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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!
Fantastic photos. I am curious though, about one thing. When you say about the CDS rules that, "the rules simply do not work," or that "[t]he mechanics just were not all there," would you elaborate a bit more please? I originally posted this over at TMP, and Eric pointed out that I should ask you here.
ReplyDeleteBWW
I second that.
ReplyDeleteNice photos, but Blog are word and this really isn't worth the visit.
Well, BrianW, maybe that was a bit rash on my part...what we did not like was the blinds and the deployment from them and the awe points - our personal taste I suppose.
ReplyDeleteWe did think that the action dice concept was inspired however.
I should edit my post to be more complete and more fair - which really is more to my style.
Tony,
ReplyDeleteSorry to take so long in coming back. The whole blind system does take some getting used to, I will admit. As to the Awe points, I think this is a natural outgrowth of the system that TFL uses. If you look at the IABSM rules, there really isn't a mechanism for making a squad pack up and leave. You have "wounds," which have a lot of the same effect as the "shock points" in CDS. However, the unit just becomes more and more combat ineffective. I've had units in IABSM take 8 or 9 wound/shock points, be ineffective for firing, but also unable to get out of the way of incoming fire. So, the whole "shock and awe" thing is an evolution from earlier TFL games using the same concept.
I'm still frantically painting up troops to start playing, but it will be interesting for me to see how the shock and awe system works on the table.
BWW