth visiting, and written in both English and Spanish)  and aficionado (like me) to the Vietnam period sent me an email announcing that Force of Arms was going out of business*. This was really bad news, as I was expecting to order some additional Vietnam models for Christmas, specifically the M 113 Command and Mortar versions. Luckily, he also mentioned that The Wargames Command Post  distributes FOA models too, so I decided to strecht my budget a little bit more this year and quickly ordered a Ford Mutt I was looking to buy for my command group and a Command Post set.

Less than a week after, it hit my (snail)mailbox this afternoon

The CP group has 6 figures, an officer (pointing) a couple of NCOs aremed with M16 rifles, two radiomen and a strange model of a bareheaded man kneeling (an officer observing? a FAO or a FAC?). All my US Army figures until now are from The Assault Group. These are smaller and less "chunky" but I think that once on the table the difference will probably go unnoticed

Bleneville or Bust - IABSM Normandy Scenario Book

New announcement in the TooFatLardies Yahoo Group this midday: a new scenario book called "Blenneville or Bust" by fellow Lardie developer Robert Avery  (a nice chap who I happened to meet in April at Salute). I bought my copy tonight and got a monster 300 pages electronic book (pdf) with 31 individual scenarios for IABSM, interlinked in a campaign format, involving US, British and German forces just after the D-Day landings at Normandy. Fromthe introduction:

The campaign described is fictional, both in terms of setting and the units involved, as what I have attempted to create is a generic Normandy campaign that allows either a series of linked games to be played, or provides a collection of one-off battles for players who do not have time to create their own scenarios (....) There are thirty-one individual scenarios in this booklet laid out in pyramid format to five levels: scenario 1 leads to either 2A or 2B, which lead to 3A/3B and 3C/3D respectively, and so on until 5A through to 5P.

More Vietnam games: "Combat Engineer"

October 12th is a national holiday in Spain and what best to celebrate than playing another game in Vietnam. As usual, we used Charlie Don`t Surf from the TooFatLardies factory and its companion scenarios book Surf's Up.

The scenario chosen was  "Combat Engineer" and involved an engineer squad supplied with mine detectors with the mission  to clear a major road traversing the table west to east. The squad was escorted by two light US infantry platoons (only the rifle sections but not  the weapon support section)  under command of a relatively newly arrived in-country Captain ("hesitant commander" class).

 A rutine mission in principle, unkown to the US  there was a major VC force lurking in the area, traveling to a major concentration of troops for a surprise offensive on the Free World Forces camped nearby. Their orders were to cross the table in a north-east to south-west direction and whether possible, to mine the metallic road.

Back to Vietnam - "The Great Rice Hunt" Battle Report

Last Sunday we  started our eagerly anticipated Vietnam autumn-winter game season at the club. As frequent readers of this blog know, we play with Charlie Don't Surf  rules from the TooFatLardies factory.

Most of the players gathering yesterday were already familiar with the rules; but as it's been a long time since our last game, I decided to go for a "warm up" exercise before moving into a more complex level of simulation.  For that reason I decided to use the first scenario of CDS' companion book Surf's Up, which makes a truly nice introductory game.