Flatpack and Has.been - Surviving ‘Nam

[flatpack]

Tomorrow Has.been (Pete) and myself will throw ourselves into the jungles of South East Asia (again).

We have been kindly invited by Mike Demana of this parish, to help play test his new Surviving’Nam rules.

We’ve tried several rules sets in the past for Vietnam games, but they’ve never really floated our boat.

Mike’s rule set looks exciting and fun.

In preparation for our first game, Pete and myself have become fired up on the subject.

Pete has prepared and painted a tray full of civilians, vehicles, boats, a jetty, and some fresh ARVN troops
See Stuf wot I done if you want to see his fine work. (I’m sure he’ll post them here too).

I have bought more great figures from Ged at Gringo40, to increase my number of US troops and VC troops.


VC troops ready for battle.


US troops ready for battle.

We’ll be hoping to use Vietnam scenery that we have put together in the past, like this.


Tomorrow we do battle for our first game, and Sunday we will have 6 of us playing a game.
Fingers crossed it all goes well.

[has.been]

It is the morning of our first play-test and... I'm sure I can smell Napalm. 


As Flatpack (Bob) said, we have become enthused. To match Bob here are a few starter pictures from me.


























Wish us luck. 

[Digits]

Love the tuc tucs…..where did you bag those?

[flatpack]

Knowing Pete, they probably started life as a pencil sharpener 

[Digits]

Or a banana skin!

[mikedemana]

Everything looks great -- good luck on the playtest. I hope you guys have fun. I'm looking forward to hearing how it goes... 

Mike Demana

[has.been]

Love the tuc tucs…..where did you bag those?

Off t'int-ter-net David 
James told me they do a civilians version, but I could only find these.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Tuk-Tuc+%283d+printed%29&ia=images&iax=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fi.etsystatic.com%2F41123324%2Fr%2Fil%2F2808ec%2F5062421781%2Fil_1588xN.5062421781_m8di.jpg

Everything looks great -- good luck on the playtest. I hope you guys have fun. I'm looking forward to hearing how it goes... 

Mike Demana

They do say be careful what you wish for. 
Questions from Bob & I are...INCOMING !!!!! 

[has.been]

More pictures of Nam stuff on my workbench thread.

https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=119096.msg1935397#msg1935397

[has.been]

Our first play-test with the rules.
I decided to try a market day scenario, well I have a lot of civilians  , with two American teams (Bob & I) on the look-out
for suspected Charlie activity. e.g. collecting 'taxes' & gathering supplies.


























INCOMING !!!!






VC start popping up from all places!





and we start taking casualties. 







A whole squad of them start shooting from the jungle BEHIND us 




The M 60 team go down!





To make matters worse a concealed MG team sprays death & destruction towards Bob's team. 




At that point we drew a veil over our efforts.
We had taken down a lot of them, but our losses were heavy. Same kind of result that classed Dien Bien Phu a French defeat.

Bob will add his viewa & pictures, I just want to say we had a great time. 
We will play them again...well we have to, we've got six gamers due on Sunday for a game of this. 

[syrinx0]

You put together a great looking table.  Looking forward to your next game report.

[flatpack]

Fun and VC everywhere 

Good experience play testing Mike’s Surviving ‘Nam rules today.
If we found an issue, we noted it down, and made a ‘workaround’.
We will pass the issues on to Mike, and he can hopefully use our input.

Great battlefield layout from Pete.






My US squad entered the table from the far edge, along with the second squad commanded by Pete.


We were happy to cross the open ground, towards our objective, the market place on the waters edge.




Then the VC started appearing.


Here, there and everywhere.

And my boys started dropping.

Mortar rounds started to drop on our heads.


Now the two units started to fall apart.


The civilians knew there was trouble, so did their shopping quickly in the market 


More trouble appeared from the jungle, and even though the US troops were happy to trade lead, they were falling at a high rate.




Darkness fell, and the US troops were happy to head for home asap.

[mikedemana]

Sounds like your squads took it on the chin the first mission. So did mine, though we did much better in the second one. Your table looks lovely -- so much cool stuff...civilians, markets, statues, sampans!! 

I like your idea for a Market Day scenario. You asked how to end the game in one of your emails. Maybe have your objective to spend so many actions searching, then the team is free to bug out with any wounded in two? I did something similar in my first "Check out the Hooches!" playtest, and then the players can boogie off a specified board edge

Good luck on the 6-player weekend game!! You will definitely be beating me on number of players in a game... 

Once again, I appreciate you guys play testing Surviving 'Nam!
Mike Demana

[has.been]

Thanks Mike.

[has.been]

Tomorrow Bob (Flatpack) & I will play another game.
Hopefully as we did a Dress Rehearsal, see aboive, the game will run smoothly.

There will be up to six gamers around the table & therefore more squads.
As a result the scenario will be slightly different. Not market day, so less civilians.
Watch this space for the AAR & pretty pictures.

Oh and just in case anyone wants to mention the river being a nice blue & not muddy brown...
The Dunhelms (shop where we got our leatherette material) near to Bob, and the one near to me,
have stopped doing the Brown. 

I have found some on line & it is on its way. Not expecting it to arrive before tomorrow though. 

[flatpack]

Started making more jungle today, as you can never have enough.