Party at Charlie's

Hey,

So this weekend was HAVOC. A weekend-long miniature wargaming convention in Shrewsbury, MA. Mark and I ran a large game of Charlie Company on Saturday afternoon.

Charlie Company is a Vietnam game where players take on the roles of Lieutenants and Sergeants in a platoon and fight their way through various missions. Most of the time, when we play we only have one platoon. So that’s 5 players at most (1 Lt. and 4 Sgts.). In practice we usually have 3-4. But it’s certainly possible to do a bigger game and that’s what we set up for HAVOC.

In our scenario we had two platoons march in along a broad front and establish two ambush zones. Then the company commander and some Cobra gunships would strafe a VC camp, driving the troops out into the ambush. As is usual for Charlie Company, the plan goes completely FUBAR almost immediately and the platoons had to assault a heavily entrenched NVA position.

The signup sheets said we had a full game, but we only had 7 players. A bit of a disappointment, but still more players than we’d ever had in one game of Charlie Company. Luckily, no actual Vietnam vets participated. I expect that they’d self-select out, but I can’t imagine how awkward it would be to game that.

However, the game was a stark reminder of how old the historical wargaming set is getting. By tradition, the youngest players are the Lieutenants. In this case, one player was clearly qualified. I forget exactly how old he was, but he was probably in college. The next youngest player, who took on the other Lieutenant, was older than Mark and I. Two of the players claimed that they had been wargaming since we were in diapers.

Those two players were the “Eds”. Imagine a crusty old mountain man wargamer. Now double him. Those were the Eds. If I’m ever a player in another Charlie Company game, I want the Eds in my platoon. They were hell on wheels. They were in the same platoon and their Lieutenant basically just sat back and let them win the whole game. We gave a quick explanation of how American squads would set up an L-shaped ambush pattern, but these guys were planning a few improvements before we even started discussing it. When the game started, they rushed their troops in and set up. When plans changed, they just assaulted the bunkers. They used smoke grenades for cover (something which the rules allow, but which I don’t think we’d thought to use in our games) and just piled into the bunkers and sorted them out.

Meanwhile, the other platoon was having classic newbie syndrome. They advanced very cautiously, thought for a long time about what they were going to do and got completely flummoxed when things changed on them. The only good thing was the one guy who covered the rear and was less surprised when the local VC forces ambushed them from behind. They had about six casualties while the platoon of the Eds had like two or three.

Overall it was a fun game. I screwed up on the die pools for the VC forces which was kinda brutal so I just fled out early after they started taking hits. Our total game time was about 2.5-3 hours so we had plenty of time to clean up afterwards.

Larger games seem like they’d be more fun and the system is simple enough that even when people were kind of dithering, things still moved along, but the scenarios really need some thinking through to make sure that there’s always a challenge for the various platoons. Although Mark did inspire an Urban game in Hue during the Tet offensive. I’d almost certainly play that with just a platoon and maybe a couple of extra players here to represent local ARVN forces or something. Two platoon in a city would be a real nightmare to track.

Afterwards, all the players seemed pretty happy with the game so I guess that’s about as good as you can hope for.

later
Tom

Back in Black

Hey,

So my NVA figures are now pretty much fully painted. I skipped out on the backpacks and went straight for the black. Guns, boots, they're pretty much set.

Next step is to get these guys based and flocked. I'll have to hurry up and get that done over the next couple of weeks, we want to grind out a playtest before the actual convention.

later
Tom

NVA Base

Hi,

So as part of gearing up for the Vietnam game my friend Mark and I are running at HAVOC, we need more NVA troops...a lot more. Mark picked up a couple of packs of Revell plastic NVA and it's my job to put together a company (40 figures) worth.

Mark warned me that painting the soft plastic Revell figures would be difficult. So far, I've just cleaned them off and put on a base coat of white gesso and it all seems to be going pretty well. Took me about an hour and a half or so to clean, trim and base coat all the figures. We'll see if I'm just getting lucky when I start in on color tomorrow.

Luckily, because all the players are on the U.S. side in the game, the enemy figures don't have to be painted to museum quality standards. In fact, a group of NVA might spend several rounds in combat unseen by the U.S. squads so some of them might not even appear on the board.

So my basic painting plan is:

1. Flesh
2. Olive drab...just about everything really
3. Kahki backpacks
4. Black belts, boots weapons.

Then I'll clip them from their sprues and mount them on to bases. I've got a plan for that too -- each 10 man platoon is based as follows:

1. A single leader
2. A single "grunt" figure
3. The LPD and RPG heavy weapons together on 1 base
4. 3 stands of 2 "grunt" figures each.

The way that casualties work in Charlie Company, this is a pretty optimal set up. It also means less overall figure handling when I move groups around.

I'm hoping to take care of painting steps 1 and 2 tomorrow. Updates as they happen.

later
Tom

Vietnam in HAVOC

Hey,

So one of the big historical miniature conventions here in Massachusetts is HAVOC. I went last year and had a good time. This year, I've decided to bid a game.

A friend of mine has been running Charlie Company, a nice set of Vietnam wargame rules from RAFM. This is the game that really kindled my interest in historical wargamming. Playing the game inspired me to do a fair amount of research on the period and I feel like I really learned a lot from it. I really appreciate the way the game puts you 'in the shoes" of an NCO or CO. The rules are pretty basic, but that frees you up to consider the tactical problems and work out solutions for them.

At any rate, it's been a lot of fun, but I always wanted to do a "big game" of Charlie Company where you had enough players on the American side to run more than a single platoon (so 6-10 people). The rules certainly make that manageable but finding enough people was always a challenge.

Enter HAVOC. I've taken the lead and bid a game of Charlie Company which will mostly make use of my friend Mark's terrain, figures, markers, etc. But he was game and I've got some work to do beyond managing the paperwork with the convention. We don't have nearly enough VC forces for the game we want to play so Mark picked up two packs of Revell plastic soldiers and I'll be painting them up. I've never done soft plastics before and I'm told they're a bit of a pain. Luckily, as the VC forces are all NPCs, their paint jobs don't have to be spectacular (indeed, the figures don't even appear until they're spotted, which can be a tricky proposition if your leaders are all inexperienced).

So over the next month or so, I've got to paint and base 40 VC figures. Actually, for this scenario, they'll be the tougher NVA troopers. I figure I'll do most of the work painting them on the sprues, then clip them off, touch them up and mount them on bases. I'll be mounting them in pairs to help reduce handling time and to make it easier to move the troops around. Hopefully there will be some pictures soon.

later
Tom