This is the eighty-eighth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or go back to the master post.
Having written a stream of pretty positive comments about Campaign Series: Vietnam, I’ll now offer a counterpoint. It was, now, eleven posts ago but my last (non-hypothetical) land battle, Operation Coronado V, is also modeled in Campaign Series. Coronado V is the operation name for the U.S. operation which used riverine forces to attempt an encirclement of a VC Main Force battalion via a penetrating amphibious assault up-river.
First the good.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/rachnroll1.jpg?w=1024)
The Campaign Series scenario, titled Curses, Foiled Again!: Battle of Rach Ba Rai, has a larger scope than the two tactical takes that I wrote about previously. This one includes not only the riverine units themselves but also three other forces which were part of the operation. North of the battle zone, the mechanized elements of the 60th infantry (see below screenshot) prepared to provide the anvil to the 47th’s hammer (or was it the hammer to their anvil?). To the south, there is an airfield with waiting airmobile forces. The scenario also includes an ARVN battalion, inserted pre-scenario-start, to be a blocking force. Getting the full picture is certainly helpful.
The map is also very well done. Key objectives of the battlefield are clearly identifiable and the result is a strong connection between scenario play and the historical situation (for those that have read something of the latter). As before, the performance of the various weaponry “felt right.” Also as before, I get the sense that this reasonably mixes small arms, air support, and artillery fire in a way that gets right the combined-arms of the period.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/rachnroll2.jpg?w=1024)
So what’s the problem?
I complained before, particularly when it came to the Squad Battles representation, about how much worse I did in the game when I compare my performance to what happened over the course of the real battle. In CS: Vietnam, my loss was even greater. A good part of that is on me… I know I played the scenario wrongly in several key ways. However, I also think there is a gap between the game’s modeling and the experience of the actual battle.
If I read Seven Firefights in Vietnam correctly, the two big mistakes were that a) the U.S. command did not anticipate the ambush that the VC had laid in for them and b) assuming they would have surprise, withheld the advantage of artillery preparation. The result was that the first run up the river was aborted after meeting with resistance. After regrouping and retrying, the “run of the gauntlet” was successful. The real “loss” was the loss of opportunity. Because the river force required two tries to get up river, by the time their objective was reached, it was too late to trap and destroy the enemy. The VC escaped under cover of darkness, leaving history to question what was achieved by a day’s worth of fighting.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/rachnroll3.jpg?w=1024)
This is not to discount the losses on the American side. It was a nasty fight with many wounded plus a few deaths. By no means, however, were the losses anywhere near what I met in all three of these games.
For my first run up-river in the Campaign Series, I knew I was done for after I lost a handful of my transport boats. In the real battle, no American boats were sunk. Although there were many injuries to those on board, most of the soldiers came through the battle alive. Furthermore, when the fighting was at its worst, the soldiers aboard the transports were able to fight back from the deck – creating an intense firefight that is just not possible according to almost any game’s modeling of “mounted infantry.”
Contrast the 100% survival rate to all three of these games, where the boats are very fragile after they come under enemy fire. I found it impossible to simply run past an enemy position – my boats will be sunk and all hands and all passengers will be lost. I also lost many, many transports to one well-placed enemy mortar position (with line of sight to a particular river hex). Every shot was a hit and every hit was a kill. I’m in no position to speculate about what’s wrong with the algorithms in this case but, if the real river boats were so vulnerable, there is just no way they all could have survived this battle.
I don’t hate this scenario. It is both challenging and interesting. I’m sure if I revisited it, I could correct my most obvious mistakes and learn from others and do a lot better. With enough work I might even be able to “beat” the scenario – although that is never a given when it comes to my wargaming skills.
Return to the master post or continue on to the next post.