6mm Vietnam Game - Devblog

Thanks Madman, glad you're enjoying following this journey

Good progress over the last 2 weeks, I've re-formatted all the army lists, and am gathering information to do a US marines list. Reading "Bury Him", a book written by a marine company commander in Vietnam, which is giving some good insights. The book started slowly, being in a rear unit and sorting out drug and discipline issues, but after 2/3rds of the book we're finally getting into some intense company firefights, involving close support from tanks.

Here's a look at some of the new army lists, should be much clearer now, and I added in options for different unit qualities where necessary:






And just for reference, this is what the army lists used to look like:


Not shown are the 2 other NVA and VC lists (the early and late war ones), the US Mechanized company, and the 2 other ARVN lists for early and late war.

The new troop qualities allow for interesting fights to take place, such as ARVN being better quality than early VC, representing the period around 1961 - 1962 where the ARVN were doing very well against the early VC combatants (before they received AK-47s and NVA reinforcement).

So next up I pretty much just need to do playtesting and get the rules working without any issues, and test a few different mission types and army types. Looking forward to trying ANZACs out!

I will also put together a US Marine list, including things like Amtraks, Tanks and Recoilless Rifles on jeeps so they can be used for things like Hue battles.

Now that we've passed the busy holiday period, I have a lot more time on my hands to work on this game!
I've been doing some small-scale testing of the Helicopter rules - making sure detection and attacking from and against helicopters is working well.


I put my nice game mat on the small table in my room, so while it may be my own personal hell of small-scale playtesting, it can at least look nice(er) in photos.

There were some clarifications needed - some old rules that didn't fit with the new cover / damage system, and so I'm straightening those out.

I also typed up the "Troop Quality" section of the rules defining what the qualities mean, what real-world troops they describe, and the in-game effect of each of the 4 qualities.

I finished reading "Marines in Hue City: A Portrait of Urban Combat Tet 1968", which I thoroughly enjoyed, and would recommend to anyone interested in the subject - quite a good overview of the city fighting from both the US marine and some of the ARVN side too. Lots of photos too, which help to back up the text.


Next up I'm reading "The Gunpowder Prince: How Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir Baig Saved Khe Sanh", which is an almost complete change of pace from any of the Vietnam books I've read. So far the Cambridge-educated Pakistani immigrant with a British accent, known as "Harry" seems completely out of place in Khe Sahn among the US Marines, and yet, with his knowledge of French he is able to read the same books that NVA General Giáp was able to, and use an experimental electronic intelligence network and his extensive knowledge of NVA operating procedures to interdict NVA forces and staging areas with artillery. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out, although I'm not sure how useful it will be to the game.


Hope you all had a good festive season, I'm looking forward to some larger scale playtests once the helicopter rules are running nicely.

Well I'm back from our 3 week holiday, and managed to finish reading Jungle Dragoon while I was away:


I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes first-hand accounts of Vietnam, its straight-to-the-point, and full of tactics and action.

A few things were eye-opening to me about Armored Cavalry units:

• Crews can and did dismount to conduct patrols, ambushes and even attacks on foot. Often a single crew member was left behind to man the .50 cal.
• The M113 Tracks were fairly maneuverable and light, while the M48s were heavy and hard to maneuver (I kinda already knew this, but I think I will implement Tracks having fewer limitations on movement, while tanks retain a more "Clunky" movement system.)
• Tracks could be set up around a disabled tank, and then the crew dismounted (except the .50 cal gunner) in order to create a larger defensive position - tank in the middle, then track around it, then the crew / infantry squads on the outside.
• Tracks and Tanks regularly fired everything they had while moving, if in a dire situation and needed to try to break out - this will be implemented, allowing vehicles to suppress targets while on the move.
• Armored Cavalry would often plan bait attacks where a single platoon (perhaps 3 or 4 tracks and a tank) was sent out, after much noisy helicopter "recon" of an area (alerting the NVA/VC of an upcoming attack). The single platoon would be the bait, while heliborne troops and the rest of the unit were waiting nearby. As soon as the small unit started taking fire, the rest of the company would be mobilized to attack. The small unit would take high casualties, but usually the much larger NVA/VC force would take even more casualties once the rest of the company and the heliborne troops arrived. This would be implemented by allowing Cavalry to have heliborne troops in reserve that could be called up at any time, without any friction, as every would be waiting for that radio call of contact, and then quickly scramble to the rescue.
• M42 Dusters and Flame tracks occasionally taken
• Tracks were used to "clear" areas around Night Defensive Positions - running down the surrounding bush (when possible) to give better fields of fire if attacked.

I don't know how true these are of Mechanized units as well, but I'll definitely implement quite a few of these ideas, while still trying to keep things as simple as possible. The idea that Armored Cavalry were a lot more flexible than just "some tracks and tanks", especially the fact that they dismounted their crews, I think will add a lot more depth to how they are played on the tabletop.

Today I continued my work on the helicopter damage tables, and I will conduct some small scale tests on helicopter damage, as well as start looking at how Vehicles function in the game over the coming weeks.

Had a real life playtest today, first in a few months. Went very well:


Game start - 2 US platoons enter the area, with a Cobra overhead for cover


A heavily armed NVA platoon ambushes both platoons, attacking the squads out of cover


Both US squads take casualties and are suppressed, as RPGs and LMG fire tears out of the treeline. The Cobra overhead needs someone to pop smoke to work out where the enemy are - its too close and too many friendlies nearby!


Green Smoke! The US call in reinforcements, and 3 M113s arrive to help out
Unengaged US squads flank the NVA through the jungle, catching them unaware and suppressing the right-flank unit. Meanwhile the US units in the forest open up on the NVA, suppressing the other squad. A second NVA ambush is sprung from the top-left of this image, although only armed with AKs...


The US fan out, bringing a mortar squad up and zeroing in on the NVA position - combined mortar and small arms fire causes the NVA to retreat. Meanwhile the US on the top left move to engage the 2nd ambush position.


The NVA Platoon HQ melts into the forest, dragging the casualties with them... (an "Asset" used by the NVA commander)
A third NVA ambush position opens up on the right flank US platoon, with snipers taking out that units RTO. the radio is soon back in operation, however.
The M113s move to flank the top-left NVA ambush site, causing massive casualties with their .50 cals and wiping out an NVA squad


The cobra makes rocket and minigun runs on the 3rd NVA ambush position, forcing a squad to retreat among heavy casualties.
The top-left NVA unit is crushed, and the HQ retreats, attempting to drag the casualties with them...


In the confusion of tracking down the fleeing NVA, the cobra mistakenly fires on a friendly HQ unit, badly damaging them (essentially wiping them out) - call them off! call them off!
On the top left the NVA HQ is captured, as they attempt to flee from the M113 .50 cals, right into the US infantry behind them. A heavily armed NVA squad is able to get back into the fight, having retreated earlier, but its too late - the US have secured a minor victory, the Capture of the NVA HQ and the various casualties not recovered by the enemy putting them ahead of the NVA, who gained points for US casualties and the wiped out HQ unit.

Overall a good game, things were working fairly well. we decided it needs to be easier to destroy units, especially at very close ranges, and I took an entire A4 page of notes for things that need to be clarified and/or fixed.

So good progress, will have another playtest in a few weeks - which is also good incentive to keep working on the rules and trying to wrestle this game into something fun on the table.

Finished off  Your Sons — My Soldiers — Our War, which was a pretty good read. Now on to Comanche 6:

Another book from the company commander's perspective, so that's always good - hopefully get some more good insight out of this.

I've now finished off my university work for the year, so actually have time to get back into this project!

First order of business is to get the game running with as simple as possible rules - get a good core running, and clear up my line of sight, cover, movement, attacking rules. I'll also tidy up the rulebook and get rid of some of the extra actions that aren't really needed for games, such as conducting cloverleaf searches. They tend to add too many options for a player, but I may add them back in once the basics are solid. Ideally the movement, attacks and assets (such as artillery / air support) alone should create an interesting and challenging game, and the extra details should just add to the 'flavor'.

Once the game is running smoothly with basic rules, I'll start thinking about how I'm going to mix things up, throw a bit more chaos in. I'll likely experiment with random events (52 different events that relate to a pack of playing cards?), friction via activation (perhaps uncertain activation), and maybe even a real-time movement phase (although this probably won't work with the hidden movement mechanics where one player needs to turn away from the table).

Over the past week I've made great progress - had a bit of a breakthrough with regards to both activation and casualties.

I recently watched a GDC talk about game design, and one of the main takeaways for me was that As you approach the end of the game, drama should increase. This is akin to film and stories, that there is usually a climax at the end of the film, and that drama there should be at an absolute peak. This is the moment where the last squad is heavy bloodied, one guy is carrying his wounded buddy and yelling GET TO THE CHOPPER! as hundreds of VC close on their position...
With this idea in mind, I designed my activation and casualty systems to attempt to capture this kind of drama, as well as make things more fluid on the tabletop (more movement and outflanking, and closing with the enemy to really finish them off).

I've done some testing and typed up a 3-page "core" document, just covering infantry (and without any special terrain point / fog of war rules).

Typing up this core is something that I would always start a game with, (and indeed, did start this game that way, back in 2019) - but because so much has changed since the initial version of this game, I felt it was important to do it again. Not too much has changed, but this small re-type allowed me to focus on the important parts without having to make lots of decisions about legacy rules and options. Opening the original game document was a bit overwhelming at times, there's so much in there. So its important to me to have a very clear core foundation of rules that I can then build on and re-introduce the rest of the rules on top of.

Without a good foundation, this game isn't going to work, and so that's what I've been focusing on over the past 2 or 3 weeks.

You can check out my 3 page "core" document here if you're interested:
www.mediafire.com/file/68bjb65xpwq5bak/November_2021_Re-Write_3.pdf/file

Activation
I think I've solved my activation issue. A Platoon will still roll a skill check in order to activate, and double 1's will still be a mishap for poor and average quality units. If this activation roll is successful, the Platoon will generate a number of action points (AP):


This was a super simple system that allowed me (and the players) to not have to do anything beyond placing a D6 with the 6 facing up next to the platoon. By keeping this simple and not having to look up anything, or roll any dice to generate a number of AP, I allow the players to focus on the decisions they want to make, rather than how many decisions they're allowed.
I also tried out a system where the number you roll over your activation check number is how many actions you get, but this ended up giving only 1, 2 or 3 actions on average, which just wasn't enough, and I didn't want to add any more maths to correct those numbers.

So now we have each platoon getting 6 actions, and these actions can be used on any squad, in any order. Most units can do things in any order (move, detect, move again, detect, attack, etc.), but once a unit attacks, it can no longer do anything else. This would represent units getting target fixation and the time it takes to actually get a unit to CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE!

To differentiate the more rigid command structure of NVA/VC units, I decided to keep them in the old style of "detection first". They still have some freedom, but as soon as they undertake any non-detection actions, they can no longer attempt detection. I also applied this to Poor Quality units, as this will make all these unit types just that little bit less flexible and static.

This system is working nicely, as the less squads you have in your platoon, the more actions those squads can undertake, so it kinda balances out casualties, and represents commanders only having a certain amount of attention, so they can't command 100 men as well as they can command 10.

Casualties
I came up with a counter-intuitive system for casualties, after trying out a bunch of ideas.
My main idea was

• The more damage a unit takes, the less likely it should be to get removed from the game

This seems completely backwards to how most games do it, but hear me out. As a unit takes more casualties, the ones left alive will be taking more and more cover, trying to survive, until eventually you have 1 or 2 guys left, hiding under a dead body or some bush.
This also gives two good results: one is that drama increases as you reach the end of the game, as units with more casualties actually become harder to destroy.
The other is that once a unit has taken casualties, you can't just keep shooting at them and expect them to die, you have to close with them and destroy them from close range, which encourages movement and outflanking rather than static shooting from a distance.

I tested out this core system today, and it seems to be working great. Here's the run down of the quick playtest I did:

2 US platoons (bottom) vs 2 VC Platoons. US advance up to the treelines, while VC are waiting, hidden.
left-hand US platoon is able to spot only 1 squad of the left hand VC platoon, and open fire, but with no effect.
VC platoon on the right attempt to detect US platoon after it has moved up to the opposite treeline, but are unable to.


US platoon on the right send a single squad to crawl across the open ground, they inch forwards, attempting detection as they go, but don't find anything (even though they're within spitting distance of a VC squad... the VC must have been well camouflaged and had excellent fire discipline...)
Thinking everything is fine, the right hand US platoon sends 1 squad walking in the open towards the VC platoon on the opposite side of the clearing. In a regular game, the VC would often be hidden under terrain points, so the US wouldn't actually know they were there. I role played this, because its not a move that a rational US force would take if they knew VC were watching the open ground.
No surprises, the VC open up on the squad walking in the open, taking advantage of opportunity fire.
On the left, all 3 lightly armed US squads open fire on the 1 detected VC squad, and are able to knock out the RPG team. The squad is now suppressed.


The left hand VC platoon returns fire with AKs and RPGs, and annihilates one of the US squads. Meanwhile the US HQ unit attempts to outflank the rest of the VC platoon, moving multiple times and then hiding in the bushes nearby, in case the VC attempt a counter attack.


I went for a few turns after this, and it was enough to be a good proof of concept. It felt fluid, exciting, there were lots of options for the commanders, and it was all based on dead simple mechanics. I especially like being able to get a squad to crawl up slowly, while the rest of the platoon waits, in order to reconnoiter an area.

I will next look at trying out Recon by Fire / Probing fire, and maybe some suppression fire mechanics to make sure everything is looking good before I start adding in support and weapons like mortars and suchlike.

I also have a playtest / ideas session organized for tomorrow with my old friend, who has helped me with many rule sets in the past and is very knowledgeable on military history and game design, so I'm hoping to see what he thinks about the activation and casualty systems.

Had a good playtest yesterday, the core seems to be functioning well, as well as mortar and hidden movement mechanics. We did some small tweaks to make units easier to remove from the game via casualties, but I'm re-thinking this today. While in many wargames you're used to seeing enemy units removed as an indicator of your progress, in this game its more about inflicting casualty markers (and how the enemy deals with those markers) rather than wiping units out. You can still wipe out units with enough firepower, but the norm should be units taking casualties and trying to evacuate them, and (for the NVA) prevent the enemy getting a body count, or (for the US) evacuating wounded / recovering bodies.

Here's a photo - probably not much to look at as its just infantry carnage...


I also noticed yesterday there was a lot of busy work with the casualty / retreat system, placing markers, making checks, removing markers - so I'm doing a bit of 'start from scratch' brainstorming to see if I can simplify these mechanics. The game should be about tactical decisions rather than spending time resolving casualty and retreat checks - that kind of resolution should be almost automatic.

So I've opened a blank word file, and am typing up ideas and simple sentences about want from the game, as well as tying out simple mechanics.
it looks a bit like this:


I have two main factors I'm trying to balance:

Intensity of incoming fire
Quality of the troops under fire

I feel like retreat / suppression and casualties should be much more likely for poor quality troops, and could happen at any time, even if poor quality troops are in a heavily fortified bunker.
As the rules currently stand, cover completely prevents you from retreating, and makes it harder to cause casualties and suppression. While this is fine for average and good quality troops, I feel like poor quality should have a chance of retreating regardless of what kind of cover they're in.

And so I'm trying to think outside the box and come up with a simple and effective casualty/retreat/suppression mechanic that allows for troop quality and intensity of incoming fire. It might seem like a lot to put together, but if I can find an elegant way to handle this, the game will suddenly flow much better.

Next playtest we plan to introduce helicopters and the support assets such as artillery and air strikes, so having these casualty mechanics sorted by then will hopefully help a lot as we add more complexity and facets to the game.

Good progress over the holiday period, I've finished looking over and re-typing the helicopter and vehicle sections, and done some small scale playtests of helicopter and vehicle damage / detection / line of sight, so that all seems to be working nicely.
Photos of playtesting:
Cobra attack runs and attacks against Cobras:

I've also tried out hunter killer teams (1x Loach and 1x Cobra) and they operate together nicely.
I put some time into making sure the Loaches worked correctly, as they operate differently to the two modes of flight assumed in this game. I assume helicopters are either "High and Fast" or "Low and Slow" for simplicity, meaning you don't need to track altitude or speed. Essentially helicopters moving more than 4" are assumed to be high and fast, and don't need any marker (and also receive reductions to damage), while helicopters moving less than 4" are considered to be "Hovering", and place a "Hovering" marker.

The only problem with this is that Loaches tended to fly low and fast, and their pilots learned to very quickly asses situations. Actual hovering on the spot was usually fatal for a Loach in close proximity to the enemy. And so I allowed them to move further while hovering, and take the reductions to damage as if they were "high and Fast".

More small scale playtesting - looking at dropping troops and ground fire vs. hueys. Line of sight to Hovering helicopters is blocked by terrain features, and so they can hover down low and use stretches of forest to give themselves cover from known threats.


While looking at helicopter line of sight, I used this time to make some example images for line of sight and cover in general, especially jungle terrain:

This image is accompanied by example text describing the situation of each unit both to and from the US squad, and showing players the best positions to fire out of forest in order to get cover and not give the target any.

My current work is the vehicle damage system, which was incredibly simple (and brutal), whereby units simply rolled a number of D6s against a vehicle damage table, so 1 dice roll could destroy / immobilize / disorder the vehicle.
This seemed to work ok (although led to a lot of destroyed vehicles), but incorporating cover into the system proved problematic. Usually in games in the past when I had a damage table and needed to incorporate cover I would simply just implement a -1 or -2 modifier to the roll on the damage table, however I decided early on that I didn't want to use modifiers to dice rolls, and instead rely on the Skill Check and Task Difficulty system, where the target 2D6 roll increases or decreases based on modifiers (you can see this system in the post above (Task Difficulty Table).

At this road-block I thought about a few options for quick and simple fixes, but eventually decided I should have the vehicle damage system be identical to the Helicopter damage system, which has large parallels to the infantry damage system. Having just the one system for all three is the most logical choice, and it works well for infantry and helicopters.

Upon implementing this kind of system I had a few issues however - firstly it makes it much more busy work (need to roll to hit, then make a damage check based on how many hits were inflicted, cover, troop quality, etc.), then roll on a damage table, and secondly because it made vehicles really hard to destroy. Vehicles are already immune to small arms fire, and so require an RPG or large caliber HMG or suchlike to damage them, so having all these extra stages to get through made it really difficult to actually bring one down.

So I'll need to re-think how I'm going to handle vehicle damage, I can tweak the numbers (make it easy to hit, and make the damage check more likely to inflict damage), or I could omit some of the stages, maybe just assume hits and then go to a Damage Check (which would allow us to immediately take cover and attacking units troop quality into account). I've been doing a few small scale vehicle tests and will continue until I find something that flows nicely and Isn't too much work.

One one hand I'd like vehicles to not be the focus of the game, and be relatively flimsy, but on the other hand mechanized players would probably like them to be a bit more robust, and certainly tanks should be a nice stonewall to hide behind in things like city fights. I will need to find a balance here that feels right.

Was reading about an early ARVN battle which game me some good ideas:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ap_Bac
>Lots of arguing between ARVN commanders on the ground and the supporting US helicopters
>ARVN refuse to take orders from US
>US refuse to listen to ARVN, and end up landing in a VC stronghold that the ARVN specifically told them not to land near
>3 H-21 flying banana Helis down, 1 huey destroyed
>Shit load of ARVN infantry deployed, but now totally pinned down and unable to move
>Send in the ARVN M113s!
>VC Keep sniping the exposed M113 crewmen - 14 in total killed
>ARVN M113 commanders also act as the machine gunner
>all the ARVN M113 commanders killed, replaced by less experienced soldiers
>M113 attack falters as they try to rescue the stranded ARVN and helicopter crews
>Try to break the VC line by sending in a flame M113
>Flame supposed to have 200m range, but only gets 30m
>ARVN mixed the wrong fuel for the flamethrower...
>M113s withdraw with shattered morale
>We have an entire battalion of airborne ARVN, lets drop them behind the VC so they can't escape
>ARVN commanders argue - "no lets drop the guys on the other side, so the VC have a clear place to escape"
>Paratroopers draw fire on approach and plane alters course, so they end up dropping right in front of the VC.
>VC pick off one paratrooper after another as they get stuck in the trees
>Entire battle is bungled, VC escape at night, loading into sampans at the riverside

Inspired me to allow VC and NVA snipers to pick off M113 crewmen...