An Awesome War Room

Eric was kind enough to send along a few pics of the room he refers to as "The War Room" - I must say, I was impressed by this room while I was there. Eric has a wonderful book collection and many historical items around the room. I really liked his use of war game boards hung on the walls! Of course, there are wargaming treasures everywhere as Eric has an extensive collection of miniatures and terrain. Anyway, enjoy the pics, and, Eric, thanks for them and the great gaming last weekend!

More Vietnam Pics

Eric sent over a few more of the pics from the big battle...so, they demand to be posted with their awesomeness. As you can see, American artillery and air power was a problem for the People's Army of Vietnam.

The cool thing about games like Piquet - those that distort the time line - is that you simply do not have 100% control and intelligence. The Americans had called for the air strike fairly early but did not receive it until the last turn of the game. Eric simply had no idea when it would arrive...nor should he have had an idea. I gotta tell ya, we NVA had a lot of fun simply not knowing when it would come! The American player had better luck with the off-board artillery as it was on "ready status" for calls from the front.

In our battle, the numbers of units/miniatures on each side was almost identical, but American firepower was the tipper.

Vietnam War

Hi everybody, I got back from Charlotte today. I went out there to visit my brother and his family and to play some war games too, of course. While there, we played a 15MM Vietnam game at Eric Burgess' house - he of the Charlotte Garrison fame!

Ben and I had wanted to try the Charlie Don't Surf rules from Too Fat Lardies, so he and I played a small battle the night before in order to try them out so that we would be better prepared for the game in the morning. The rules really did not work for us. We did not enjoy the blinds (hidden movement) and the deployment from the blinds and we did not enjoy the shock points...we did enjoy the concept of the action dice a unit receives. Personal tastes I suppose, anyway, this is not a review. That said, the rules do have some fantastic "flavor" rules and concepts for Vietnam battles. We're going to adapt a few of these into Piquet's Forgotten Heroes as house rules.

So, yes, we ended up playing Piquet, Forgotten Heroes, for the war game...and we had one hell of a good time. The rules really worked well. Eric, a serious Piquet player and contributor (he's the moderator of the Piquet Yahoo group) implements the "Rule of One-Third" where the loser of the impetus roll receives one-third (rounded-down) the number of impetus that the winner receives. So, if the winner gets 9 impetus, the loser will get 3. In addition, the winner can decide to use his impetus first or last. This really helps the game move along and mitigates some common complaints about the impetus.

Forces involved were a full U.S. foot infantry company with artillery and air support and organic mortars. On the opposing side, a full company of N.V.A. regular infantry with some mortars and recoilless rifles. The U.S. mission is to capture a town that is on the table.

The game was played on the incredibly awesome game boards that are owned by Eric. They were created by a master terrain maker that he is friends with. Wow. Eric's war games room is also awesome, I hope he'll send me a couple pictures of it too!

Take a look at the below images of the game and the terrain. Uh, yeah, I ordered Forgotten Heroes and am going to order some 15MM miniatures!