The End of Game Discussion Thread

[MJ1]

So History has repeated it self and Hue finally re-captured by the ARVN and US forces.

The final turns saw the USMC and US Airbourne surround the city and after 3 days of trying to break the strangle hold the game was up for the NVA.

The dice gods favoured the US forces and they soundly defeated the NVA forces.

I hope the maps and images show how the results panned out and give people a flavour of how it played.

[MJ1]

So thank you to all the players and I think it was worth trying. Perhaps a bit too big for 1st attempt but I think that tends to be a fault most gamers fall in to.

Really liked reading the ARVN Commanders comments both Joe and Ben's. Anyone who wants a few sniggers at the US expense swing by to Joe's forum and threads

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Nice end game summary.

The hardest thing is keeping momentum and as an umpire trying to keep the flow in your head between turns, once you lose the flow it gets harder to do each turn and running solo is a big task and not easy to do with RL getting in the way...

[drdzoe]

Heh. I had a lot of fun with this. And a lot of that was roleplaying.

I played the good Major as someone who thoroughly hated the Americans, but who nevertheless sucked up to them at every possible opportunity. Pretty much a stereotype of a bad ally.

A few choice excerpts from some of my orders/messages:

"Curse clumsy Americans behind their backs for their destructive artillery and lack of cultural sensitivity. Fantasize about dropping artillery barrage on stinking Statue of Liberty and Grand Canyon to see how they would like it."

"Have all other troops defend in place and wait for the terrible American laggards to get off their butts and get ready to attack."

"Shift the supplies held by the 4th Btn 2nd Regt to the 2nd Btn 3rd Regt. Order all troops to defend in place. Curse out the Americans to my second-in-command. What's the point in being an American client state if they can't even give us enough supplies?"

"My supply situation is getting desperate. Several of my units have no supplies remaining, and the few units that do have supplies only have enough for one more engagement. What is the use of putting up with the smelly Americans if they cannot even provide us with sufficient supply? They're stinking factories are too busy making Chevrolets for all the stupid American families to drive around their absurdly large country."

To the American commander:

"Hello my good American friends!

I don't want to complain, but I'm afraid that some of our forces are getting a little low on supplies. I know that you are a very rich country, and no doubt have many many supplies available to you. Would it be possible for you to provide some supplies so that we can do our best against the North Vietnamese? Because right now our troops are largely immobilized because of the bad supply situation. But if you could act with that famous American generosity, we could be more effective.

We have managed to reestablish control over the Van Xa airfield, so perhaps you can use some of your very impressive large planes to bring in more supplies.

Thank you very much. We are so lucky to have such a nice country like you here to help us in our time of need.

Major Nguyen"

and:

"Thank you so much for all the delicious things you had at the planning meeting. How can we ever lose this war when our allies have such good chocolate!"


To my Vietnamese commander:

"Sir:

The smelly Americans are now all over PK17. They are asking lots of impertinent questions, and getting ready to make impossible demands on my troops, asking us to clear the roads even though they do not have supplies to offer. It is typical: filthy Americans expect us to do all the fighting while they stay back in their fancy officer clubs and smoke their stinky American cigars.

They say they are going to try to fly supplies in, but I'll believe it when I see it. So far, they have not provided us with any real supplies or support - they have just taken our supplies from us! I never should have given them supplies when they came roaring into our compound demanding them!

In the meanwhile, they crow over the number of the enemy that were killed as if that ever meant anything. Curse them and their stinking body counts!

If we lose Hue, it will be all the Americans' fault!

My mother wanted me to be a doctor. Curse the day I chose to be a soldier instead!

Do you have any orders of how I should deal with them, or any messages I can give to LTC Cheatham? Assuming I can manage to stay in his presence long enough to give the messages without vomiting from his horrible American aftershave, that is.

Major Nguyen"

Joe

[Mfastoso]

Mark - Thanks so much for running this. I had a blast and it is great to see how it all played out.

My perspective as the USMC commander was that I was fighting a separate battle south of the river and it was my objective to do everything I could to get across the river and into the fight as soon as possible. Thanks to one unguarded ferry crossing that was just barely possible. (I'm not sure those damned engineers ever arrived!) I had two main offensive actions: 1. up the main road to relieve the MACV compound -AND- 2. Crossing at the ferry and pushing into the old city of Hue. Both of these moves followed a similar pattern; an initial period of free maneuver followed by a stiffening of the battle lines. I enjoyed the 'maneuver' period quite a bit. When the lines formed it was basically hammering the enemy with artillery followed by assaults.

It appears the NVA did the best they could under the circumstances. I am wondering if a battle the highlighted more maneuver might be a nice option for another go around.

Mark

[sean b]

Mark--yes--thanks very much for doing this.  I know it's a big undertaking for one person!  Although we slowed down at the end, I enjoyed the game and appreciated your running it.

Our objectives were pretty straightforward:  Get into Hue and take as much of it as possible.  Hold on until the US/ARVN were too powerful to fight and then either withdraw or hold the city in a siege, essentially for political purposes.

I had to switch roles halfway through the game, from outside Hue commander to overall and Hue commander.  So I missed out on the early action in Hue and the late action outside the city.  

One thing that made this game very interesting relative to other board games and minis games is that we had no knowledge of the combat strengths of the units--ours or the enemy's.  We had to surmise them from history and experience. No optimizing to get the Avalon Hill ideal 3:1 attacks every time!

Thanks again for doing this. I'd be happy to play another when I've got a little more time.

Sean

[tballou]

As exterior defender to the west of Hue, my biggest fear was the ARVN force driving south towards the An Chu canal and cutting off my supply route to the city. I was shuffling supplies as fast as I could into the city. It was fairly easy to block the canal to the south from the Marines, but I had little force to stop even a small force of ARVN driving south to break my lines of communication with Hue. Of course the writing was on the wall, when the Marines crossed the Perfume river and started driving north, there was little I could do to stop them.

Thank you again Mark.

--Tom

[Comassion]

Thanks for all the work you put into this Mark, I had a lot of fun! It was definitely more of a guessing game than your run of the mill wargame, and the fog of war was pretty intense.

As the beleaguered commander of the ARVN forces inside the city, I had the misfortune of not being able to pull the excellent Black Panthers (Bac Hao) back to the main HQ compound, which historically held out for the entire battle. Instead they were cut off from the start and held out for a ridiculously long time, but were eventually eliminated - leaving insufficient combat power to continue holding out at the compound. I was able to get some forces across the river and had a helicopter evacuation of my remaining HQ forces, and we were able to attack into the city from our newfound location on the Eastern side. I ran into heavy resistance inside the city and the plan from there was to basically hold and distract the VC while my allied commanders surrounded the city.

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