6mm Vietnam Game - Devblog

So the combat results are for the entire squad or still individuals within the squad?

Casualties can be tracked by rings cut from straws on the figures if you were using bases with one figure per trooper. Use different colour straws for KIA, heavy or light wounds. When I was looking at playing Conflict of Heroes using 6mm bases per squad for spent I was going to place a coloured stick (probably a painted match stick) on the base. Similar could be used for other info (ammo status?) and for in coms have a radio equipped figure with a magnet attached to the base while in coms. I like having stuff on the base which is not too offensive visually. Makes book keeping on the stand (platoon of stands) easier. I know my opponents were against lots of markers in H&S but I feel if many can be made as inoffensive as possible so much the better.

BTW I am looking at steel bases and for attached figures small washers with very small (1/16" dia x 1/32" thick) magnets to allow them to be attached to the bases.

Finished listening to "Silent Heroes: A Recon Marine's Vietnam War Experience" (would recommend, although the narrator isn't quite as good as some of the other audiobooks), and downloaded "Taking Fire: The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot" for listening to while I paint & build miniatures. Started painting the CH-47s and Loaches today.

Rules-wise over the past few days I've been looking at the helicopter rules, typing up a few things like damage tables, and today I'm hoping to attempt an air insertion of troops into a hot LZ to see how the heli rules hold up. Should be interesting...

The Helicopter rules currently look this this, although I'm still filling a few things in, and they're likely far from finished:
www.dropbox.com/s/tc83eg1ipfbs743/Heli%20Rules.pdf?dl=0

Finished of the Chinooks and Loaches, ready for the table:


Over the next few days I'll be testing out AA fire and helicopters dealing with AA and ground threats - so detection and engaging, and see what the balance is like.
I'll be trying out small arms, RPGs, larger caliber and Radar-Guided AA fire, and working out how I'm going to handle the 12.7mm / .50 cal, 23mm and 37mm AA weaponry of the VC / NVA

Gearing up for a full scale playtest today, and another on sunday, so have been frantically typing up missing rules and making markers.

One of the hardest thing about games that feature a lot of hidden movement is that you can't really playtest them on your own, so almost every aspect of the game needs to be ready and (hopefully) functional by the time the first playtests roll around. I found the same thing in Hind & Seek, where I essentially had to write the whole ruleset and then start playtesting, as opposed to most of the other games I design where I can solo test each new concept as it comes around, tweaking balance and rules clarity as I go.

I plan to do a US search and destroy of 2 Villages, allowing the VC to deploy hidden, but not being sure where the US will come from. This will make for some interesting cat and mouse, as the VC won't know which village the US will go for first, and the US won't know where the VC will be waiting. Civilians and booby traps will probably be implemented, as they both make things interesting and add to the "Vietnam" atmosphere.

So we'll see how it goes today, I'm sure I will learn a lot and have a lot of edits and things to clarity!

Here's the latest marker sheet:


Rules typed up in the last week or so:
Vehicles, Terrain Points re-typed and Cleaned up (hidden movement and detection rules), Army lists cleaned up and filled out, Trench and Bunker rules written, Night Fighting rules written, Typed up the Reinforcements, Extraction and Supply drop requests for the US, as well as a lot of cleaning up and refining of all the other rules here and there. It has been crunch time for these rules!

Ok so now we've had 2 large-scale playtests, I have a lot of notes to go through and edits/clarifications to make. This is my actual notes sheet from the last game (there was this sheet + another half page in total) I just make a note every time something doesn't make sense, or a rule is missing, or needs to be changed, or clarified:


Generally you take a lot of notes in the early playtests, then as the testing goes on, you take less and less notes, until eventually you're playing games without make any changes to the rules (by that point you know the game's pretty much done).

So I will be working through this list one by one, fleshing out or adding rules to accommodate or mitigate issues or situations we encountered. I also want to re-type or at least rearrange the infantry section so it flows better and gives the player more detail on exactly how combat functions. Because this is the heart of the game, it's well worth spending a lot of time on that section; making sure it reads well and creates a clear understanding of how the game flows. I will likely take some example photos too for Line of Sight examples and suchlike.

Another thing I need to do is whip up some quick reference sheets - it feels like the kind of game where we're have an infantry quick reference page, and a helicopters quick reference page, and then a section for making requests (like artillery, medevac, air support, etc.).

The basics of the game are working, but they still have some wrangling to keep them in line with the gameplay and fun I want out of the game, so still plenty of work ahead. We will have another playtest in just under 2 weeks, so everything should be clarified / filled out by then, and I'll be expecting to play a much more coherent and balanced game.

Another good playtest on sunday - I played the VC and my opponent took a US patrol on foot to check some villages. I placed a LMG ambush team near the village, and the ambush gameplay - suppressing and disordering the US platoon initially, but then recovering, working out where the fire was coming from, then calling in accurate mortar fire on the LMGs - worked perfectly.



There are still some teething issues with when VC units can activate - I played them as if they needed some kind of message to activate, which would have relied on civilian lookouts, or orders from Company HQ. This resulted in most of the VC forces waiting around for the game, while the US conducted searches of a village, medevaced their wounded and generally had the run of the place.

We decided the VC should be able to activate whenever they liked, whether this would just happen automatically (as we played last game), or if we should get civilians in there, it makes for a much more interesting game - as the VC can re-position and set up new ambushes, which puts time pressure and stress on the US player. While the game we played felt like an accurate "day in the life" of US forces, it didn't make for really engaging, exciting gameplay - and since this is a game, gameplay is the most important!

The playtester really enjoyed the more narrative elements of the game, especially the reasons why US units didn't activate - such as being too lazy, expending ammo, or having accidental casualties. It caused us to come up with interesting stories, like the US platoon searching a village and shooting a bunch of dogs, or just wasting ammo while doing so. Or after a very small engagement (with the LMG ambush), one of the US soldiers shot himself in the foot to try to get out of duty.

We also had a US Recon squad for the first time, which caused us to work out some rules for Recon units moving around and what happens if they come across enemy forces while moving.

So this is the main thing I will be looking at over the next few weeks - how to integrate civilians with the Terrain Points without giving away the position of VC forces, and how to treat VC hidden movement - they should be able to move about, but it should take time to set up new ambushes.

Been a while since I've had a chance to do much work on this, what with university and the current virus lockdown. Without playtesting to motivate me to get a new version of the rules ready every 2 weeks, I've been working on other projects instead (namely a piano concerto and some uni assignments).



Over the last week I've been thinking about ways to potentially streamline the detection and spotting system, perhaps having 3 levels of "Situational Awareness" that will determine what can be detected and attacked. Now that the rules are functioning and we've done some tests, I think the detection and some of the tracking systems such as the detailed casualties tracking are a bit much, so I'll look at scaling them back - perhaps down to a simple tally sheet for casualties.

Having some distance from the rule set allows me to think about my original intentions with the game, and if the current rules are serving that vision. I imagined a clear, clean game with plenty of friction, with the players attempting to struggle control back from chaos (coming from the rules themselves, and the opponent). I definitely think I have a way to go to achieve this goal, although many of the systems are working very nicely so far.

Hope everyone reading stays safe in this time and is able to get some painting done, or even some solo gaming or getting some roll20 / VASSAL / tabletop simulator games in.

Finally been able to do some typing on this project, and crystallize my thoughts on this project over the last few months. It's always scary when you don't write something for many months (will I actually finish this game? am I needlessly re-thinking the mechanics, over and over in a never-ending loop?) but once you're back into it, that fear goes away.

The main thing I wanted to change was the flow of the turns - players needed more control over being able to move troops longer distances and organize air support / tunnel movements, etc. without having to place markers and wait a number of turns. Reading "Sons of Kolchak" helped to give inspiration on how a Company Commander thinks and what he's able to do. Its not so much about the "day in the life" of an infantryman (which was the way I had been writing the game), but its more a selection of engagements, movements and reactions.

So over the past 2 days I've been typing up how the turns should work: I knew I wanted 2 distinct phases - a tactical phase (with troop movements on the ground) and an operational phase (with air support called in, more 'strategic' long distance troop movements, and so forth). These 2 phases could be interchanged at a cost to the commander (so they could use an operational asset during a tactical phase, but it would cost them perhaps an extra operational asset discarded).

I thought how to determine what kind of phase would take place - a simple D6 based system, or using playing cards drawn from a deck to determine turn order and which player could activate (like our Cornered Wolf game), but eventually settled on a simple D6 system at the start of each turn: - 1-4 the turn would be Tactical, 5-6 the turn would be Operational.

I also needed a way to change the time of day without doing it completely randomly - I though about different types of randomness and decided I needed a track on which a marker would advance randomly, it would spend a at least a few turns in daytime, then at least a few turns in night time. The changes can be seen below:



The Idea of Operational Assets came to me today - instead of players purchasing tunnels or waiting for their troops to call in air strikes, why not have a deck of cards, from which they can choose which asset to use in-game. This would play right into the hand of the Friction that I desire in the game play - you might really need an air strike, but all you have is mechanized infantry reinforcements, which will take time to get across the table. Or you might really need a tunnel system to get out, but its not there...

I'm also looking at making the Platoon / Unit Roster much smaller and more compact (only showing the ammunition and casualties of a unit) so it can be placed next to the unit instead of being a large thing which tracks a bunch of stuff off the side of the table. This will help keep players immersed and show directly the condition of a platoon.

I've been thinking a lot about how to get rid of a lot of the game markers - for example instead of using markers to show prone / running / etc. , using a reaction fire system, where depending on how far you move, the enemies fire has a different effect. For example if you crawl 2", the enemy will not be able to inflict casualties, but if you move at a full run, the enemy can inflict casualties, disorder, and suppression.

I don't know if the reaction fire system will work, as its quite alien to the current system, but I will attempt to get rid of unnecessary markers. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I thought about having markers showing stance, so that individual squads could have their own stance rather than tracking it on the platoon roster. There would only need to be 3 states - prone, cautious-upright, and oblivious / running. This could be represented with a triangular piece of cardboard (like an A-frame house - although this would become a mess in larger games) or by only representing 2 of the 3 states with markers, so that the most common state would require no marker. I will need to think about this further...

To do in the future: I need to design the Time Marker track, a circular track with 4 spaces, and I also need to design the new, more compact, Unit Roster.

Our wargames club reopens this sunday, so I might be able to get a playtest in, but 2 of my playtesters can't make it, so I'll have to check with another.