Librarian Gamer: Tactical Combat In Vietnam

This report took a while, and I may not post again for a week or more. Life is busy, work exhausting and I am taking a staycation to deal with some stuff. This means I missed a good round of interwar Tactical Combat last Saturday, because my work schedule is annoyingly wonky.

But the Saturday before that, I made it to Das Krieg Haus again for a game set in Vietnam; specifically Ben Het, 3 March 1969.

CIDG camp, with target objective (a 175mm gun) to left.

This was a night battle - primarily a to-hit modifier, as range for most weapons at this scale (1:1) is unlimited. Shooting in Tactical Combat is akin to The Sword and the Flame - roll-under on a D20, so we mostly required 5 or less to hit. Since most weapons have two or more shots, this isn't as bad as it looks, and even at 1:1, it was mostly an armor battle and there weren't, say, hundreds of infantry on the table. It's assumed this is a fraction of the larger combat.

This was also a rare tank-on-tank action - Two M48 Pattons and an M42 Duster vs. eight PT-76 light tanks and a BTR-50 tracked transport. This was a PAVN attempt to break into a Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp (backed up by the armor and a handful of US advisors and spec-forcers). So the rest of the units (some of them reserves) were:

US/SVN: One 60mm mortar, one 4.2" mortar, 27 CIDG with M16s, light machine guns, grenade launchers and light antitank weapons, eight American advisors with two Starlight scopes, two .50 cal machine guns (one of them in a jeep, two recoilless rifles (one of them in a jeep). Plus, for fun, a couple TV reporters who spent most of the game hiding behind the one hut on the battlefield.

PAVN: 25-man assault platoon with light mgs and RPG-7s, eight two-man wire-cutter teams, a Maxim machine gun and two 82mm mortars.

Everyone had illumination shells, although in practice brewed-up tanks shed far more light. The Americans also had a bunch of fortification elements - trenches, sandbags, four buried mines (which went under the road where it left the outer defenses near the enemy deployment zone), and four Claymores (two went near that exit, and two in front of the angle in the wire closest to our left flank).

I engaged in a bit of gamesmanship by claiming Jim Johnson as my partner, since my tactical ability (despite all that reading) is practically nil and he kicked my arse last time out. Since we were on defense we mostly just threw fire downrange, with only a little repositioning as reserves turned up, so it's not like the SEATO side really needed more than one player.

But when I suggested I was mostly an observer here, the others pointed out my enthusiasm for blasting NVA infantry off the board. And two PT-76s.

Anyway...

The blameless defenders of democracy set up on the hills to the (effectively) south and center. The star denotes the objective, an M107 175mm gun. We were permitted to set up to a dozen troops on the central "ridge", which Jim placed in foxholes as a sacrificial "speed bump." The PAVN infantry could set up anywhere on the jungle edges outside the wire, and their armor had to come from the NW corner up the road.

Our "inner" deployment.

The objective was to kill or protect (depending on side) the M107 self-propelled gun at the center of the CIDG camp. It would not fire, but "accidental" scattering of missed mortar shells would not suffice to hit it either - the enemy would either have to get into line of sight to call down fire or hit it with a demo charge.

The secondary objectives were casualty ratio - a side that caused twice as many as it took would be deemed to have won, but retrieved casualties (dragged off table by the NVA, medevaced by the Americans) would not count against this. In practice, the NVA players decided that keeping an uninjured man on the firing line was preferable to using him to help a second man away, and for Jim and me it was somewhere between not remembering and fearing the helicopter would be shot down - especially once the camp was lit up.

Our assumption was that - while the NVA vehicles would have to come on via the road - their infantry would hit us elsewhere, and most likely from the eastern corner. They would try to swamp our right flank and pass through to the objective. This was why we placed the Duster there, so as to shoot up masses of infantry. As it turned out, they were more spread out, which left the Duster and all of my assets (I got the right flank while Jim took the center and left) in dead ground with fewer targets. This is due to the fact that, the NVA having reconnoitered the ground beforehand, they got to set up second.

Both sides launched illumination shells. The markers for these were ingenius; just teased-out strips of cotton painted acid green.

Light mortars 3" radius, 4.2" mortar 6". The bulk of NVA
assault troops are visible; the ones in the back are not on-table yet,
but illumination will force them into line of sight or farther south.

Another angle on the NVA.

Nearby, an NVA heavy-weapon team.

The outer checkpoint where the tanks will come in.
The forlorn hope position is to upper left.

Concentrating my fire, I killed
half the wirecutter teams on my side.

Jim's recoilless rifle brews up a PT-76; the radius of the
firelight is 12 inches!

The sacrificial hope, about to have fire rained on it.
Brown felt strips represent foxholes.

The hill is lit up and pounded; red paper squares indicate casualties.

Our pesky recoilless is now out of the game...

... after killing another tank. The NVA advance is developing.

A man with M79 "blooper" grenade launcher
is still out of range. Our rear entrenchments
also visible.

The Allied position is entirely lit up now, and we've lost
one M48. We got a second as reinforcement, though.

My two light machine guns, a handful of rifles and a cracking eight shots a turn from the M42 were at least hindering the attack to our northeast, if not stopping it. Jim's comment was: "Turn one: the attack is commanded by a regimental commander. Turn two, a battalion commander. Turn three, a platoon leader." As the NVA tanks broke through the outer checkpoint and their infantry followed, I shifted the Duster over the crest and down the hill where it could have more targets:

I targeted the enemy light tanks, and got two kills before the turret was hit and all the crew injured or killed. They piled into the nearby emplacements.

NVA armor is almost all gone...

... but the infantry are closing.

One of our grenadiers ran down to the wire to get into range for his M79, but was killed before he could use it. Later, Jim spent a couple more lives trying to recover it, to no effect.

Here's my surviving Duster crew, clustering around the medic,
who'd narrowly escaped the burning position next to the tank.
Bottom left is a reporter asking annoying questions of men
more concerned about pain than posterity.

We had two media guys on the board, but they weren't objectives - didn't need to protect them or get a report out. So in the last two turns, I had them randomly move around and get in the way, just for fun. One approached the wounded infantry for an interview, while the other moved into position for Pulitzer-winning photos. (If he's using my phone-camera, he ain't gettin' 'em.)

Nothing but fire and a looming opponent in sight.

In the end, the Allies lost two tank crew (ten men total), and all the infantry on the hill, which the NVA were now waving flags atop. The rest of our casualties brought it up to 32, but the NVA had 70+ casualties (including all their vehicles and nearly all wirecutter teams) and never got near the M107. Their infantry was through the wire, but was unlikely to make it across open and lit-up ground to a position where they could fire on or assault the objective. Indirect fire came first in the turn sequence, which means that once you've moved to where you'll use it from, the enemy has a turn to shoot at you before you can actually bring it down.

I'd only played these rules during "bolt-action" periods - WWII and interwar. Firepower a generation later was far more devastating, with two shots a turn from every rifleman, and more machine guns per unit too. And yes, using the Duster was a delight.

As usual with this system and GM, a fine game. You can find video reports of the rules on Jim's Youtube channel, though I expect this one won't be up for a couple months. He's just released a battle report for Op: Husky. Edit: Here's the Ben Het video.

Closeups of game assets: