This is the hundred-sixty-second in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. Go back to the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
The scenario Major Engagement has sat in on my hard drive for, well… who knows how long, awaiting its time to shine along with its fellow 1969 scenarios. I can tell from the installation footprint that it is not one of the initial Squad Battles: Vietnam scenarios but I can’t tell you when or from where I downloaded it.
The scenario was built by Rich Hamilton, a prolific contributor to the Tiller game library, and does not pretend to have much grounding in reality. His goal – one that I (I should add) appreciate – was to throw together all that this game engine has to offer into one mighty scenario. Armor, infantry, artillery, and air support – it’s all here.
The design defies a principle that I’ve touted since I read it in my Panzer Blitz manual when I was a teen. Tactical games are turned limited, in part, to remove the need to handle the logistics of resupply. To model a combination of supply, morale, and exhaustion, Squad Battles uses a diminishing effectiveness of squad weapons as ammunition is expended. It does not directly allow a unit to run out of ammunition1 nor does it model distributing additional ammo. One would assume that both of these would be major factors in a 24-hour tactical operation. Indeed, the whole concept of a continuous, 24-hour offensive operation just doesn’t make sense outside of this “sandbox” construct proposed for Major Engagement.
It also avoids even the hint of a realistic encounter. Just as the Americans get to field a little bit of everything, so do the North Vietnamese. I recently posted about Tiller’s modelling of the only U.S. armor v. armor encounter during the entire war. Even a hypothetical scenario pitting U.S. main battle tanks against T-34s – well that just wasn’t in the cards.
Despite that list of caveats, the scenario is surprisingly enjoyable. More surprising given the vast distance and massive number of units on the map – one doesn’t end up suffering the immensely-long turn execution that tends to plague the biggest of Squad Battles scenarios. The player’s turn can take quite a while to play out – but that’s OK. It is your own turn that takes all the time, not the execution of the enemy’s turn. More playing is usually better.
The secret to its success, I think, is that the size of the battlefield means that, despite all the forces on the map at once, they can’t possibly all be in contact with each other. Also, despite the large expanses of clear terrain, the sight lines are broken up across the map preventing the lengthy AI-driven exchange of long range and, therefore, ineffective machine gun fire from dozens of hexes away.
I have to admit, here, that I haven’t played the entire scenario yet, so my impressions are from partial completion. As I hit “publish,” I’m only about 50 turns into the eye-popping 288 on tap – barely started, really. I have a suspicion that the turn limit isn’t the binding condition. In other words, assuming I defeat the enemy forces, I suspect I’ll have plenty of time to assert control over the map. Who knows, though… reinforcements keep pouring in. Anything could happen.
Or, to be more precise, it does not do so in the “shell counting” way that (say) a Steel Panthers does. As a weapon is fired in Squad Battles, the weapon’s “effectiveness” also declines. Single-use weapons aside, a Squad Battles gun never never runs out of bullets. Likewise, there isn’t a resupply model that allows the replenishment of spent ammo, although there is a way to build a recovery of “effectiveness” into the scenario design. What’s going on in Major Engagement? As with so much with the Tiller designs, I have no idea. ↩︎
This is the hundred-fifty-eighth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. Go back to the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
In all the years since I started playingVietnam Combat Operations, I never triggered the sudden-death loss until now. When it finally happened, I’m not really sure what it was that I did wrong. Rather I should say – while I did a number of things wrong, I’m not sure which one of them caused my game to so abruptly end.
I thought I read somewhere (presumably the scenario’s manual) that in the most recent iteration of the series, the loss trigger has been updated to reference Nixon’s change of policy, making Laos and North Vietnam, including the DMZ, officially off limits for American forces. Reading the instructions again, I can’t find it. If true, this would do it. My most obvious mistake came out of my execution of Operation Virginia Ridge, starting on May Day 1969. The operation was a 3rd Marine Regiment effort to interdict enemy units infiltrating through the DMZ, intending to disrupt Route 9 supply lines and undermine the rice harvest.
In my fictional version of the operation, I was frustrated with how quickly the identified units fled back through the DMZ and so I pursued. This was definitely forbidden by the “house rules” but I’m not sure it was a scripted no-no. The only outright sudden-death condition that I am aware of is gaining possession of one the forbidden victory locations, outside of South Vietnam. This event has triggered an instant loss in every iteration of the series. Well, almost every iteration. Since I couldn’t find the violation, I suppose it may have been some other transgression1 that did me in.
Anyway, I went back to my save and picked myself up from there. My intention was to play, mostly, as I had done the first time around. Among whatever the minor deviations were, though, would be the avoidance of anything that violated scenario rules; formal or informal. Whatever the offense was in my first go, my second time through was a success. I did not lose the scenario and I managed to advance the game up to the scenario’s depiction of a battle that we’ve considered here before; the battle for Hamburger Hill.
Watching the 1987 film, I absorbed that its key message was about the utter futility of the battle over Hill 937. The 101st Airborne fought for a week over a position and then, having seized it, that gain was quickly abandoned shortly after it was captured. All that cost for nothing, right?
A combination of operation and tactical gaming tells us a slightly different story.
The goal of the bigger picture, in Operation Apache Snow, was not to control the one hilltop but to take command of the A Shau Valley. By engaging the enemy in their remote strongholds, the allied forces were determined to prevent an attack on the coastal population centers to the east. Hill 937 offered a commanding height, giving an advantage that could project across the entire valley. This was an advantage that the U.S. would rather deny to the enemy. Once the battle started, the hill also had the allure of representing a known enemy location. Given Apache Snow’s goal to actively engage the PAVN and keep it on the defensive, the mere presence of an entrenched enemy position made it a high priority target.
I vowed to play out this fight in Squad Battles, starting from this first scenario, a little more realistically than I’ve done in the past. Rather than throw myself blindly at the objectives, I was going to attempt a withdrawal in good order when (as I assumed it must come to pass) the enemy proved too formidable. Tiller‘s scenario design on this one threw me yet again. After getting several squads pinned down, I felt compelled to commit the rest of my company in support. Having done so, it turned out not to be so difficult to seize two-out-of-three objectives for a major victory (see Scenario #1, above) after all.
I detect once again that something of a lesson is being offered; a lesson about this battle. As the week-long fight proceeds, Mr. Tiller sends me back to continue challenging the same ground. In each battle, the objectives are achievable but, even in victory, it is clear that the enemy does not become dislodged.
Much is made of the decision to abandon the hard-won position atop Hill 937 as soon as Operation Apache Snow ended. Senior officers justified the decision by saying the hill (or most any hill, for that matter) had no strategic value. As much as such an assertion is just a simple and obvious truth, these statements combined with the experience of the soldiers on the ground became an example of the pointlessness of America’s war. The losses at Hamburger Hill solidified and accelerated America’s movement towards “Vietnamization” of the war. The fight for Hill 937 would be one of the last large, American-led operations in Vietnam.
Although Tiller’s scenarios specifically point away from that “lives lost for no purpose” narrative, the trajectory of the seven-series set subtly makes the point. While the fights show the American forces slowly but steadily taking ground, when one finally gets to the final scenario, it all seems a bit anticlimatic.
Continue humming along with Alice in Chain’s song as you read about more combat involving the 10st Airborne. If you’d rather, you can return to the master post for the Vietnam War.
Another transgression was a forbidden bombing mission into Cambodia. Nixon had authorized counter-battery artillery strikes near the Vietnamese/Cambodia border. Seeing an apparent ineffectiveness and having some unused aircraft, I decided to hit them from the air as well. Cheat? Yes. Game ending violation? Don’t know. ↩︎
This is the hundred-forty-eighth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. Go back to the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
When I was in college, I had a professor who drove us all nuts. He would assign group projects that were overspecified. What I mean by that is his project requirements were such that it was impossible to do all the things that he asked us to do; accomplishing some goals would prevent others from possibly being met. It was supposed to be a lesson in what happens out in the real world – management (or, perhaps, a customer) asks employees to do things that don’t make sense and the employees, being the ones who know how things really work, have to figure out what requirements are important and which are superfluous. A good employee can figure out how to meet the intent, if not the letter, of a request.
Likewise John Tiller seemed to have been fond of giving lessons in Vietnam War strategy and tactics through certain scenarios that he seems to have designed to be frustrating or even impossible to win. I’m guessing this must have been the case with the first scenario, out of four, in The Battle of Dodge City series of fights.
From turn two, when I get my first inkling of what I am up against, the situation looks pretty grim. I have only squad weapons – no mortars, no artillery, no air or armored support. Against me are entrenched NVA who have at least one heavy machine gun. Just like I did back in college, though, I press ahead because – Mr. Tiller wouldn’t have sent me in if he didn’t think I could prevail, right?
Dodge City was the name that Marines gave the stronghold area for the PAVN 1st Battalion, 36th Regiment and the Vietcong’s R-30 Battalion. The name came from the frequency of ambushes and firefights encountered in the 36 square mile zone, likening it to America’s Old West. On the morning of November 20th, the Marines entered the area and around noon began sweeping the area. At a location they called The Horseshoe, the USMC Company G 2/7 encountered a bunker complex. They withdrew under fire leaving six marines dead.
As a long-time Squad Battles player, it should have been obvious to me that the setup for this scenario was impossible to beat. I had too few on my side and the enemy’s position was too good. My experience should have advised an immediate withdrawal, once I fully appreciated what I was up against (no more than another turn or two beyond the above screenshot). Instead I pushed forward, assuming that there must be some sort of “trick” to the challenge, and paid dearly in digital lives for my misjudgement.
The drop-off in my available Vietnam War gaming scenarios, post 1968 election, is profound. Am I imagining it? I don’t think so. Nixon’s election (and LBJ’s policy shifts during its run-up) marked a major shift in strategy. Between the failures of the 1968 communist offensives and the strain of the now-halted Rolling Thunder interdiction, the communist forces in South Vietnam were at a low ebb. Their chosen strategy was to retrench and regroup – a departure from the recent seeking of large-scale battles of annihilation and a return to the guerilla tactics from earlier in the war.
In reaction, the Americans focused on political control rather than major military victories. The replacement of General Westmoreland by General Creighton Abrams as commander of MACV in June of 1968 would begin a shift in military strategy. LBJ’s emphasis on peace talks dovetailed with Nixon’s promise of “Vietnamization.” The emphasis pivoted to one of providing security for areas under nominal control so that the South Vietnamese government could solidify the political front. That is not to say that Abrams wouldn’t have jumped at the chance to crush the NVA in a major battle. It is just that the NVA wasn’t waiting around to be found.
In many ways, Vietnam Combat Operations: Volume 10 plays like its predecessor. The missions assigned are few enough to be manageable and the forces available to execute them are plenty. Even so, a multi-year neglect of the Delta region means that, there at least, there is still a bit of the feeling from the earlier fighting as riverine forces sweep into new territory.
Squad Battles: Vietnam‘s Dodge City series is, not counting the hypotheticalThe Long and Winding Road and another Huey flight mission, the only battle of this period portrayed at the tactical level. I suppose this is evidence, such as it is, that the kind of fighting portrayed by Squad Battles just wasn’t taking place at the tail-end of 1968. Even the structure of this four-parter indicates that the drama arises from a misjudgement about the location and strength of an enemy position rather than the strategic importance of the fight.
I played each of the four scenarios earnestly trying to accomplish my mission. Burned once, I was bound to be burned several more times. Not to ruin for you, but the SOP for the Marines in each of these firefights was to withdraw in the face of casualties and then call in artillery and napalm strikes. That approach wouldn’t make for a fun game. On the other hand, the relative flat and non-jungle terrain of these scenarios provides some interesting tactical situations.
These scenarios also reminded that, while the monster, user-made scenarios come out really cool, the game engine is more suited to these shorter, smaller encounters. Limiting the player’s scope of command to a single company means that one can actually watch and absorb the enemy’s turn – no need to take a snack break while the combat resolution grinds away.
Refocusing my commentary to Vietnam Combat Operations, there are a handful of interesting operations there, above and beyond Meade River. This includes one or two fairly complicated missions in the Delta, reopening transport lanes that have been shut down by the Viet Cong. Much of the player’s work, however, involves shifting commands around the country to properly focus them on the historical pacification missions to which they were assigned.
If this were a stand-alone scenario, it might disappoint. Within the context of VCO‘s modeling of the full war, however, it is useful and educational. Actually trying to conduct the historical activities provides a level of insight that merely rattling off the operations’ names could never convey.
Return to the master post or, for a change of pace, go on back to 1951 and France’s Vietnam experience.
This is the hundred-forty-seventh in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. Go back to the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
Over the last week or so, I went through a trio of hypothetical scenarios created in Squad Battles: Vietnam. All three are from the Task Force Echo 4 Squad Battles fan site that I’ve posted about before. All three are set in the fall of 1968, roughly around the time of America’s presidential election. As far as I can tell, not one of them is specifically tied to historical operations in that time period.
Ordering them the date on which they are set produces a listing of Dawn Assault, Extract!, and The Long and Winding Road. Each one is a product of a different scenario author so, besides their proximity to each other on my timelines, the connection between them is that they were all archived in the same place.
I didn’t play them in that order – I started with Extract! because, well, because of the exclamation point, I suppose. The setup imagines a U.S. Army company has been landed on a remote hilltop but finds itself overwhelmed by NVA attacks. The force must hold out until helicopters can arrive to lift all to safety.
Extract! was a pleasant enough scenario. Using the “hypothetical” freedom, the author can model helicopter extraction – even if it never took place just this way. Furthermore, winning this one doesn’t become an exercise in frustration. The “strategy,” as far as I can figure, is to hunker down in your positions until help arrives. This isn’t an impossible task. I did only obtain a draw, but the reason was that I waited too long to do my pickup. Another turn, maybe two (Soft Conditions – see screenshot – where are you?) and I probably would have had a major victory. I simply misjudged how long it would take me to get across the map.
Dawn Assault plays out very, very differently but in many ways pushes the same buttons. This scenario models a battle that might have occurred near the DMZ. A patrolling Marine Corps battalion, having dug in for the night, is hit by the enemy at dawn. As the player, you have access to plenty of support – air, artillery, armor, and airlift in with some additional forces. Unfortunately for you, the Vietcong (and did I see some NVA in there too?) are many and they have some really big artillery. Will your help arrive in time or will you be overwhelmed by the surprise attack?
Or maybe both?
Like many of the user-made scenarios, with the structure being unhampered by reality, an interesting bit of back and forth can be built in. Like with Extract!, the only strategy seems to be to try to hold the positions in which your men are defending. To attempt any kind of maneuver will just have them dying more quickly. The key difference is you’re not waiting to be extracted, you’re waiting for the cavalry to come to your rescue. You must defend-defend-defend until it looks like all hope is lost and then attack-attack-attack and try to get back the victory positions before the clock runs out.
In the end, I managed to do just that, so the scenario is not impossible to win, as hopeless as the prospect appeared at one point.
When I went to play my third scenario, I realized that I had yet to download and install it. I went back to that site that I first told you about back in 2019 and grabbed a copy. While I was doing so, I came across some sad news. This Squad Battleswebsite has been discontinued as of this summer. It is to remain up until the end of this year but will thereafter be taken down.
Thus it seemed not a moment too soon that I downloaded The Long and Winding Road and gave it a whirl. This one provides a distinct experience from the first two and does so in more ways than just the location of its files.
The Long and Winding Road is designed to be played (solo) as the NVA. As a rule, I don’t play scenarios from the communist side, because I’m not a communist. In this case, I thought it best to do as instructed. This one is a convoy ambush scenario and, like the first two, a hypothetical encounter. The U.S. side comes well prepared for a fight with some heavy support (tanks and helicopters) on their side, making the player’s job a tough one. There is also an important prioritization for the player to consider.
As you can see in the above screenshot, the scenario is 15 turns long. There is an on-map victory location but most of the points are either going to come from kills or from scoring the exit locations. For the American (AI), it must exit as much of its convoy, through the ambush (right to left in the screenshot) and off the map, as they are able. Likewise, the player has an exit hex (off the screen at the bottom, near the mortar location). The latter simulates the hit-and-run mission of the People’s Army. The point was not to engage the U.S. in a straight-up fight. Attack suddenly and then skedaddle before the enemy realizes what’s going on – that was the name of the game.
The player must make a trade-off, however. Do you try to maximize your damage to the convoy? You might imagine yourself getting away after the scenario’s final turn? Do you hit and then quickly run in the hope that you earn more exit points than the American does? As usual, I’m not of a mind to keep replaying this one in an attempt to find an optimal strategy. For what it’s worth, I decided to stick it out and keep killing rather than retreat and it got me a draw – but just barely. I was a mere 10 points from a minor victory. The kill zone looks to be about 5-6 turns from the exit hex, and maybe more if that exit is contested. That doesn’t mean much time left for actual fighting if the plan is to exit your entire force. I’m going to guess, therefore, that I played this one (mostly) the way it was meant to be played but that I just didn’t do it well enough.
So as I said, one theme for this post is I found each of these scenarios through the aforementioned Task Force Echo 4 website and blog. When I set out to write I had no idea that this was going to be important. It has long been a gem in the Squad Battles experience and I am sad to see it go. The site may, however, have left me with a parting gift. The farewell message suggests that WDS will honor previously-purchased Squad Battles versions and provide the update to access their ongoing development path. TFE4 doesn’t actually say that they’ll go so far as to honor my CD purchases, but it might be worth my asking. As I’ve said before, I can’t imagine that I’d want to repurchase, full price, the two Vietnam-era Squad Battles after having thoroughly played the original version. I don’t see how that could be worth the roughly $80 (absent a sale) that this could run. It would be a fantastic compare-and-contrast exercise to evaluate any upcoming development against those old versions that I’ve played nigh unto death.
If WDS could do for Squad Battles what Campaign Series Legion has done for the Campaign Series, we could really have something to write home about.
Return to the master post for more on the Vietnam War. Continue forward for a post about Operation Meade River in Squad Battles: Vietnam and the Vietnam Combat Operations scenario that covers this time period at the tail end of 1968.
This is the hundred-thirty-ninth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. Go back to the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
Employing some innovative ways to use the mouse, I gave an innovative scenario from Squad Battles: Vietnam at try. This is a scenario with several variants. It is hypothetical but it gives credit to the personal experience of Squad Battles playtester John C. Kincaid for inspiration.
The inclusion of four variants for the scenario, I must assume, was intended to enhance human v. human play and (maybe) to a lesser extent, extend replayability. As a hypothetical, it can get creative and is designed as a kind of three-way battle. Each side has the ability to attack and to defend with three victory locations on board. By my experience, winning against the AI will result from taking the easy points and leaving the harder ones on the table. I’ve not counted hexes, but it looks like it is feasible reach all three victory locations if one applies oneself.
I’m inclined to be forgiving with this design given that it’s part of the first of the Squad Battles game series. Aside from the gunships (see screenshot), the game is mostly the one-hex-per-turn game that most of the jungle based scenarios feature. OK, it is a little better than some. There are, as you can see on the left side of the screen, roads in this scenario allowing for more rapid (but predictable) advancement. The right side of the screen features long sight lines. The entrenched Americans on the left side of the screen can hit the VC on the right with their long-range squad weapons.
Although this battle has four scenarios, only three are intended to shake things up. The fourth variant is not actually included as an alternate setup. It swaps the on-board Huey gunships for off-board air support. Given how I am constantly griping about the off-board support in this game, you won’t be surprised when I tell you I am not interested in this particular variant.
Mostly, today, I just wanted to make my pun with the title.
Return to the master post for Vietnam War or move on to the next post for a strategic level look at the Vietnam War via a free-to-play browser game.
I gush about how great it is to have three decades of old games from which to choose. Many were not only great in their time but, with a little forgiveness for a dated interface, hold up well among the better offerings that are coming out today.
One thing that was not done so well back in 1999, though, was the ergonomics of the user interface. While some games have actionably-harmful user interface designs (see my tirade about Salvo! from 2005) many more were just not up to the current snuff. You don’t realize, in many cases, the that the game’s inputs aren’t quite good for you until the resulting repetitive strain syndrome causes you to drop your coffee mug one morning.
I’ve told you about my recently-rediscovered addiction to Heroes 3. In my case, forewarned was not forearmed and it is, strangely enough, my forearm that is paying for two-too-many late nights of fighting monsters and dragons.
Now that I know the harm I’m doing to myself, it is clear that Squad Battles is almost as bad as Heroes. Maybe its even worse except that it is far less addictive. I ended up playing Squad Battles: Vietnam scenarios The Attack of Nui Ngoc (pictured above) and Skirmish on Route [5]27, because that’s what I’m doing but also figuring it would give me a break from the wrist-grinding thrill of Heroes. It did not.
I will need to find a way to slow down the pace of my recent game playing. That may also mean slowing down the pace of my blogging, which probably would also be good for me. It would definitely improve my life if I were to substitute yard work, day trips, and other summertime activities for computer-desk -centric pursuits. We should listen to our bodies when they try to tell us things about our health.
This is the hundred-twenty-seventh in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
After wrapping up Volume 7 and starting Volume 8, several of my speculations from last time around turned out to be accurate.
First off, as I kick off another round I can see the scoring has returned to normal. Those big victory locations just across the border have returned. It’s a comfort in their familiarity but, once again, getting myself out of the “draw” zone is probably going to be impossible.
I was also right to sit tight* regarding Khe Sahn. As shown above, the situation around Tet is just as I left it at the end of Volume 7 but now with an assigned mission to lift the siege on Turn 1. All around, the rhythm of the game is back to what I was used to from volumes 1-6. Spring 1968 is a little more active… more units are available and the missions tend to be more decisive.
As the first month (April) wraps up, VCO alerts me to a battle that is featured in Squad Battles. Just in advance of Saigon’s so-called “mini-Tet,” the U.S. command learned of an attack on the forward command post at Dong Ha. A joint Marine/Army force, called “Task Force Robbie,” was dispatched to locate and eliminate the threat. You can see, in the below screenshot, the units being moved into position. I didn’t find anything, but if you stay tuned until the end of this, I’ll give you an update.
Following the last of the major Squad Battles: Tour of Duty projects and the announcement of more and better Squad Battles to come, we return back to the software’s beginning. It’s a bit of shift, especially sine I was crowing how well that last group of scenarios were crafted. But remember that the Squad Battles: Vietnam product was the first of the Squad Battles series. Everything about it is a little behind what we might expect, especially coming fresh from House to House. All that scripting, new weapons, innovative maps? Don’t look for it here.
Instead, I’d say that the Dai Do and Nhi Ha scenario sets exemplify much of what I’ve talked about in earlier posts. The initial fights, namely The Battle of Dai Do – Parts 1 & 2, start small with limited engagements (turn duration, map size, and unit availability) but then the scope grows as you work your way through. I’ve speculated that this is done as a kind of “lesson”; an attempt to teach how a battle historically developed in a way that can encompass factors that are too big for the Squad Battles engine to handle at one go.
One such lesson involves the critique that the Marines used blunt-force, frontal assaults where they should have used more finesse. Each of the four fights at Dai Do were U.S. victories, but they were costly ones. The player is both shown why the assaults were difficult and, perhaps, is challenged to optimize his use of forces and the rules of the game to obtain a cleaner victory. I am not sure I’m fully on board with the latter. I’d prefer to blame large losses in a tactical encounter on mistakes or omissions at the operational levels rather than insufficiently-optimized tactics. Is figuring out how to squeeze out an unlikely victory going to be fun for me? Consider that I’ve never quite mastered the terrain in this engine, a shortcoming that surely hobbles my ability to optimize tactics.
The path to victory, assuming there is one, would be to use maneuver and flanking to improve upon the frontal assault tactics that come naturally in this game and were criticized historically. As I’ve discussed before aplenty, I’m just not sure it works at this scale. These scenarios (even the longer ones) are short enough that trying to maneuver outside of the sight and range of the enemy is generally not feasible. Is taking 6 turns of small losses while finding a better position superior to taking 2 turns of large losses in a frontal assault? My gut says no but I’m not patient enough to grind through a rigorous analysis.
What I do think is this – full appreciation for these eight (individual) scenarios requires some background reading. It took some off-line study to learn that, while successful, the U.S. casualties may have been higher than they needed to be. Background reading also clued me into the fact that these two separate scenario quartets are, despite a few days gap between them, part of the same fight. It also helped me to understand how to relate the difficulties that I have in the game map to the actual flow of the real battle.
In the third of the four Dai Do fights, as an example, the Marines finally get to Dai Do. Confusingly, the name “Dai Do” refers to a group of five villages, one of which is actually called Dai Do. In this larger and more lengthy scenario, the Marines assault the village having, now, two tanks to back up the infantry. I was disappointed, as I often am, to lose one of my tanks (which I was cautiously husbanding) to recoiless rife fire. I’ve so often complained that the armor (particularly American armor) seems too brittle in these tactical games and this seemed another example. Until I read about** the actual results, that is. I found out that I actually did better than the historical record. I only lost one of my two tanks; the real fight saw both disabled.
As I said, the connection between the Dai Do scenario set and the four scenarios included with Squad Battles: Vietnam and labeled Nhi Ha isn’t obvious without some additional historical insight. The scenario descriptions don’t hint at the connection between them, although comparing the dates and locations in the accompanying documentation would probably be a major tip-off.
After the fighting multi-day fighting depicted in Dai Do, the Marines controlled the Dai Do complex and, for them, fighting had stopped. To the Northeast, however, attached units from the 196th Light Infantry Battalion found more work to be done. The Army units had been brought in to replace Marine 2/4 Company G, itself moved to the fighting around Dai Do. The Army’s 3rd battalion, 21st Infantry was attached to the Marines’ command structure and the force was sent in to secure Nhi Ha on May 2nd. When they advanced into the village they found that the NVA had laid-in an ambush. Fighting the enemy now fell to the U.S. Army.
In the literature, the Army’s fighting at Nhi Ha seems to be treated as a bit of an aside relative to the Marine’s main event at Dai Do. In Squad Battles, though, the Nhi Ha quartet is the meatier of the two scenario sets – perhaps because John Tiller designed it to be a continuation and and escalation of Do Dai. Nhi Ha‘s first scenario starts out bigger and more complex and they go on from there.
I’ll make one comment – a whine if you will – about my Nhi Ha experience. Because I don’t have any write-ups on the battle, I don’t know if what happened to me reflects or conflicts with reality. As the 196th forces realized they were facing a dug-in enemy at Nhi Ha, they were backed up by air support from the U.S. Marines. This was very exciting to me as a player, until I attempted to use it. The air support is slow (of course) and when it finally comes it is not very accurate. Despite making sure I had line-of-sight to my targets, my first bomb took out the Lt. Colonel who called in the strike. A second bomb killed his radioman. Despite the aircraft having dropped into an enemy-occupied hex (albeit in no case the one that I had asked to be targeted), the harm to my own forces seems to have exceeded the damage done to the enemy (500lb bombs have a big blast radius in the game). For me, it made the game really frustrating as the only alternative seems to be not use the aircraft for close*** air support at all.
One final screenshot to wrap it up. As I explained last time, I was a little confused about the change in scoring methodology that accompanied the Tet Offensive. As explained, while I’m back to the familiar “draw” rating, the operational advantages that accompanied that Tet “major victory” are still evident. It has been easy enough to get through the objective missions and I have plenty of resources to get things done. Despite being told, turn after turn “This is a draw,” I believe I am seeing my success reflected in the results and in my score. 573 points to the positive, and still near the start – this seems like one of my better results.
I toss in this last bit here mostly, I suppose, for me. As I move forward, I can look back on this post to see whether I really did have a good sense of things. Maybe I can hope to figure out Vietnam Combat Operations‘ scoring system before I get to the end of the series.
Return to the master post. The next post returns to Saigon during the Mini Tet offensive for a stock scenario taken from Seven Firefights in Vietnam.
*Although not that it matters, really. As I said, this scenario design that breaks the war up into manageable chunks is a mixed blessing. It means that the history is kept pretty well on track and even years in (both into the war and into the game, in my case). It also means that whatever your accomplishments, whatever your failures, you’ll still get that reset back to the historical situation every few dozen turns.
**I downloaded the book U.S. Marines in Vietnam: The Defining Year, 1968 from the Marine Corps website. The electronic version is free. So far, I’ve only used it as reference material but the fighting around Dong Ha has its own chapter (15) and seems like it will be a good read when I sit down to do it. The one deterrent is that PDF is built from a scan and is pretty hefty for use on a mobile device.
***I probably should have looked up what the rules of engagement were for air support of forces in contact with the enemy. If I really was trying to bring in bombs “danger close,” I supposed I should be slapped for having done so.
This is the hundred-twenty-fourth in a series of posts on the Vietnam War. See here for the previous post in the series or return to the master post.
I return to Squad Battles: Vietnam wherein but a single scenario has been created to represent the siege of Khe Sahn. This an engagement that went on for some five months plus. The scenario, just called The Battle of Khe Sanh, was an experience and it was so in a number of different ways.
The most obvious, and what I’ve captured in the below screenshot, is that I completed misunderstood the situation before I started my playing the first time at it. The scenario opened with my guys just outside an extensive perimeter so I just assumed (without thinking it through, I must admit) that I was to penetrate that perimeter and assault some defended position on the other side.
I crossed the wire, pushed through the trenches and bunkers, and began to move on the internal positions – all without seeing a single insurgent. I finally zoomed out to try to get my bearings within the bigger picture. That’s when it became obvious – I was assaulting my own position – the very position from which my men had obviously emerged shortly before the scenario began.
So I started over.
Played correctly, the scenario Khe Sahn is pretty typical of Squad Battles: Vietnam‘s collection. It is a small battle with limited movement and sight lines. The maneuvering company has little in the way of support – outside of the bazookas that march with each platoon. Amazingly enough, there is one artillery battery from which fire support can be called. As we know in this game, the scale tends to prevent big, off-board artillery assets from being decisive even when they are available.
Particularly as a representation of the months-long operations around Khe Sahn, The Battle of Khe Sanh doesn’t live up to its title.
Return to the master post or take a break from my usual chronology as I crack open another book, this one returning to the beginning’s of America’s entanglement in Vietnam.
This is the ninety-sixth 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.
It’s been a couple of years now since I’ve played what was called a “beginner scenario” created by a user for Squad Battles: Vietnam. See the post linked here, where I also include some information about the site that organized these extras and how to download them (which, apparently, still works). The same scenario creator also made a second hypothetical, which I played the other day.
This one, titled Pick Up Time, involves a pair of platoons making their way to a landing zone for pickup, only to find the extraction contested.
The scenario is long enough for interesting things to happen and lets the player make meaningful choices that will determine the ultimate outcome. The most obvious example involves the designation of a primary and backup landing zone. You COULD make for the primary extraction point, as I’m doing in the above screen shot. You could skip that and head straight to the second. You could also do as I’ve done (as illustrated by the second screen) and abort your move on the first LZ and then make an attempt at the alternate.
The nature of the helicopter units in Squad Battles means that you’re under no obligation to use either of the pre-designated landing zones. Helicopters in-game can land just about anywhere. I assumed, however, that the proper way to play this scenario was to pick up on or about the victory hexes designated for this purpose. Also (if I understand the instructions), the victory hexes are there to drive the AI, not to determine victory. For the player’s scoring purposes, points are earned by exiting forces off the edge of the map and this can only be done via a helicopter ride.
The terrain itself contributes to making this a more interesting mission than your average encounter in the jungle. Even on foot, your squads can cover a handful of hexes in a turn. This provides consequences to your tactical decisions. Does your squad provide covering fire? Do they move and shoot? Or do they reposition themselves using their maximum movement allowance?
Support comes in the form of helicopter gunships. In my initial play through, as I so often do, I suffered pretty heavy vehicle losses. My experience was that my line of sight to the enemy means he’s eventually going to visit a lethal round upon my air support units. It doesn’t help me that I have no idea just how close I have to be with rockets and Gatling guns to maximize their effectiveness. Maybe I am not properly standing off when it comes time to dole out some pain. Then again, maybe this is just part of the game and if you aren’t willing to take it you shouldn’t be dishing it out.
As before, the best part of this scenario for me is how it deviates from the stock scenarios which, despite each of them being grounded in a different historical situation, start to get a same-old, same-old feeling to them. Pick Up Time is very different than these stock scenarios; at least those that I can recall. It makes use of a few aspects of the engine that you rarely see. In the end, it prioritizes movement over weaponry, in that your goal is to get everyone on board a helicopter and get them out – shooting the enemy is only valuable to the extent that it helps you accomplish the first.
If not clear from the second screenshot, I did lose the scenario pretty badly. Another aspect of this scenario’s design, however, is that it should be suitable to multiple replays as I attempt to “get it right.”
This is the ninety-second 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.
The Squad Battles: Vietnam treatment of the Battle of Dak To is not bad – for Squad Battles: Vietnam, that is.
The Tiller-designed scenario tasks you with taking two somewhat-adjacent hilltops. One (see first screenshot) you must approach on foot and dislodge the NVA units that have prepared to defend it. For the second (the second screenshot, naturally), you can insert your company directly onto the objective, which is an uncontested landing zone.
The result is that you are fighting two different encounters simultaneously – one offensive and one defensive. Notably (and you can see this in the below screen), you have radios with which to summon air and artillery support. Your major decision during gameplay is how to distribute that support – on offense or defense.
It’s a longer scenario, as far as these things go, lasting nominally 18 turns. However, once the airmobile troops are inserted and once the marching infantry begins to come under fire, the turns fly by pretty fast. Your fellas either don’t want to move (because they already hold the objective) or they won’t move (because they’re pinned down). In the end, I spent most of the last half of the game firing from static positions; not at risk of losing my held hilltop but with no chance of taking the other objective away from the enemy.
As I said, the battle is not bad for a Squad Battles scenario and I’d probably have more to say in that regard had I not just finished playing the Dak To scenario from Campaign Series: Vietnam. When the two are set side-by-side, the limited scope of Squad Battles becomes all that much more obvious.
I miss the larger context inherent in CS‘s bigger maps. There is also a better sense of realism when the battle is allowed to stretch over multiple days, as it did, as opposed to forcing the scenario’s conclusion into a couple of hours. The only downside (or rather upside, since we are talking about Squad Battles here) in this regard is that this scenario forces the player to take the LZ* by air assault. If I remember my CS scenario correctly, I played more cautiously; securing the hilltop LZ with ground troops before bringing in the choppers. For better or for worse, Squad Battles forced me down that more aggressive path.
*A good chunk of my turn was spent trying to figure out the intended landing site at scenario start. I’ve already grown used to having them clearly marked for me in Campaign Series: Vietnam. I puzzled over the Squad Battles manual for a bit but I’m still not really sure. Squad Battles assigns each hex a “terrain height” which is different than (on top of, quite literally) the ground height of the hex. According to the manual, this terrain height must be less than 2 meters to allow helicopter landings. Hill 823 shows a Jungle terrain at 3 meters. It also has something that looks like rubble augmenting the hex (see 2nd screenshot). I couldn’t find it in the manual, but I’m assuming the prior jungle had been destroyed, allowing the use of the hex for an LZ. I believe the terrain was labeled as XV, but I couldn’t find that in the manual. “X” for destroyed, maybe?