Flatpack and Has.been - Surviving ‘Nam

[Poiter50]

Surviving’Nam rules - do we have more info on these?

[Lord Raglan]

Love all the attention to detail buddy

[has.been]

Surviving’Nam rules - do we have more info on these?

The Brains behind them is Mike Demana (fellow LAFer)
We, Bob (Flatpack) & myself are just helping to playtest them.

Love all the attention to detail buddy

Thank you m'Lord, but that should be 'buddies' we have both put effort into this.
 

[has.been]

Our second play-test took place today, with what Mike tells me is a WORLD RECORD (for pla-testing these rules)of SIX gamers around the table.

I will briefly outline the scenario & then leave it to the various players to fill in the blanks, add their views & pictures (I didn't take ANY  )

The scenery was pretty much the same as the first play-test, well that had only been earlier this week.
The scenario was different.
Intel has it that Charlie is moving supplies between the landing (to the North) & the ruined temple (to the South.)
The plan was for the Americans (provided by & led by Bob) would come onto the table from the East while their
noble allies, the ARVN (provided by, but not led by, myself) would come in from the West.
I just want to brag that the ARVN have NEVER lost  ,
and in the interest of total transparency, have never been on the table before.

Now over to the others. 

[mikedemana]

Surviving’Nam rules - do we have more info on these?

Thanks for the interest! They are inspired by the Ganesha Games fantasy skirmish rules, Sellswords & Spellslingers. My Vietnam variant (which Andrea has agreed to publish if all goes well) is that this is a cooperative, low-level skirmish game with all players controlling a fire team or squad of U.S. or allied troops (5 figs or so). All of the actions of the VC are controlled by Event Cards and the dice rolls of the players. The heart of the game is, when activating a figure, a player can choose to roll one or two 20-sided dice. Each activation failure results in turning over an Event Card. The cards typically bring new foes onto the table or activate ones already there.

Bob and Pete, I am looking forward to the others chiming in with their reports! I had a lot of fun awhile back reading their reports of the Wars of Insurgency game, so hopefully they will be similarly forthcoming... 

Mike Demana

[CapnJim]

Lovely stuff here.  Rough day for the GIs in your first playtest.  Looking forward to reports from the 2nd...

[flatpack]

Lovely stuff here.  Rough day for the GIs in your first playtest.  Looking forward to reports from the 2nd...

Well CapnJim, it didn't get any easier for the GI’s in our second game.

The US forces entered from the eastern edge, looking to seek out VC that had been moving equipment from the riverside to the temple.
The US patrols entered cautiously.

First two units on the road


The third unit across open ground between the paddy fields and jungle.


Charlie (once again) appeared from everywhere (poor dice tools = card pulls = Charlie).
These VC forces really cut up the first two units.

We were even falling over our own casualties.

Ok, we were able to silence then VC HMG for a while.


Then a VC car share turned up 


The firefight with the car share continued, with VC actually starting to fall.


It was nice to see the two ARVN commanders on the other side of the table having a splendid day out, not even losing a figure each, whilst we didn’t know our heads from our toes.


All in all a fun game.
Played in the right spirit.
A few more notes were made about the rules, and these have been fed back to Mike.

Thanks to Pete for hosting, and thanks to Pete D, James, Sam and Ian for taking part.

[Poiter50]

Thanks to has.been for that and Mike, I have followed your posts for years. Sounds like a good skirmish type game. As I get older, simple skirmish games appeal even if just to save the amount of time in setting up. Love what I'm seeing so far.

Thanks for the interest! They are inspired by the Ganesha Games fantasy skirmish rules, Sellswords & Spellslingers. My Vietnam variant (which Andrea has agreed to publish if all goes well) is that this is a cooperative, low-level skirmish game with all players controlling a fire team or squad of U.S. or allied troops (5 figs or so). All of the actions of the VC are controlled by Event Cards and the dice rolls of the players. The heart of the game is, when activating a figure, a player can choose to roll one or two 20-sided dice. Each activation failure results in turning over an Event Card. The cards typically bring new foes onto the table or activate ones already there.

Bob and Pete, I am looking forward to the others chiming in with their reports! I had a lot of fun awhile back reading their reports of the Wars of Insurgency game, so hopefully they will be similarly forthcoming... 

Mike Demana

[flatpack]

Thanks to has.been for that and Mike, I have followed your posts for years. Sounds like a good skirmish type game. As I get older, simple skirmish games appeal even if just to save the amount of time in setting up. Love what I'm seeing so far.

If you can enjoy painting the figures, and setting up the terrain, it’s a win win situation.
Play a game and have some fun.
It’s all you need from the hobby.

[vodkafan]

 Finally got my pics uploaded after some troubles. Fisrtly some views of has.beens fine scratchbuilt jetty and worked on Sampans a helicopter eye view!

[vodkafan]

 I was one of the players controlling a US squad who was a complete newbie to the rules.
 The sleepy village and road to the river before the trouble starts


Two squads in single file advance up the road (my squad and Flatpack's)


To our left  across an intervening paddy field another US squad files in


3 ARVN squads advance from the other side of the table from 3 different points (sorry no photo)
The initial squad movement phase  COULD have gone on for a while, but ended after only one  move because of the dice roll. That meant all  US and ARVN squads were basically stuck in place at the periphery of the table edges for the rest of the game.

 The game was short and over in one subsequent turn after that,  ( by which I mean I got to try to activate all of my 6 characters only once) although it took a while for us to move around six players activating one player of our squad each time.  As an experiment to see how the rules worked I ALWAYS elected to throw 2 dice rather than one. Outcome  from my dice rolls was always bad (some other players fared slightly better) I always got at least one fail (which meant an event card) and sometimes both (two event cards!) The number of VC in front of us increased rapidly  and despite the odds weighted in the rules against  VC being accurate shots , we were cut to pieces in short order.







 I had two small issues with the rules, but Peter has written those up and is passing them back to Mike, so I won't touch on those. I will concentrate on the things I liked.
First off the basic concept- trying to just survive  and not have a bad day- is spot on  I feel.
I liked the idea of the initial squad phase where you could conceivably get into an advantageous position. We didn't this time.
I like the fact that VC can pop up and be gone again (snipers, spider holes) and that Civilians can turn into enemy.
The core concept of the VC being controlled completely by the event cards works pretty excellent. It just needs a bit more balance to give more options to the US player once the action starts? The options just seemed either non-existent or always bad.

Definitely need to play these again in different scenarios. I feel they have something that other rules we tried didn't. 

[vodkafan]

Oh the "Surviving Nam" part - afterwards we got to dice how our individual squad members  got on. My squad of 6 sustained 5 casualties. in the post-game rolls 2 suffered light wounds and got 2 months Rehab , 2 lost a limb each and got sent home permanently disabled, and my Blooper man got a Million Dollar wound  and was sent home without permanent injury.
So next two games will be almost a whole new squad of replacements, with two veterans returning from their rehab  for the third game.

[CapnJim]

Ok.  I stand (well, sit, actually) corrected.  2 rough days to be the Americans...ugh...

Lovely terrains and troops, I must say.  Which I just did...

Perhaps the GIs can pull a rabbit out of their...er, hat...next time.

[mikedemana]

Thanks for your input, guys! I appreciate the kind words about the feel of the game and the basic mechanics. I was wondering how a 6-player game would go. To this point, I had tried it with only two "players" (me running two squads as separate players).

I'm disappointed to hear the game really went only a couple turns. Did no VC pop up near the ARVN positions? Because a Foe is supposed to always shoot at the closest, non-"Down" (wounded) PC. So, if ARVN activation failures on one side of the board are causing VC shooting against U.S. soldiers clear on the other side of the board, I could see a massacre like that happening. If so, then that's an easy tweak to have the initial appearance of VC placed on board after the Countdown to Contact ends more spread out.

I look forward to hearing (and seeing) more reports and feedback guys. Thanks so much for your time and efforts you are putting into this!! 

Mike Demana

[Lord Raglan]

Oh Jes, that’s a patrol I wouldn’t like to be on 😳