Vietnam Battle Report: A County Fair

After a late email crossing last night, I found enough interest to play another Vietnam game today in the morning with our favourite rules Charlie Don't Surf.  As a new player was to be introduced to the game and some of the other gamers have been in the dry dock for several months, I decided to play a simple scenario to refresh the game mechanics, only involving  infantry. Browsing Surf's Up (CDS's companion book), I found scenario #7 "County Fair" interesting enough, on top of not having played it yet.

The context is 1967, the operations leading to win the minds and hearts of the population living in areas suspected to be controlled by the Vietcong. The Free World Forces mission is to secure militarily the hamlet of Rang Dong, only to be followed by a civic group with food and medicine supplies.

The map above shows the area of operations. A former French rubber plantation in the north east side, including two colonial brick buildings; typical local hooches are scattered around the rice paddies, at the edge of a thick jungle area.

The FWF comprised two US infantry platoons reinforced with one ARVN regular platoon of three rifle squads and a weapons section. The primary objective is to clean Rang Dong of suspected VC elements (20 points) and avoid any civil casualties (10 points). Given the nature of the mission no artillery or aerial support would be available except in the most dire conditions.

Gaming table from the south

More X-Wing Fun: 200 points battle

Father's Day long weekned in Madrid, Alex and me organized an X-Wing bash at the club, fighting a 200 battle with another father & son pair (Darío and Alvaro). It was also a good opportunity to put our new Slave model on the table for the first time.

After some discussion both sons aligned together and chgose the Imperial side against the Rebel (?) fathers (the world upside down...it used to be the other way round, at least in the 70s...), although they were reinforced with a new (significantly older) recruit arriving late to the club.

Imperial Headquarters in Thinking Mode

The Dark side deployed 2 Slaves, half a dozen Tie fighters, a couple of Advanced Ties and Darth Vader. The Rebel side organised two squadrons, the first with two X-Wings and one Y-Wing; the second with a similar configuration plus one of the new A Interceptors.

Darth Vader under Harassment!!

More than 3 hours of fun playing on a big table. At the end of the game, the 2 Slaves controlled the battlefiled thanls to their great firepower and strong armour, despite most of the Imperial fighters being shot down, but after wearing down the Rebel ships.

Imperial Squadron

Rebel Forces

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Vietnam Battle Report: Sniper!

After a long spell, we played today Sniper! the second scneario of  Surf's Up, the companion book to Charlie Don't Surf, the TooFatLardies Vietnam-era rules for company size actions. The game was a total disaster for the Vietcong player (...who by the way, it was me), losing the game on both fronts, the military and the political.

This scenario sees a local VC force (1 platoon) vs a full US Infantry company. The VC is on a security mission in a village defending some rice and weapons caches, and owning a small tunnel network, The objective was to maintain the tunnel network intact (20 points) and as a secondary objective to keep at least 1 cache safe (10 points)

The US orders (main objective with 20 points) were to round up and relocate the villagers and to destroy the hamlet; a secondary objective was to find and destroy any food or weapons stored in the area.

X Wing Competition at "Mi Tesoro"

My son Alex and I went to our first X-Wing competition today, organised by a local games shop in our neighbourhood called "Mi Tesoro" (= Gollum's "my precious" in Spanish). This a small but extremely well-supplied shop run by brothers Juan and Josema, two very nice chaps and where my son spends his Friday evenings after school playing Magic.

Alex with Juan, owner of Mi tesoro

We played 100 points and decided to go for the Rebel Alliance, deploying a squadron with two X-Wings (manned by Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles) with some droids and a Y-Wing model with the ionic gun tower. Being a kind of a rookie pilots, we did not have a brilliant performance, but ended up in second place... starting from the bottom, of course (sigh). The balance was that we lost 300 points in 3 games and shot down 42 points worth of Imperial spaceships. 

Nonetheless, we had a lot of fun, the games were very friendly and all the participants were happy to share tactics and squadron formation ideas with us, so at the end of the day I think we significantly moved ahead in our learning  curve.

Jarama BattlefieldvVisit

This February is the 76th Anniversary of the Jarama Battle a major and bloody encounter of the Spanish Civil War in the fight for Madrid and the first test for the recently created Republican Popular Army. This weekend the Asociación Tajar has organised a number of events including a couple of very interesting guided tours to the battlefield. I signed up with my son and we are eagerly waiting Saturday to arrive... and hopefully that the rain falling these past three days will give us some rest during the weekend.

Warming up for our visit,  I leave you now with this famous contemporary tune sung by the members of the Lincoln Brigade and also adopted by the British Battalion of the International Brigades

X-Wing: Father against Son and the new gaming mat

Two very excited Young Padawan Alex and father organised a X-Wing morning at the club to try our new Star Wars gaming mat, that just arrived on time for the event last Thursday evening. We quickly have a few onlookers around  attracted by the nice visual display of the game, even enlisting and training a couple of them in their first combat flights in a far away galaxy.

 

Looking for Arthur

Browsing in Amazon this afternoon, I just bumped into this book about Dark Age Britain recently published. Written by Guy Halsall, a serious, reliable and knowledgeable historian who also writes a most interesting and "heretic" blog, it really looks promising for those interested in the period (...and struggling to play Dux Britanniarium one of these days!!!).

From the Amazon website:
King Arthur is probably the most famous and certainly the most legendary medieval king. From the early ninth century through the middle ages, to the Arthurian romances of Victorian times, the tales of this legendary figure have blossomed and multiplied. And in more recent times, there has been a continuous stream of books claiming to have discovered the 'facts' about, or to unlock the secret or truth behind, the 'once and future king'.