21st November 2010 - Vietnam Game

It is the night of the 31st January 1968 and the players will find themselves enveloped in one of the defining moments for Vietnam the Tet Offensive. The 1st January for the Vietnamese represents the most important holiday of the year and a 2 day ceasefire had been announced by the NVA and ARVN. This ceasefire was not to hold and the NVA launched a bold attack throughout Vietnam to try and finally defeat the ARVN and their Allies. This is one of the few operations where the communist fighters came out of the jungle to take on the ARVN and Americans in a head on fight.

The city of Huế (pronounced “HughA”) was the former Imperial capital of a united Vietnam and represented a key political centre for the NVA to capture and control. With many Southern political leaders and their staff working and living in the city the target was of prime importance for the North and South. Highway 1 passed through Huế and the city itself was divided by the Perfume River with only 2 bridges connecting the Old Imperial City to the North and the new city suburbs to the South. The old Imperial palace was of national importance and became a hostage in the war between North and South.

Players will take on the roles of the commanders trying to control this important city and up to 3 players a side will be required. For each player we will need an umpire who will help the players implement their orders on the map. This will be my first attempt to model city fighting and the issues that surround it. Players will be free to make decisions as they see fit. The units will be battalion / company level. There is no need to research as the scenario is based upon the battle but will not necessarily accurately reflect the historical reality. The game will be designed to give players an insight to the actual battle and issues faced by the real commanders of the day.

Anyone interested please either post here or via e-mail. It will be played from 11am on Sunday to around 4pm. You will need to bring your own lunch and the venue is Little Gaddesden village hall at HP4 1NX

Umpires will be need to be available at 10.30am for a pre game brief.

Key commanders will need to do some initial planning the week before the game and e-mail me with those by the Friday night before the game.

Plenty of free parking available and Tea & Coffee is provided.

It is expected that the game will cost £5 per player to help cover the cost of the hall.

I'm definitely up for this one.

Martin

MJ1 wrote:It is the night of the 31st January 1968 and the players will find themselves enveloped in one of the defining moments for Vietnam the Tet Offensive. The 1st January for the Vietnamese represents the most important holiday of the year and a 2 day ceasefire had been announced by the NVA and ARVN. This ceasefire was not to hold and the NVA launched a bold attack throughout Vietnam to try and finally defeat the ARVN and their Allies. This is one of the few operations where the communist fighters came out of the jungle to take on the ARVN and Americans in a head on fight.

The city of Huế (pronounced “HughA”) was the former Imperial capital of a united Vietnam and represented a key political centre for the NVA to capture and control. With many Southern political leaders and their staff working and living in the city the target was of prime importance for the North and South. Highway 1 passed through Huế and the city itself was divided by the Perfume River with only 2 bridges connecting the Old Imperial City to the North and the new city suburbs to the South. The old Imperial palace was of national importance and became a hostage in the war between North and South.

Players will take on the roles of the commanders trying to control this important city and up to 3 players a side will be required. For each player we will need an umpire who will help the players implement their orders on the map. This will be my first attempt to model city fighting and the issues that surround it. Players will be free to make decisions as they see fit. The units will be battalion / company level. There is no need to research as the scenario is based upon the battle but will not necessarily accurately reflect the historical reality. The game will be designed to give players an insight to the actual battle and issues faced by the real commanders of the day.

I am aviable!

Robert

Robert / Martin can you say what you prefer to either play or umpire and if play what side you would prefer and if you want the senior command position.

At the moment the plan is one senior commander away from city and two at city on the ground controlling forces there.

Of course the plan might change as I work through the design

Hi this is the number of people I have down for involvement in the game: -

Martin James (NVA)
Steve Hockin (US / ARVN)
Robert ? (??)
Paul Dowden (US / ARVN)
Andrew Owens (??)

Richard Prosser (Umpire)
John Acs (Umpire)

Tim Gow (Possible)

I need Robert or Andrew to be an Umpire so Robert as you signed up before Andrew can you confirm if you want to play. If so you will be assigned to the NVA and working with Martin. The briefings for the game will be compiled over the next few weeks.

There is room for more people but I will need to know before hand (by 8th Nov) to work out roles. Ideally I would have 3 a side but with 4 I shall design the game slightly differently from 3 a side.

Should any players drop out on the day, umpires might be asked to take on a player role to ensure we get a reasonable game.

Not only do I already have something allocated to this date but I am already double-booked. Have we got anything for December or do we assume seasonal activities takeover until 2011?

What do we have for the future?

Nothing planned for December.

We will probably fix a game for late Junuary or February 2011, but are currently taking stock. We were fortunate to have a lot of regular 18-20 year-old players over the last couple of years. The downside is that they have moved away into their first jobs or (temporarily) to university.

It will be interesting to see what turn-out we get for the November game.

Martin

Updated Names List

Martin James (NVA)
Robert Syms (NVA)

Steve Hockin (ARVN)
Paul Dowden (USMC)

Andrew Owens (Umpire as other umpire dropped out)
John Acs (Umpire)
Vince (Umpire)

Tim Gow (Possible)

The maps have now been issued for those not playing and following here you can see what we will be using by following these two links: -

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14841130/Hue%20Area%20Map%20v2.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14841130/Hue%20City%20Map%20Players.jpg

Updated Names List

Martin James (NVA)
Robert Syms (NVA)

Steve Hockin (ARVN)
Paul Dowden (USMC)
Andrew Owens (USA)

John Acs (Umpire)
Vince (Umpire)
Andy (Umpire)
Ian (Umpire)
Alan (Umpire)
John's Friend (Umpire)

Just a reminder that the cost for this game will be £5 per head to cover the hall rental. If this is your first game, it's free however.

Suggest you bring something for your lunch. We also normally take a break mid afternoon for afternoon tea, so any cake or biscuits contributed will be gratefully received. I will provide coffee, tea, milk & sugar.

Martin

Updated Names List

Martin James (NVA)
Robert Syms (NVA)

Steve Hockin (ARVN)
Paul Dowden (USMC)
Andrew Owens (USA)

John Acs (Umpire)
Vince (Umpire)
Andy (Umpire)
Ian (Umpire)
Alan (Umpire)
Steven Davis (Umpire)

Went the day well?

Yes - there has been quite a long discussion on the Yahoo Group. US player threatened to start shooting ARVN generals. Mind you, the US had also shelled the ARVN! At one point every one in Hue, on both sides, was cut off from supplies, and the NVA was indulging in regimental scale guerilla tactics.

Ian wrote:Yes - there has been quite a long discussion on the Yahoo Group.

BTW it was via E-mail the old Yahoo site is dead... I will today try and consolidate some of the discussion and open up the combat tables I used as I think they could do with tweaking. Not sure how but I am sure once people see them they might have some ideas... Will have breakfast first and then spend some time on updating this thread...

hammurabi70 wrote:Went the day well?

I believe it did and certainly had enough thanks from the players to make it worth my while setting it up.

The following threads can be drawn from the discussion via e-mail after the game.

Comms
This was done via the players hand writing messages between themselves and before handing the message over their opponents had a chance to intercept the message by rolling a D10. A 1 for the NVA and 1-2 for the Americans would allow the opponent to read the message before it was handed to the original recipient. This was a simple method to allow for decoding of radio messages and I based my view that America would have more resources to monitor traffic.

I was not in the room to watch it but some good points were made about it. Martin mentioned that "I actually think we did a lot of that - my guess is c50 messages between us. sometimes several per turn." which is good as I wanted to allow more comms than normal as Radios would allow for this. But each of those messages could have been intercepted. 20% chance.

In fact the NVA intercepted more of the American's comms and that was with a 10% chance. This did allow Martin the chance to make plans with this knowledge and gave him an edge in some situations. Again something I think fair considering we were doing 12 hour turns.

John ACS had some more input on Radios and I think it is worth just dropping this in here...

"On reflection the radio messaging worked well, though in a longer game it would have been fun to have some news from the outside world re long range weather forecasts, news from home for the yanks with effects on morale, communist propaganda which would raise the temperature regarding insurgent activity or even a cease fires being called for, or a stricken bomber or helicopter crash landing – some units may even see it coming down, which with possible useful information on board, might even be a valuable propaganda prize with a handy prisoner of war who could be bartered for or paraded on TV."

All of the above points would add flavour to the game but for me I wanted it to be about the taking and control of the city and ultimately it was a game of resource management and supply. These points would work well for a platoon level game or company level where you are dealing with smaller turns and a different scale of action IMO.

There was some use of codes by the NVA and John ACS commented on this: -

"The use of codes in radio messaging was naughty but wicked fun. As it is, this was apparently made up on the day and could indeed have backfired being more easy to misinterpret. However it needs to be considered whether both sides might not be already engaged in this kind of activity and whether the dice throw for interception might not already have code braking as part of the difficulty of interception. Or is the code on the crashed helicopter? "

Turn Length Night / Day
The next discussion off line was about turn length and how to get more turns done. I had allowed for the full month of Feb 1968 to be played as this is how long the battle took to resolve and against which I was working. This was pretty unrealistic and I kinda knew that was the case but felt it was worth a go. The turns were split into 12hr with a day and night move. We completed to the 10th Feb so around 20 turns in 4.5 hours around 13 mins a turn which is not too bad. For us to attempt to do a month I think we would have to concentrate on day turns and this would have made the game very different. The night turns were used by the NVA (Martin) to regroup and change positions and this added a lot to his approach. If we did it just as one day then the choices for the players become less and the umpires have to do more.

John ACS commented on the dilemma: -

"The night and day scenario is very good I think but could be drawn together. ie.: most commanders would know what they would want to be doing the next day but might give orders for movement or even the action itself. Commanders would simply have to specify which side of dawn they would want the action to commence. They may even stipulate a time. It would however mean less briefs to umpire and less running about thus time saving in running the game.

Might it even be an idea to allow commanders the chance to give general orders covering the next 2 or 3 days. This would not be quite so useful in a short game but might be useful if radio silence was required on a recon mission which might take days. Or a large body of troops were being moved – again keen not to be detected though use of radio contact."

Paul D said "I believe night movement was crucial to the success of the insurrection, with the VC exploiting their knowledge of the countryside to dominate the villages by night, while the ARVN came by day. So a crucial aspect might well be lost with day movement only, even though we are dealing here with urban rather than rural combat for the most part."

And Martin's views: -

"I agree with Paul about the night turns. One of the things that makes Vietnam interesting (for me) is the different strengths & weaknesses of the two sides. And the extra freedom the VC/NVA have at night is a big part of it.

I suppose you could try to issue 'double' orders for day & the following night (or would it be better night & the following day?), but what happens if something unexpected occurs in the first 'half' of the turn? The player will understandably want to change his orders, and if the umpires allow him to do so, then you're really back into effectively two turns."

Ultimately I have no formed view on how to run it next time either with 1 turn a day or two. I guess on this point there is no right answer and despite not completing the month people had enough fun and it did not need to be completed for people to feel they had won or lost the game?

Confusion Between Players

Some of the most amusing aspects of the game was the interplay between players on the same side. Of particular note was the Allied side where you had the ARVN USMC and US Army all trying to work with one another and not always pulling it off. It was only at the end of the game when it was explained to the ARVN commander did he fully understand why some of his junior commanders were less than happy with working with the USMC who had shelled them and given them suicide orders against which they had rebelled. This had not been communicated to the ARVN commander who got very stroppy with his juniors and these sorts of actions are a joy to watch for the umpires.

Steve commented after the game "well done to all (except some Marine General who single handedly pushed the South Vietnamese army in to open rebellion!!)."

John Acs "The distrust between ARVN and Marines was wonderful to behold and made great gaming. I’m not sure if the players on the receiving end enjoyed it but it was great fun umpiring."

Combat Results
This area is the one that caused much discussion and I am in no way sure I got it right. I had done much reading about the battle and it struck me that units rarely became totally ineffective. We have a view (well in my mind) that people fight to bitter end and they all die. In reality combat does not work that way and people retreat or freeze far sooner so after a couple of casualties in a unit the will to do silly advances across open streets becomes almost zero. Common sense really as soldiers prefer to live... So when you look at combat results in games of 12 hour turns how to represent this and give realistic results for the commanders as you are abstracting at Company level. Here is the chart I choose to use for the game.



This I used for all combat be it city based or outside.

The values for units as follows:-



The debate combat threw up was as follows: -

John ACS started the ball rolling "I thought the helicopter recon was useless even with large bodies of troops. This may of course be how it was, and the single recon run in a day didn’t allow for it to be co-ordinated with the time the information would be needed. Would a recon not happen maybe several times a day?

The defensive actions were spectacular and worked very well. So did the resource counters.

Air-strikes and bombardments were all but useless.

I thought in the final sequence, the NVA on the run would collapse and the 3 battalions of ARVN would have them at gunpoint and unable to fight back effectively but they did not have any more resource counters left to attack again. I think if an attack has accrued momentum it might not need additional resources as the units would simply carry on regardless from one turn to the next, possibly even being sucked into a trap as a result. If an attack fails or the combat result is a stalemate, then conjuring up the effort to re-organise would indeed be an effort and take up time."

Followed by Ian saying "I thought the combat worked very well especially in the city. ..... The only tweak I would make is look at when odds exceed 3:1 (off the end of the table). But then I suppose you never expected Martin "Regimental scale guerilla tactics" James to mass 5 battalions against 2 companies!"

Martin quickly followed up... "Ian raises an interesting point re combat. Although I was less than impressed with my 5 battalions failing against 2 companies, I've got no complaints about it, as such things occasionally happen in war. I do think there should be some extreme results. Perhaps my guys failed to coordinate, or messages to individual battalions didn't get through, so not all actually attacked. Or perhaps some of them fired inadvertently on each other etc etc. I think you can rationalise it, and in general don't think there should be a sure thing in any combat.

I think what would help in the briefing though is some guide as to the odds which commanders had (in the past) found desirable for a successful attack. How many NVA battalions you normally need to take down one ARVN or one US, and vice-versa of course. Following a failed attack on the surprise first turn, this result against the 2 companies decided me to head off north to blow the bridge. I didn't recognise it as an extreme result at the time, and assumed I needed to move away from direct assaults and try something else, and that anything I did try would need overwhelming odds.

One thing that did surprise me was my lack of casualties when attacking. I was assuming that my units would be used-up in short-order, but this didn't seem to happen. This may have been because supplies were cashed in to rebuild units, but I was not aware of that, so perhaps the umpires could comment.

Overall it's difficult for me to judge combat as I only had my own experience to go on, and I would be interested in any views from the umpires & other players."

And then John ACS added more on Airstrikes. "On air strikes: Making these work 3 possibilities come to mind.
1 the victims are dug in their pits and survive just about everything. Well dug in troops would be almost impossible to move except with grenades and lots of walking into booby traps which is slow and demoralizing work with lots of potential tempers and mistakes.
2 the victims if in the open, are burned alive and have to move out of the area as it is scorched, hot and now open, steaming, wasted, flattened and difficult to defend.
3 the victims are stunned and demoralized for a while till they can be reorganized and or reinforced. Till that time they may be prone to being feeble in defence against a well coordinated attack. The trick is to have artillery shelling or air strikes hit the right spot. Getting it wrong is just too horrid to contemplate. The closer the attacking troops can be to the bombardment the more advantage can be gained."

Paul D added this "Personally I would have been inclined to 'tweak' such an extreme dice result in the interest of realism and game balance. But my own combats in the city seemed to remain true to the newsreel footage of dogged street fighting."

There was one key attack where 2 companies of Air Cav held off a large NVA force and this raised more debate: -

Andrew Owens made some good points "Personally I believe that it is totally reasonable to expect two companies of highly trained air cavalry to fend off five regiments of NVA! As I was closely involved with the said action can I just mention that one possible reason for this heroic deed was that Mel Gibson was in command of one company and Robert Duvall the other. It goes without saying that overall command was in the hands of John Wayne.

(Can I also say that this was later compensated for when 6 companies of airborne and air cav with air support and clear blue skies failed to do anything to an NVA battalion caught in the open!!! )

It is questionable whether the heroic defense by two coys would have been beneficial for the US/ARVN in the long run (beyond the end of the game) if it did indeed lead to the attack on the bridge. The loss of the bridge reduced the transport of supply substantially as the helicopters available were only able to deliver two tokens per turn and spent most of their time on the ground anyway! I don’t know about other troops but my forces in Hué were out of ammo by the end of the last turn.

Anyway the Congressional Medals of Honour are on me."

Martin Responded "Sounds good to me Andrew. With Wayne, Gibson & Duvall involved, I count my 5 battalions lucky to get away!

I suspect the later result was down to the modifier us commies had for being fiendish

I actually thought blowing the bridge was the most sensible thing I did, which I agree would have created real logistical problems for the northern Allied forces in the longer term. The worst thing was not giving Robert all my excess supplies to take with him into the Old City at the beginning of the game. I under-estimated the difficulty of finding a way in once the fighting was in progress. Perhaps if I'd reconnoitred more that would have helped? I never had a good feel for which gates/bridges we held."

And the final comment on combat by Ian.... "Yes, the city combats were good- viewing as a umpire it was easy to see why it would happen like that. I didn't get the feeling the PAVN players were getting overly bogged down with what companies were doing - the one time individual companies were ordered, there was a rationale for the player giving that order.

Perhaps where odds are ridiculous you could split the PAVN into two attacks to simulate human wave attacks."

Combat Results Continued....
Some comments to make on the debate mentioned on the previous reply...

Artillery for me as the turn represented 12 hours planning individual bombardments fixed at a place and time within that 12 hours was a non starter and artillery for the game would only have a real effect if used in part of a combined action. This is the level of abstraction I was working with and a limitation of the game.

Casualties This is one area where I think there could be tweaking to the charts and I open to further debate on this. But first let me explain what the perceived wisdom is on total casualties for the whole of the battle.

According to the US Army Center of military history "A total of 142 U.S. marines were killed in the fighting for Hue and another 1,100 or so were wounded. The South Vietnamese
Army lost 333 men killed and 1,773 wounded in the operation and the Vietnamese marines another 88 killed and 350 wounded. The 1st Cavalry Division reported losses of 68 killed and 453 wounded while the 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, listed its casualties as 6 dead and 56 wounded. Allied estimates of the number of enemy killed ranged from between 2,500 to 5,000"

This to me has to be reflected in the combat results and as I limited myself to a single counter for a company with 2 sides you need a simple system to keep track of fighting strength to allow for a quick games system.

In the combat between the 2 US Air Cav companies the best the NVA could achieve is a 3-1 and if they had thrown a 10 or 9 the whole force would have been wiped out as it had no where to retreat. As it happened the NVA threw a very poor die roll (as they did for most of the day) and so little was done. Is that a fair result? For me I think it was one of the possible outcomes and fair...

By publishing the charts it gives IMO too much info to the players but I do value alternative view to see if we can end up with a better chart for the next game...

It was a good day and thank you for all the comments so far. I hope I have caught most of the points made after the game and if not please post here so it can be corrected.

Regards

MJ

Well edited that chap!

Yahoo - my confusion - a lot of my stuff on wargaming is via the TFL yahoo group, and the brain grabbed 'Yahoo' rather than 'Email'. (Caveat - as per the other thread I have started

"Just to clarify - no criticism meant in the post. I've been trying to word it in a 'neutral' way for the past week.")

With the 10:1 odds situation. Iget the impression from reading that the NVA were not above the Stalingrad 'pick the rifle from the dead man' approach, and attacking in waves. As I suggested in the emails this could have been split into 3 x 3:1 to represent this.

Also was there a mechanism for engaged US forces to request fire support- 12 hour turns can not cover this in orders.

MJ1 wrote:

Ian wrote:Yes - there has been quite a long discussion on the Yahoo Group.

BTW it was via E-mail the old Yahoo site is dead...

I too would be alarmed to learn the YAHOO site is still working after I deleted it earlier this year; email I think.

I am glad everyone enjoyed a good game. However, this should remind everyone to try and make more details public so the whole community can take advantage of learning from the experience.

Sounds good fun and I hope we can have a more formal write-up here or on the main website.

Should have posted this e-mail I sent out to players giving some further rules clarification...

"Supplies can be used to either to pay for a Battalion to attack with or used to replenish a Battalion that has taken damage. A token will be used in either case. No tokens required to defend. Tokens can be lost if supply dumps over run. Max a battalion can carry is 2 tokens once issued to a Battalion they can not be put back into supply.

Supplies will filter to commanders during the course of the game. If not issued they must be stored at a dump. These locations to be given to umpires when new dumps are created.

2 turns a day. - Night and Day turn. You will be asked what your orders are for units during those phases. Movement will be reduced if moving at night.

Recon Helo's can be used to scout 12 KM squares in continuous path and will attempt to spot units in square (they might not see enemy) but will have a chance to reveal hidden units.

Radio messages will all be written on pads and passed to the intended recipient but before that can happen you must go to the central table and allow the enemy to roll a D10 to see if they intercept the message. If the NVA roll a 1 or US ARVN Roll a 1or2 on a D10 then they can read the message before it is passed to the recipient. Only the person rolling the dice for the enemy see's the message so that it is not immediately known to the other enemy commanders. It is upto the enemy to choose who rolls the D10. If you do not want this to happen then messages can be sent by rider / courier but these must come via the umpires to me and I will determine if and when they arrive at the recipients location. Radio messages can be sent at any time and the D10 rolling is down to the players to control and monitor. No verbal comms between players unless they are at same location on the map for a face to face meeting. I hope this makes sense?

The weather was appalling during Feb (why the NVA attacked that month) and only on certain days will air ops be allowed and Helo's / Bombers will be grounded on no fly days. Weather reports will be issued via the umpires. Some flying did take place but these were mainly beacon supply drops using instrument flying. I have found the exact weather conditions as noted for Hue in 1968 (amazing what you can get on WWW).

I will be using counters for the companies and they are two sided so in effect three step's. Full / Reduced / Combat in effective (no counter). You will get told how effective your force is based upon full strength or reduced or ineffective.

As in all wars supply is king.....No supply = no fight.

I hope to rattle through the turns and will try to cover as much of Feb as possible. I will use the bell to call back umpires so please be brief and specific when issuing orders. It is a high level game and I will try and brief umpires as to exactly what I need from you and I hope you will have enough decisions to make the day interesting for you all. "

Ian wrote:Well edited that chap!

Thank you it took some time trawling the e-mails

Ian wrote:Yahoo - my confusion - a lot of my stuff on wargaming is via the TFL yahoo group, and the brain grabbed 'Yahoo' rather than 'Email'. (Caveat - as per the other thread I have started

"Just to clarify - no criticism meant in the post. I've been trying to word it in a 'neutral' way for the past week.")

With the 10:1 odds situation. Iget the impression from reading that the NVA were not above the Stalingrad 'pick the rifle from the dead man' approach, and attacking in waves. As I suggested in the emails this could have been split into 3 x 3:1 to represent this.

No criticism taken and yes in hindsight greater than 3-1 could mean more attacks in a 12 hour period so I would do that in future as Martin said an elegant solution and one worth doing.

Ian wrote:Also was there a mechanism for engaged US forces to request fire support- 12 hour turns can not cover this in orders.

The Umpires would have made a call on it. Me more precisely as in clear weather there was some help available to hard pressed units. No specific rule more stuff in my head to help the narrative....

hammurabi70 wrote: Sounds good fun and I hope we can have a more formal write-up here or on the main website.

It has taken some effort to type up the feedback and I did this to open up the debate.

As for an AAR of the game if I want to run it again that would not help and again it takes time and effort. I think for the voyeurs in the WWW it is a big ask to get these AAR's and while nice they might not always be possible.

If another player wants to write one they are welcome to do so but for me at the moment I will hold off on doing one....

In the future it might be possible to do web cams to record events and post them here but technology will have to move on a tad for me to pick that idea up and run with it....

AAR

Confusion Reigns...

Accurate and to the point