Hexsides and Hand Grenades

Well, I didn't get much time to play my first Vietnam campaign game this week due to the insane amount of work I had on my plate.  However, I did get the chance to sit down through Saturday morning and afternoon and get things rolling a bit.  I'll be updating this blog with weekly progress. I haven't moved any units yet but holy cow, SO MUCH has happened anyways. Here's a rundown as summer of 1965 begins. The NLF player places a division within arm's reach of the SVN/NVN border.  They look ready to sweep down into South Vietnam, which is a bit alarming.  I only have a handful of ARVN regiments protecting it. Map after NLF set up. As the NLF player, I decided to purchase 4 regiments and 20 battalions of VC and placed them throughout South Vietnam, especially in the inland areas.  The VC are basically everywhere on the map.  I don't think I left a province untouched with their presence.  It is going to take a long time and it will be a r...

Disclaimer:  I have trouble finishing my breakfast so the prospect of finishing a full monster campaign game of Vietnam is pretty dim.  Some of you might ask, "Why even start then?", which is a valid question but my only answer to that is, "I want to at least catch the flavor of the game and catch a glimpse of why so many people love it so much." Disclaimer #2:  I really have no idea what I'm doing here.  Really. I've played through one scenario (the first one) and now I'm on the campaign. Setup : We start off in the summer of 1965. Sam & The Pharaohs have released their hit song "Wooly Bully", which is climbing to the top of the American Hit 100 Chart, where it will sit for a week before being knocked off by "Help Me Rhonda" NASA is about to launch Gemini 4 and the first space walk by an American is about to take place. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 will be passed, a landmark piece of legislation during the Civi...

Well, it's been a little while since I've played a game of World at War and I thought I would get back to my roots this weekend and post a playthrough of a scenario from one of my favorite expansions - Counterattack.  This time we'll be playing the first scenario of the Steckler campaign called "Little Red Riding Hood". This scenario features a battle between Task Force Eagle and elements of the Soviet Forward Security Element (FSE).  It takes place on Map W, a cozy little affair that comes with the Counterattack expansion.  There are a couple of interesting terrain features here like stone walls (that add a +1 defensive bonus for any fire that goes across them) and orchards, which offer some limited defensive terrain cover.   The Americans enter on the west side of the map from hex A9 while the Soviets can enter anywhere along the eastern side of the map. TF Eagle:  A little bit of everything in here - tanks, IFVs, infantry, and two leaders. Forwar...

Well, we've got the American Special Forces guys all sorted out so now it's time to figure out how the Libyans are going to deploy.  Since I'm playing solo here, we're going for a random setup by rolling dice for each member of both Libyan squads to determine what each guy is doing and where he is on the map.  The Americans are taking the Libyans completely by surprise so none of them will be entirely ready for a fight but there will be varying degrees of combat readiness among them. For each Libyan camp guard, I rolled on the following table to determine setup area: 01 - 15:  Located in tower Roll again for tower location: 1 - tower 401 (H10) 2 - tower 402 (H4) 3  -tower 403 (S2) 4 - tower 404 (AA4) 5 - tower 405 (Y9) 16 - 25:  Located in pillbox Roll again for pillbox location: 1 - 5: pillbox 406 (W1) 6 - 10: pillbox 407 (K1) 26 - 35:  Sleeping in barracks (building P2) 36 - 45: Patrolling camp wire (R8 or V9) 46 - 60: Manning check...