Lard Island News

With Fire and Sword is the latest product to be added to the TooFatLardies catalogue.  Penned by Chris Stoesen from Atlanta in Georgia it is a natural follow on from Chris’ first AWI supplement, This Land Divided, that concentrated on actions in Georgia in 1779.  In this latest publication Chris looks at events in neighbouring South Carolina in the following year, presenting twenty-four scenarios for Sharp Practice along with a range of rule suggestions which may be used for this conflict. 

As part of the celebrations we flew Chris in to Lard Island for the launch and got the opportunity to chat with him at the Lard Island News offices.  

Chris, welcome to Lard Island.  Thanks for joining us here to discuss your latest supplement for the Lardies, With Fire and Sword.  Can you tell us a bit about your interest in the American War of Independence, or the American Revolution as I am sure you’d call it on your side of the pond?

Sure.  It has always been a fascination for me.  It was one of my favorite things to study as a small child.  At that point, I think I just liked the three cornered pointy hats.   As a college student, I lived just a few miles from the King’s Mountain battle site.  That and the fascination of how the founding fathers managed to pull it off and then manage to piece together a government that has lasted more or less intact since then.  Their lives are a marvellous mixture of virtue and vice that always make for a great story.  Living in the South, there are a large number of battlefields to visit that are only a few hours away.   It is just an easy period to get excited about.  It was the AWI that had me first find the TooFatLardies.  I was looking for a good rule set to game the period with some 6mm Adler figures.  I could not find any that I liked when I found Le Feu Sacre and wondered if I could morph those into something usable.  After that I found I Ain’t Been Shot Mum and I ended up writing the Greece supplement.  My Gamers Attention Deficit took over and it was a few years before I came back to the Revolution.

Tell us a bit about With Fire and Sword, where did the name come from?

Major Patrick Ferguson is the reputed source.  He delivered an ultimatum to the Over Mountain Men to stay out of the conflict or he would destroy them and their community “With Fire and Sword.”  It was this that was pretty much the beginning of the end for the Major.  Ferguson was an interesting character unto himself.  He developed a breach-loading rifle that had significant potential but was never adopted by the military.   I believe he was a commissioned Major from one of the Highland regiments.  As such he was entitled to a higher rank within the provincial and Militia establishments but did not take the rank.  He was one of the best leaders of British Militia in the war yet was beaten at Kings Mountain by a large number of men from what would become Tennessee and the colonies of North & South Carolina and a small Georgia contingent (Elijah Clarke’s men). 

How would you describe With Fire and Sword to someone wanting to know a bit about it?  What’s in there?

It’s about the Revolution as experienced in the South.  I think it represents the bulk of the fighting that took place in the South during the revolution.  The militias on both sides carried the fight on a day to day basis.  Some of this was rather ruthless and barbaric with actions against civilians occurring on both sides.  The militia battles were passionate and sharp but generally did not involve a huge number of men, so they are ideal for Sharp Practice.  Shots were exchanges and usually after a limited exchange one side fled.  The winners and losers would be engaged again within days.  The large battles such as Camden and Guilford Courthouse are exceptions rather than the norm for the battles in the South. 

What scale figures do you use for your games of Sharp Practice?

I use 15mm figures.  I have a mix of Old Glory, Lancashire, QRF and now Peter Pig.  I am more comfortable in this scale as I already have terrain for it and the cost is significantly less.  Plus my painting skills are not up to larger scales.  They are more suited for even smaller scales but that is another story.

Do you have any favourite ranges for the scenarios in With Fire and Sword ?

I really like the Old Glory ragged Minutemen pack.  It has a large variety of figure poses and they look to my eye like militia.  The Peter Pig range is quickly growing on me and probably will be my favourite when I get to see their mounted militia packs. 

Is all of your gaming with 15mm then?  I know a lot of people use mainly 28mm for Sharp Practice, do you change the rules at all for the smaller scale figures?

Not all of my gaming is in 15mm.  I have 6mm armies for LFS (Russians & Ottomans), Taxes Tea and Tories and IABSM (French, Russian, British Western Desert, Italians – Desert) as well.   I had some ancients in 28mm but have since sold them.  I have some Ancients in 10mm (Late Saxons and Normans) but they have never seen a table yet.  I also have a 6mm Seleucid and Maccabean army that needs a coat of paint somewhere.

For Sharp Practice, I don’t change a thing with the rules.  The ground scale is very well suited for 15mm.    I can see doing it in 10mm or 6mm and adjusting the measurements to centimetres if I am allowed to mention the whole metric thing on Lard Island.  

You can, but you’ll have to put some money in the swear box.  What’s the gaming scene like in the Atlanta area?  Is there much Lard on offer?

There are a number of us in the Atlanta area.  Mark and Terry are active on the list.  Mark gets to game far more often than I do and runs several Sharp Practice and IABSM games each year.  Terry has been playing some Charlie Don’t Surf and play-testing Chain of Command.  There are several others in the area that join in to get a helping of Lard when it is offered as well.  That is my New Year Resolution every year is to get more games in.

Ah yes, the famous Mark Luther and his stunning terrain.  It’s quite amazing what Mark can do, his games looks like film sets, wargaming meets Hollywood almost.  You’re very lucky to have him to game with.  Tell me Chris, how long have you been gaming with TooFatLardies rules?

Hmm….. I am actually not sure.  I think back in 2004. 

What’s the attraction of the rules for you?

I see the TooFatLardies rule sets as tool boxes.  They give you the tools needed to craft just about anything from them.  From TW&T, I have played Lebanon ’82 out of it.  From Sharp Practice I have played the AWI, ACW and even Dark Ages.  Mark games the French and Indian war and the Seminole Wars.  Le Feu Sacré led Vincent Tsao in New York to develop Taxes, Tea and Tories.  You can bend the rules without breaking them to fit other periods.  The community offered by the Yahoo group allows you to share ideas and move on one’s enthusiasms. 

I like the fact that the rules are not ridged; they make you think.  They add the right amount of battlefield chaos to make things unpredictable but reward good tactics and punish poor tactics. (Like charging a group of Ferguson Rifle Armed infantry with a group of Lauzon’s Legion cavalry as I did recently… ugh)

Do you have any favourites?

IABSM is always a great fun but I have enjoyed the smaller scale rule sets the most.  TW&T and Sharp Practice are my all time favourite rules.  I wouldn’t like to choose between the two of them.

You’ve written several supplements for the Lardies now, do you have any more in the pipeline? 

Well…. Kind of.  I have another IABSM supplement that is partially finished in a drawer.  It covers the Italians in the East Front.  I have some ideas for Dark Ages modifications to Sharp Practice with Early Saxons and Romano-British, actually I’ve got a couple of scenarios worked out for that.  I also have some scenarios written for early war ACW in Northern Virginia.  I am working on getting materials together to cover the Atlanta campaign in 1864.  I have a dream project of doing a Lardies Game Day in Atlanta doing a series of games with They Couldn’t Hit An Elephant covering the Atlanta campaign.  It would be great if we could do that at one of the battle sites, maybe Kennesaw Mountain or possibly the Atlanta History Centre.  Oh and I am looking at an AWI supplement coving Francis Marion’s actions across the swamps of South Carolina.   For Sharp Practice I am working on some scenarios to get my Cossacks out on a game table.  For TW&T I have some ideas for the Yom Kippur War and well… let’s just see where I drift off to next.

Gosh, sounds like you’re very busy.   Well, whichever path you go down we’ll be looking forward to seeing what you come up with. 

Thanks very much for joining us here on Lard Island, and thanks for the superb With Fire and Sword, you have certainly got us painting our AWI figures like mad to get some games going.

Playing Sharp Practice always drives me on in my never ending search of pretty terrain, so launching into work on the ACW supplement has seen me not just seeking to enlarge my figure collection, but also do some work on some terrain pieces for a few homesteads to populate the table.

Naturally I’ve been knocking out wheat and corn fields and rail fencing by the bucket load, but one idea that I saw at Salute really caught my imagination for a smaller, more homely piece; a kitchen garden.  Now I’ll admit that 28mm cabbages is not something that I had even considered until I saw the superb terrain produced by the chaps from South East Essex Military Society for their Great War game using our ‘Through the Mud and the Blood’ rules.  Their Belgian force was defending a Flanders village which was beautifully modelled and included several small gardens, one of which had rows of cabbages.  With this serving as inspiration I knocked up a small sample that graced our table yesterday evening, and as it was so easy to produce I thought I’d run through it here. 

Some of you may be familiar with the self-adhesive paper flowers that can be had from hobby stores to be stuck on random things, usually when some poor sod is foolishly persuaded to wed.  The photo to the right shows a sheet of these that I got from our local branch of Hobby Craft for five pounds.  You will note that some of these have been painted cabbage green, however this is entirely unnecessary as will be revealed. 

I measured a suitable sized piece of MDF for the base to accompany the Perrys’ North American Farmhouse.  This was essentially dictated by the size of the fencing that I used, which in this case came straight out of the box.  I have chosen to leave this open on one side as this will allow me to incorporate it into a larger set up.  Anyway, with the fence and a couple of barrels and a chair stuck in place I removed the sticky backing from the flowers (easy, they just peel off) and with a dot of superglue I stuck them in place.   Once that was dry I painted the flowers with a 50% PVA glue and 50% water mix.  This sets and leave the flowers/cabbages nice and solid.  Once that dries I simply undercoated everything, including the flowers, black with an aerosol (completely negating my painting the flowers green earlier!) and then painted up from that.

For the cabbages I used Vallejo Olive Green, then added some yellow and dry brushed that on, before finishing, once dry, with the same with some added white.  The base was then covered in Basetex and flock with the usual dry brushing of colours from there.  Once it was all done a liberal coating of spray on matt varnish sealed it all in place. 

I now have over forty flowers/cabbages left over to produce a larger garden area where I may well start off with some lines of “no nails” or similar builders filler to create more of a ridged effect and then leave room between the rows of cabbages to allow the figures to cross the field without tread in the greens.   To my mind it is stuff like this that elevates our wargames table from the anodyne to the inspirational, and it is even better when the total cost is less than two pints of beer.   

Sergeant Abe Hubermeir cast an experienced eye over the terrain around the stone bridge that crossed Forge Run.  On either side of the river there was about thirty yards of open ground where the river would expand when in full spate after the winter thaw.  To the edges of that were boulders that though immovable to man had been casually tossed to their resting place by the forces of nature.  It was in these, on the eastern side of the river, that Abe deployed his dozen men, pacing out the range to the bridge so as to ensure that any Rebels who attempted to cross it would find themselves met by the full power of the Sharps Military Carbine.

Captain Jebediah Butplug spat a stream of tobacco juice towards the standing crops that would be ready for harvest in the next few days.  Not for nothing was the Shenandoah called the “breadbasket of the Confederacy”.  With the Yankees so close at hand there were real concerns that in this part of western Virginia some of the harvest could be lost, and Jebediah’s company had been despatched to guard the crossing of Forge Run in order to ensure no blue-bellies could interfere before the wheat was safely gathered in.

Lieutenant Ethau Pickens had stationed his men in the rocks to the south-west of the bridge, scanning the far bank for any sign of the enemy.  He signalled to Sergeant Beckwith to move across with ten men and the big man from Alabama immediately moved forward into the low-lying open ground that ran down to the large stone bridge.  He had gone some dozen yards when the rocks to the north-east of the bridge crashed into life, a dozen breech loading carbines objecting to the Sergeant’s advances, one man falling dead before the rest made it into the lee of the bridge.

“Fire!”  Captain Butplug had rushed his men out from the small wood and into the cover of the rocks from where they fired their muskets at the Union cavalry opposite.  He could see Sergeant Beckwith down by the bridge, unable to go forward or to retire.  The Captain’s instinct was to press on, his men were veteran troops used to whipping their foe wherever they met them, but these damned breechloader covering open ground could murder his force.  For now he would attempt to shoot them out. 

“Sergeant, I can barely see those northerners now!”  The Corporal was right, over by the rocks the rapid fire from the Union cavalry was producing a cloud of thick dark, smoke that was now largely obstructing their positions.  Sergeant Beckwith looked up to see Lieutenant Pickens and his men scrambling through the rocks, clearly intent on rushing the bridge while their foe was temporarily disadvantaged.  He stood tall now and began to yell, his legs pumping as he rushed across the stone bridge, his men at his heels. 

“Hold your goddam fire!”  Sergeant Hubermeir ran along the rank of skirmishers, it was vital that he could see the bridge and by now he was concerned about the amount of ammunition his men were using up.  “Holy cow, the rebels are coming, hold it boys, wait until they get within twenty yards”.

Up in the rocks Lieutenant Ethau Pickens called out to his men to stop.  It had taken too long to cross the broken terrain and he could see that the smoke that had momentarily obscured the view of the Union cavalry had now, cruelly, been dispersed by a sudden breeze.  Sergeant Beckwith and his men were beyond help, surely they could do nothing now other than seek the shelter of the bridge parapet?

Enos Beckwith was quite literally between a rock and a hard place, or at least the rocks and the hard cover of the bridge.  For now, however, he was in the open ground and could see the Yankees crouching in the rocks, their carbines levelled.  Any moment now the fire would begin.  He ran on, braving the hail of lead that now seemed to fill the air all around him.  He plunged his bayonet into the first blue-belly, turning to look for his men, several had fallen, and the remaining half a dozen or so were attempting to fire from the base of the rocks.  The fire was simply too great to advance through, and, obliged to stand to reload his men were at a terrible disadvantage.  Beckwith slipped back, now running for the cover of the bridge.

This was the opening engagement of our second playtest of the ACW variants for Sharp Practice which resulted in an interesting game.  It was the first outing for the Union cavalry with their Sharps Carbines and they certainly proved to be a fun addition.  Their fire was rapid, however not so totally dominating that it unbalanced the game, especially as there were only a dozen of them.  In fact Sergeant Beckwith’s charge, combined with fire from twenty musket armed veterans under Captain Jebediah Butplug across the river combined to actually oblige Sergeant Hubermeir to withdraw his men back into the woods to rally them.  However by this stage Captain Hyram Washington and a 60 man company of Union infantry had arrived to take up the fight with their Enfield rifles.

At present we are really focussing on balancing the weapons so that they “work” in terms of historical performance.  We went on to find that whilst the Enfield was more accurate than the smooth bore musket that the rebels were armed with, they had a  slightly slower rate of fire which, at the close ranges that the terrain dictated, saw them pretty much equal in the results they achieved when the rebels’ veteran status was taken into account.  A promising start which, after last week’s fight in a farmyard saw the rebels scrape a winning draw to continue their unbeaten record. 

The photo below shows Enos Beckwith attempting to cross the bridge while the Union cavalry are obscured by smoke.  Unfortunately for them an immediate “Tiffin” card saw the smoke disperse rapidly and they were soon heading back across the bridge in the other direction.  Captain Butplug’s men are in the rocks to the left in extended formation.

Editing the Summer and Christmas Specials must rate as one of our favourite jobs here on Lard Island, and this latest edition has been one of the most fun that we’re produced in what is now the seventh year of their existence.  In some ways the history of the Lardy Special is somewhat odd.  Initially the 2004 Summer Special was produced as a stop-gap as at the time we had very little supplementary material available for our rules and the plan was to try to provide a smorgasbord of scenarios, articles and rules ideas for people to sample.  Since then the Specials have become hugely popular and much anticipated – look at our web site and you’ll see that second and third in the “hit parade” of products sold are the Summer and Christmas Specials from 2009, only Sharp Practice outsells the Specials. 

Our objectives with any Special are fairly broad.  In the first place we want to always provide some kind of supplement or self contained game.  Over the years we’ve covered the Falklands, Korea, a fast-play version of Algernon Pulls it Off, Corps Blimey, and many others.  This year I think we have really got a couple of crackers with Chris Stoesen’s Malta Convoy Campaign system and the Battle for Hue expansion and mini campaign for Charlie Don’t Surf.  Some of the most fun games we’ve had with Bag the Hun2 have been attacking shipping, and the opportunity to do that as part of a campaign is going to be fantastic fun.  Hue is an interesting subject as it really saw the US Marines developing their own brand of urban warfare tactics.  How these developed and the story fo the battle is charted, along with rule amendments for refighting Hue and a mini-campaign of linked scenarios that see the gamer attempt to relieve the MACV compound on the first day of the battle.  Semper Fi!

In addition we have always attempted to bring you the freshest ideas for developing, tweaking or simply stripping out and replacing rule mechanisms wholesale.  Joe Legan piles in with the sledgehammer and rebuilds two sections of Bag the Hun2, with ‘Brag the Hun’ a fresh look at attacking ground targets, and ‘You’re Havin’ a LAAF’, his new Anti-Aircraft rules.  James Schmidt comes up with some interesting suggestions for doing away with card decks altogether and Tim Beresford has some great ideas on making your Blinds more aesthetically pleasing.  

Of course we have always wanted the wargamer’s bread and butter: scenarios, and this edition has them by the skip load.  OverLeutnant von Strüdelheim makes his entrance as a new character for Sharp Practice as he leads his Austrian Jäger on a wine snatching exercise on the banks of the Danube in 1809.  Tom Ballou takes a detailed look at the battles of Mill Springs and then suggests how to run the game with “They Couldn’t Hit An Elephant” (see Tom and his fantastic looking game on the US Convention circuit where he and his buddies are running the same scenario with three different sets of rules).  Housewives’ favourite Max Maxwell is back with two scenarios both using Through the Mud and the Blood, but neither are for the Great War.  “Toro!” is set in 1936 on the outskirts of Madrid, while the superb “Get the Fakin’ Fakir” is a rather jolly inter-war bash on the North West Frontier. 

Charlie Don’t Surf is well represented in this issue.  As well as the Hue expansion we have an introduction to VC tactics with “Winning Here with Charlie” that provides not just an overview of how the PAVN fought, but also how to replicate that on the table-top and how to hone your skills whether you are controlling Free World or Communist forces.  Charles Eckart provides us with “A Bird in the Trees” where a LRRP group has been inserted to find a helicopter crash site on the Cambodian border while Robert Avery has written “Manchu Alpha” which begins with US forces pinned down on the banks of the Saigon River. 

Stephen Milam provides us with some data on British Jets of the post-war period for Bag the Mig, Allen Coleman takes us to the Arse End of Nowhere with “The Mad Baron and the Living Buddha”, we have two scenarios set on Sicily for IABSM, one with British, one with US forces.  We head for Tamames and the 1809 battle for Le Feu Sacré, Moncacy for The Couldn’t Hit an Elephant and then Sir Sidney Roundwood presents two excellent scenarios on the Western Front for Through the Mud and the Blood, both examining cavalry and armour cooperation as they attempt to reach the green fields beyond.  The Flight of the Golden Pheasant is a WWII skirmish game with a difference.  Set in 1945 a Gauleiter is on the run and in desperate need of transport while some Soviet chaps have the transport and are in desperate need of a Gauleiter. 

Fat Nick weighs the anchor and hoists the White Ensign as he says “Make Sail for Montechristo” and attempts to cut out a ship with Kiss Me Hardy, whilst simultaneously taking a trip up the Tigris as he attempts to rescue Townshend in Kut with a scenario for If the Lord Spares Us. 

All in all it is a real bumper issue with something, we hope, for everyone.  It’s 142 pages in length and we are still holding the price at a great value £5 for the seventh year running.  If only the landlord at the Lard Island Arms took the same approach with his beer!

With Charlie Don’t Surf and Surf’s Up due for publication in just a few days time, we thought we’d take a look at Surf’s Up and see just what goodies were in there for the gamer thinking about getting ready for the rules.  We asked Richard to talk us through what is in there.     

Well, my prime objective with Surf’s Up was to obviously provide some scenarios for gamers to crack on with, but I have been quite careful in selecting what is in there.  I was tempted to follow one particular unit through their experiences in Vietnam, but I came to the conclusion that this was potentially too limiting, and that I wouldn’t get the variety that I wanted.  The other option I considered was to go with a particular phase of the war, maybe a major operation like Attleboro or Junction City, or maybe even the Tet offensive, but I discounted this for pretty much the same reasons as mentioned.  The war in Vietnam was really multi-faceted, and to just concentrate on one campaign or one period of the war was to lose out on the colour and feel for other areas that weren’t included.

In the end I went for what could reasonably be called a smorgasbord of scenarios that will hopefully provide something for everyone.  What I have tried to do is show the changing nature of the war and the participants, when I showed the supplement to Robert Avery – who let’s face it is the King and Queen and Jack of scenario writing rolled into one – he said that the timeline of the scenarios actually told the story of Vietnam.  Actually, it’s probably a good idea to briefly mention each one to give people a feel for what they’ll be getting.  I will, of course, keep some secrets hidden so as not to give the game away.

The first few scenarios are set in the very early days of the main Free World forces arriving.  In the first game, set during Operation Attleboro we see US forces moving into a VC held area intent on seizing rice caches; they know that the VC can’t maintain troops in the field without food.  The next scenarios see them attempting to clear the area around their new operational base, surveying the land to set up a Firebase for support, Engineers clearing the roads in order to get South Vietnam functioning.  I wanted to show the realities of war were not about John Wayne kicking the door in and zapping the bad guys, but about achieving a sensible military build up that occurs a step at a time.  Of course, you do get the zap the bad guys while you’re doing that, but it gives a better feel for how real military operations work. 

After that we move on to Search and Destroy missions, Operation Junction City in 1967 is the setting for scenario five with a similar emphasis on scenario six as well, as Free World forces are now established in country and are pushing out aggressively, taking on the VC forces in the south, regaining control of the countryside.  Indeed in scenario seven we have a classic Hearts & Minds operation, with a US and ARVN force clearing an area prior to a South Vietnamese Civic Action team moving in with medical assistance and propaganda teams to spread the word that the government of the RVN is back in charge.  The next couple of scenarios have a similar, but more aggressive theme, as first a Mechanised Infantry and motorised force attempt to clear an area, then an Aircav assault on a village.  I really like this scenario as the air mobile force has to evacuate the civilian population of the village by helicopter before they get the Free Fire Zone authorisation and can then really go in with all guns blazing against the VC – or maybe NVA, who knows. 

The next bunch of scenarios look at the Tet offensive.  The tenth scenario is an NVA night assault on a CIDG outpost, this was great fun to play, the game was a nail biter with the outcome hanging in the air for most of the game.  I wanted to show the Communist forces attacking in the countryside at the start of Tet in an attempt to draw the Free World forces out of the cities before their main attacks went in.  Scenario eleven is one of those city fights, with ARVN forces facing NVA in Ban Me Thuot, and Scenario thirteen is US Marines in Hue fighting their way up a street.  That one is a small game in terms of table size, but it’s one Hell of a fight, troops really get swallowed up in urban area.  In between those two we  have a CIDG Mike Force unit led by an A Team attempting to ambush NVA forces coming across the border from Cambodia to reinforce the Tet offensive. 

From there on in we are into Vietnamisation and some conventional warfare stuff from the later part of the conflict when Free World forces have pulled out.  We have a CIDG and ARVN Ranger force being lured into an ambush, we have the 18^th ARVN Division fighting at Xuan Loc in 1975, and finally one of my real favourites, The Convoy of Tears.  Set in 1975 with the NVA advancing on Saigon this is a real cracker, with a mixed force of ARVN attempting to keep a bridge open for a convoy of wounded military personnel and civilians to escape.  Desperate, heroic stuff, but with a real twist in the tail. 

So, that’s sixteen scenarios in all, and I like to think it’s a well thought out collage that really gives a picture of the conflict as a whole.   Really importantly the scenarios will provide the gamer  with a bench mark for the type of actions that the rules are designed for.  I know from my own experiences of gaming Vietnam that it seems the majority of rule sets that have covered the period have tended to focus on platoon sized actions.  I wanted to really make the move from patrol actions to real battles.  I suppose what I am saying is that when reading the wealth of personal accounts written by the grunt on the ground you get the feeling that it’s all happening at platoon level.  However if you then read US military reports of actions, and in particular some of their very detailed assessment and analysis projects immediately after the event these show that battles in Vietnam were normally controlled at the company level.  It’s the old wood and trees thing.  The platoon actions are great for looking at the individual trees, but if you want to see the whole wood then its company level that you need to go for.   At least that’s where I wanted to be.    

Of course the beauty of what I vaguely call “a company sized force” is that this is the size unit that would realistically be deployed for independent action, and also able to call upon a wide variety of support from its parent unit or even units from different arms of service that have been designated to work together in an all arms force.  That said, the detail at company level is granular enough so that the men, and in particular those large than life “Big Men” who naturally come to the fore in warfare, are still very visible and individual leadership can still be the main focus of the game system. 

 Pretty much all of the scenarios use US forces as the main Free World force (until the late war anyway), but I know that people will be keen to use other forces, such as ANZAC troops.  What I have done here is to provide a whole section where I provide ANZAC forces for nine of the scenarios that are suitable for their involvement  that will show people who want to use other troops, maybe ROK or Thai units instead, how I convert the scenarios.  It’s very simple, but the illustration I think helps. 

Finally we have the Tour of Duty campaign system.  I am really pleased with this, it focuses the players on the long term rather than just the immediate game, but also provides for some real command decisions from the players.  The system focuses on a fresh company commander arriving in Nam.  He has a twelve month tour ahead of him, but the chances are that after six months he will be likely to be transferred into a Staff role.  So the campaign will run for six, seven, eight months (the company commander can try to extend his time in the field if he wants to, but he can only delay the inevitable for so long) during which time he’ll be using the scenario generator in the main rules to put games on the table.  We can then track his, and his company’s progress over that period.  It’s a real challenge, but equally importantly it is really a fun way to link your games up.  Actually that will be made even more fun by an idea I have for the Summer Special, but more on that another time.

Hopefully that has given an insight into what Surf’s Up is all about.  If anyone wants to join in the chat about Charlie Don’t Surf then the TooFatLardies Yahoo group is positively buzzing with the Nam at present, so come on in.  The water’s lovely!

Yesterday saw an excursion from Lard Island, as Fat Nick and I were off to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford for a day of gaming run by Dr.Paddy Griffith covering Operation Wesserubung, the German and Allied invasion of Norway in 1940.  What resulted was quite possibly one of the most interesting, stimulating and enjoyable days gaming that I can recall. 

We had just over twenty players split between the three teams, Germans, British and Norwegian.  We then had about half a dozen umpires, one for naval activity, one for air activity (being our very own la Skinner), two for ground action (including me as the German liaison umpire), a political umpire and Paddy operating as Chief Umpire. 

The game began on the 13th of April with the initial German coup de main having just happened, and now concentrated on German attempts to rapidly seize control of the whole country and secure the iron or resources that came through Narvik. 

It really is rather like writing the history of a dance, as the Iron Duke once said, in that everyone present will have had a very different experience, so what follows is my view of things as possibly German-centric. 

The Norwegians had only two Brigades in the field around Hamar which were attempting to halt the German advance North.  The Germans had secured Oslo, Bergen, had captured Trondheim in the centre of the country and Narvik in the north.  Their plan was to use their JU52 transport planes to shift troops rapidly north, utilising frozen lakes to shuttle in battalion or company size lifts that would form a succession of stepping stone that, initially, would pave the way to Trondheim.  This would then allow the ground forces to move northwards linking with each of these in turn.  Indeed the plan was very similar in that respect to Operation Market Garden in 1944, albeit using air-landing rather than insertion by parachute.  Would it be a “Frozen Lake too Far” for Adolf’s finest?

The British and French faced the very historical problem that they, and not the Germans, had missed Mr Chamberlain’s famous bus.  When their forces arrived off the Norwegian coast in the area of Narvik it became instantly clear that the harbour where they should be landing was now occupied by a Brigade of General Dietl’s Mountain Division.  What was more their Staff, expecting an unopposed landing, had not packed their kit in a manner that allowed for immediate tactical deployment.  As such they decided to land at the port of Harstad, spend three days reloading their kit and then consider the amphibious assault.  Politically the British commander was under intense pressure from the British government, acutely aware of what disasters the First Sea Lord, Mr Churchill, was capable of organising, not to risk his men in an attack against enemy machine guns such as had happened at Gallipoli.   This allowed him two options.  He could land elsewhere and then march through the freezing snow and sleet before fighting a battle, or he could play the role of perfidious Albion to the full and send in the French. 

Quite happy to fight to the last drop of French blood, he chose the latter, and on the 17^th of April the French assaulted with three battalions of Mountain troops directly into Narvik itself and the adjacent villages of Ankanesstrand.  Resistance was tough, and Dietl’s mountain troops survived the initial naval bombardment to fight house by house through the town, its wooden buildings being largely consumed by fire before the British Guards Brigade landed unopposed on the next day and assisted in mopping up operations.  Dietl was wounded in the action and was carried into neutral Sweden where he and what remained of his men were interned.  The Allies now began to concentrate on building up their defences around Narvik and attempting to contact the Norwegian forces in the field. 

For General Ruge, the Norwegian commander, and King Haakon the arrival of the British and French was something of a disappointment.  It was quite clear that these forces had been ready to invade Norway, a neutral country, so their status was somewhat uncertain.  The Norwegians had been keen to avoid war, and were not ready to embrace a second set of invaders with any enthusiasm.  That said, their mobilisation system relied on sending letters to their reservists, and the speed of the German coup de main had been such that almost none of her theoretical six Divisions were now assembled.  With six battalions to hand the Norwegians knew that in order to regain their land they would need help.

Their first contact with the Allies was to request that they pushed south to Trondheim, or more to the point that they land at Alesun or Kristiansund from where they could move to Trodnheim, then only held by the second Brigade of the German Mountain Division that had held Narvik.   With the airfield at Trondheim in their possession the Allies could have brought in aircraft to counter what at this stage was almost complete German air-superiority (the British did have aircraft up near Narvik but poor weather saw these grounded for much of the time).

The British commander was operating under very clear orders; seize Narvik and its railway line.  He did have the option of moving south, but there was certainly no clear brief of what to do if he chose to take that option.  His rejection of Norwegian suggestions were a bitter blow to Ruge and the King, this being especially the case as thus far they were under very little pressure in the south and centre of the country.     

Ruge had weakened his force by ordering three battalions to melt into the civilian population around Hamar (not difficult, as they were essentially armed civilians in the first instance) while his other three battalions fought a delaying action northwards.  It was their plan to attempt to really halt the Germans around Lillehammer.  A brief action was fought on the 14^th of April at Hamar when the Norwegians gave the lead elements of 196 I.D. a bloody nose, however the reconnaissance battalion of 181 I.D. looked like outflanking their position on the opposite side of the river and they withdrew to fresh positions in the southern end of Lillehammar.  They reached their destination after a march through heavy snow on the night of the 17^th of April and were attempting to dig fresh positions in the frozen ground on the morning of the 18^th when an air-armada of nearly 100 JU52s were seen passing overhead. 

This was the Germans taking advantage of a break in the weather to lift a whole battalion of infantry to land on the frozen lake Mjosa around Faberg.  On the ground the lead elements of 181 and 196 Divisions were attempting to push northwards towards Lillehammer, but they were hampered by poor ground conditions.  In the event General Ruge, made aware of the German deployment by local civilians, decided on a night attack on the German positions in an attempt to break out northwards.  What he did not know was that the Germans had also air-lifted a second battalion in to land on Hjerkinn which was striking out for Dombas. 

The Norwegian attack was an overwhelming success, with three battalions utterly routing the German troops north of Lillehammer, what remained of them attempted to fall back on Dombas to link with friendly troops, but the following days of snow and near blizzard conditions saw everyone nearly paralysed.  When the weather cleared some days later the Norwegians had decided to strike out for Alesund where the Norwegian Navy would transport them north to join the King who by now had allied himself, albeit in a somewhat frosty marriage of convenience, with the French and British.

In truth, the Germans were now vastly over-extended.  Two battalions in the area of Lillehammer were lacking support, and it was just emerging that the Norwegian troops around Hamer had now reformed, putting back on their uniforms, and were blocking the supply route north.  At Dombas the remains of the battalion that had been mauled at Lillehammer was now linked with the one that had been air-lifted in to Hjerkinn, and to their north smaller company sized formations were dotted on the road to Trondheim.  The three Norwegian battalions alone could have overwhelmed the Germans at Dombas, but without fresh supplies they could not have maintained their effectiveness in the field. 

This was the critical point of the campaign (from where I stood).  Had the Allies landed and taken Trondheim (something that they were more than capable of doing) then linking with Ruge’s Norwegians, and with air support immediately on hand, they could have presented a very strong face to the Germans who.  As it happened the next week was one of consolidation in both the Allied north and the German south and central Norway.  The arrival of the 40^th Armoured Detachment in Oslo on the 3^rd along with a Brigade of fresh troops allowed the Norwegian position at Hamar to be attacked and cleared on the 7^th of May.  But the morning of the 10^th German engineering troops had re-opened the railway line north and the forces pushing up from Lillehammer had not established a clear route all the way to Trondheim.  With the weather improving each day, and more reinforcements being shipped in from Kiel, they were now able to entrain their men straight from the boats and move them as far north as the end of the railway line in Grong the ground forces moved continually forward. 

The French attempted to stop the German advance at Bodo, but by now the Germans had cracked the crust and were moving inexorably northwards.  Narvik was now isolated, with the Germans full reinforced and certain of success.  It was here that the game ended as, with the Germans also running riot in France the French troops were about to be withdrawn for the defence of their homeland, leaving the British position untenable. 

The game was hugely interesting as it allowed the players to see just how Norway could actually have been saved by decisive action, and that the Allied contingent was hampered by their masters, the politicians, seeking limited objectives rather than looking at the bigger picture and taking bold actions. 

The game modelled superbly the frosty relationship between the Norwegians and their invaders (the Allied ones) , it also reflected well the dynamism of the German force which was not hampered by any of the political constraints that dogged the Allies, and were consequently able to focus on the military victory. 

I know that the Royal Navy distinguished themselves, apparently every Destroyed in the Kriegsmarine now lay at the bottom of the North Sea, however details of that eluded me due to my own focus on the ground campaign.  One amusing interlude was the German attempt to use an actor to impersonate King Haakon in order to broadcast to the nation, prompting a propaganda war with the real King, as each attempted to outdo the other in proving their credentials.

The setting, the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, was a truly superb venue for this event, with four spacious rooms available for the three teams and the umpires.  The lecture room where Paddy was able to deliver an illuminating overview of the campaign in Norway and then the final briefing was perfect, and of course the normal museum exhibitions were superb to wander round after the game ended. 

My thanks must go the Paddy Griffith for organising and running this game, I can heartily recommend the experience to anyone interested in gaming the bigger picture.  Really a first class day out.  I know that Paddy will be running an Operation Merkur game, the proposed but never executed Axis invasion of Malta, in October, details of which are on the Duxford site.  See this link.

 http://duxford.iwm.org.uk/server/show/conEvent.3269

Richard, thanks for coming to the Lard Island News offices.  We’ve just seen the news that Charlie Don’t Surf is at the printers; great news for lots of people who have been waiting a long time for this set to come along.  It’s taken you some years to produce these, why the delay.

In answer to your first point, yes, I am very excited about these rules, and you’re right, they have been a long time coming.  Charlie Don’t Surf was the very first set of rules that Nick and I ever worked on, he called the first four pages of notes ‘DMZ’ but I insisted on Charlie Don’t Surf for very obvious reasons.

The honest answer is that we were happily working away on Charlie Don’t Surf when we crashed into I Ain’t Been Shot Mum.  Many of the ideas and concepts that we were working on for CDS were used to produce IABSM, and then we had to produce all of the support material for that, so that took time.  However the real reason was I hit a brick wall when it came to trying to model asymmetrical warfare.  It was very easy to produce a game where the VC were nothing more than pop-up targets for the Free World players to zap, and I must admit that we went down that route for quite some time, but I was never satisfied with the results.  It really needed a huge rethink, so I put the rules on the back-burner for some time, just picking them up and dabbling when the mood took me. 

In the end it was attempting to model similar conflicts in Africa that provided the key.  Once I had that the real hard work started as I pretty much had to disassemble everything we had done previously.  In a way it was a shame, as lots of people had put a lot of work into the original concepts, but ultimately what has emerged is a much more robust and sophisticated game, and one that provides some really enjoyable and challenging gaming for both sides.  

What aspects of the rules would people who have previously played Lardy games recognise?

Cards.  The turn sequence is card driven, as is the case with all of our rules.  I really haven’t found a better means of conveying battlefield friction than by using cards, and frankly I don’t think you can model warfare, even in a game, without that being present.

Actually I think anyone who has played a Lardy game before will recognise much that is in the rules, however I hope they will also see that they are much more streamlined than, for example, IABSM.  The Fire Table is still at the heart of the firing system, Action Dice and Command Initiative are all there too.

I am interested to see that you have included the Fire Table, pretty much exactly like the one in IABSM.  Is that not a retrograde step?

How do you mean?

Well, isn’t that the big complaint you get – “what is a good shot, what is a poor shot?” I thought that with rules like Mud & Blood you’d moved on from that mechanism.

Interestingly I think the whole Fire Table issue that you’ve identified is a bit of a smoke screen.  Yes, the table does have the headings Great, Okay and Poor, but the text explains that you can simply treat that as In the Open, In Light Cover and In Heavy Cover.  There are plenty of rules that do that (like our Mud & Blood that you mentioned) and nobody bats an eyelid.  All I am trying to do is say that the gamer can be more sophisticated than that if he wants. 

In truth the Fire Table is a great tool.  Your squad is firing, you decide how many Action Dice they want to “spend” on that, and then roll the dice and cross-reference on the Fire Table.  It tells you not only how many hits you have achieved, but also whether the unit is Pinned or Suppressed.  I like rule mechanisms that do more than one thing at a time, so a fire result and a morale result at the same time, and does it quickly, strikes me as a quality mechanism.

Mud & Blood, along with Sharp Practice, are somewhat different in that you are actually rolling dice for each man.   That is because they are more skirmish games than CDS is.  We’ll be using the Fire Table again in v3 of IABSM when it comes out as well. 

Okay, so what has changed?

Quite a bit in the area of command and control.  I had a very interesting conversation with a friend in Sweden, Marcus, about command and control in IABSM.  He mentioned to me that Big Men can actually reduce the coordination of a platoon rather than increase it, due to their only being able to influence one squad at a time.  It’s an excellent point, and one that I have addressed by giving Big Men Command Initiative points more akin to the system in Sharp Practice or Mud & Blood.  So, your platoon commander with three command points can activate three different squads.  He can do other stuff to, and once the bullets start to fly he’ll have plenty of decisions to make in terms of where he spends his points, but this has really made the game more dynamic.  Big Men of a high quality can really get things moving.  Of course there is still room in there for the Sergeant who is only going to influence one unit at a time, so you get the full spectrum of command ability much better reflected in the rules. 

The big change is the way the game plays.  I felt it hugely important to represent the asymmetrical nature of the conflict, and we have done this by setting both military and political victory conditions.  This puts very realistic pressures on both forces to constantly assess just how achievable their original mission is, and to consider the bigger picture in terms of balancing military success against the political ramifications of casualties and so on.  Interestingly the game will often end not when one side or the other stands triumphant on the battlefield, but when one side leaves the table.  Free World Forces can often capture large areas of real estate that is not worth a hill of beans.  These are very interesting systems that, I think, could be transferable to pretty much any modern COIN ops.

What size games are the rules really suited to?
We state company size actions, but in truth we’ve had some excellent games where one side or the other has had only about one platoon.  Equally we’ve played games with two companies of NVA plus armoured support coming up against a company of ARVN in 1972 or later.  If anyone has played IABSM this is its brother in terms of game size.  A company per side plus support would be pretty average, but frankly the victory conditions mean that we well handled small force can take on a much bigger enemy and still win.

Isn’t that a bit larger than most Vietnam games?  I mean they tend to focus on Platoon size games.

Maybe they do.  Platoon size games are great for fighting a patrol action, but if you really want to fight a battle then a company size game really introduces so many different dynamics. 

What is the rule writing process for you? 

Start small.  I get my ideas on a piece of paper, put together a deck of cards, shove the figures on the table and then we basically brain storm our way through the first few games.  This can be literally as basic as turning the first card out of the deck and saying “Right, what does that mean”.  We have a very vibrant development group on Lard Island and within three or four workshop sessions we’ll have a twenty-five page draft that we can put out to play-testers around the world, while we continue to play our games and develop and expand ideas.  After that it is just a case of playing game after game and dealing with any issues that arise. 

You mentioned earlier the issue of friction, and modelling warfare.  Does that give us a clue on where you stand on the ‘Simulation versus Game’ debate?

There is no debate on Simulation versus Game, just a lot of bollocks talked.   I think it’s pretty simple really, we are wargaming, by definition that must include some attempt to produce a game that relates to war.  In order to relate to war it must share some of the characteristics.  So, for example, cavalry move faster than infantry.  It’s simple stuff; any game that saw cavalry move 6” and infantry move 18” would be laughed at.  Whether we like it or not, we are attempting some simplistic form of simulation within our games.  The question really should be how far do we want to go with the simulation whilst maintaining the “game” element?  To my mind a game has to be fun, a wargame has to be fun and simulate aspects of warfare.  However, I do not believe it is a straight line with Fun at one end and Simulation at the other.   

Okay, so accepting that viewpoint how do you view the hobby’s shift towards rules that are more about fun and less about simulation?

Well, I am not convinced that question is entirely different to the last one.  What I will say is that it is my intention to keep the historical content high in Lardy rules.  In its purest sense Fun in a wargame is dictated not by how much historical content there is, but by the rule mechanisms.  So, for example, a chap who knew nothing about Napoleon could have a great fun time playing a wargame, based purely on the game mechanisms making it fun to play.  Agreed?

Yes, agreed.

Right, but if you’re interested in military history you will also want to see that represented in a wargame.  So, as mentioned earlier, that will determine that our cavalry do move faster than our infantry.  Now that is a bit of simulation that as far as I can see has no impact on how much fun you can have.  So, if we can agree that simulating realistic movement rates does not affect the fun aspect of our game, then my question would be why should we not aspire to introduce more areas of simulation to complement our basic fun game mechanics.  By running the two along-side each other we are able to make our wargames so much more than just a game. 

Do you see that as being in-step with what the hobby wants from rule sets?

I don’t honestly believe that there is such a thing as “the hobby”.  Wargaming is a broad church with a whole host of gaming preferences, and I would not presume to tell anyone in it what they should or should not want.  All I can do is keep producing rules that interest me and that I find enjoyable to play.  I can only hope that they will enjoy them too. Fortunately thus far they have, and I have gained a lot of good friends as a result of TooFatLardies. 

What do you see yourself writing next?

I really don’t know.  IABSM3 looms large, as does Algy and M&BWWII (still no snappy name for that one!).  I am putting together another set of Kriegsspiel rules from 1872, and I really want to get my teeth into In the Buff.  What I do know is that I have got at least three years worth of work already lined up ahead of me,  the question is just what order it all happens in.

Richard, thanks for your time today.

My pleasure. 

Figure reviews are not something I normally do, but having just finished my first M113 ACAV platoon for Charlie Don’t Surf I feel inclined to put pen to paper, or at least fingers to keyboard, and talk about the Peter Pig model of this quintessential Vietnam AFV. 

I must first admit that I had planned to buy the Flashpoint Miniatures model as it had been recommended to me by a friend in the US, however the supplier that I went to was out of stock, and being a typical wargamer I was not inclined to wait before I purchased more lead.  What was more, my US troops for Nam are all from Peter Pig anyway, so this was not uncharted seas.  I was pleased to discover that the Piggy version was £6 per vehicle, while the ones that I had originally intended to get were £8.50 a throw.  When you’re looking to field two or three platoons the difference is worth saving. 

The Peter Pig model comes in several parts; the main body, the left and right tracks, the rear panel and then the crew and the turret.  Clearly the Piggies do a number of variants – I got three different ones so my platoon of four tracks looks attractively varied.  Sticking together was simple enough and with very little (if any) filing needed to ensure snug fitting of parts.  I added some detail with Green Stuff just to add to the variety, a few kit bags, the odd roll of tarpaulin and general bric-a-brac that makes units look ‘lived in’ and a few crew sitting on top to add even more variety.

I have to admit that at this point I was a little disappointed with the models.  I couldn’t really put my finger on why, just a general feeling of them looking a bit boring.  But I pressed on with a black under coat and then a base coat of Vallejo Brown Violet (what a STUPID name for a colour – rather like calling something ‘Blue Pink’) followed by a wash of black ink thinned with windscreen wash and water.  As an aside I have been using this solution since I stopped being able to get Klear floor polish in the UK, it’s not as good but it’s the best I have found. 

I let the ink dry overnight, then dry-brushed the colour up from there.  Mainly Brown Violet with white added, but I also like to add on some other greens in there too, just to get depth and a bit of variation, so things like Russian Green and US Olive Green all got used as well.  Once that was done I mixed up a very light mix of Brown Violet and white and highlighted the edges.  At this stage this creates a very skeletal look, rather like an anthropod, but it will all get toned down as we go. 

Next I pained the baggage black and while that dried I painted the crew with Vallejo Russian Uniform for the main colour and with Bronze Green for the flak jackets.  The webbing was a mix of Russian Uniform and Stone Grey.  The kit then got painted in a mix of dull colours, so some English Uniform (another dreadful name, ‘British’ please Vallejo!) US Brown Drab, Russian Green and so on.  This then got ink washed and highlighted up.  After that it was details, like the Stars and Stripes that is rolled up ready to be planted on a suitable objective, or the names on each vehicle.

Finally I painted the track black, dry-brushed them grey and then gave them a very heavy dry-brush of Flat Earth.  This is a more red brown than I’d use for Europe, but it suits the soil of South East Asia.  I then gave that a lighter dry-brush of Khaki and then an even lighter one of Stone Grey, before adding some streaks of dirt with heavily watered down Stone Grey.  I like my vehicles to look more dusty than the “completely covered in crap” look that you see sometimes. 

And the end result?  Well any sense of disappointment disappeared very early in the painting process.  I am really pleased with these models, they have lots of character and obviously match perfectly my Peter Pig US infantry which, despite being one of their earliest ranges, are superb figures which really capture the feel of the conflict.      

Anything I’d prefer to change?  Well, for my next platoon I am going to drill holes in the anti-RPG screen on the side of the M113 models that have them.  It will take an hour or so for each one, but it’s something I can do while watching the rugby and I think that the time spent will be repaid with a really individual model.    All in all these a re really nice models that paint up really well. 

Great news for Hun baggers, as we now have the Luftwaffe Staffel cards available for download.  Over the next weeks we’ll be producing a set for a US, Japanese and British Empire forces, all with new artwork.  Just click on the link below to download your Huns in the sun.

Luftwaffe Staffel Cards

Commander Ly Chi looked down from the veranda of the Pagoda towards the river. Several members of the local community were working to get the river water through to the new rice beds that would soon be feeding his men. Chi was commanding the advanced guard of the 37th Main Force battalion of the Viet Cong. The main body of the force was still in Cambodia waiting for news that their accommodation was ready, and that would be very soon. Already the arms cache in the village was being moved into the freshly dug tunnels. It would not be long before Ly Chi and his comrades would be able to take on the imperialists and free the South to enjoy the benign rule of the Communist Party. Nothing could go wrong.

Even from many thousands feet the jungle clearance and the excavation of new paddy fields was clear to Major Milton Clamburger in his OV-10 Bronco, the freshly dug red soil a visible scar on the landscape, and fresh paddies could only mean one thing, more mouths to feed. VC mouths.

Captain Butch Taylor moved along the sweep line, words of encouragement came easily and his men responded well. Butch was a soldier’s soldier, and Charlie Company appreciated that, and yet a sweep through an area know to be occupied by the VC was always a mission fraught with danger. Men smoked, swapped jokes and laughed, and yet the tension could be read on their faces. Then the word came.

“Let’s move out”

Lieutenant Hung Lo looked down from the Huey, his eyes scanning the ground in an attempt to read the terrain. There were several LZ near the Pagoda, all of them potentially killing zones, choosing the right one and getting his men on the ground would be critical to the success of the operation. If Charlie was allowed to just melt away then the press would have a field day. Again.

In the Hog Lieutenant Walter Greenbaum made his approach, flying in a shallow dice through the fire that was coming up from the treeline. He watched the rockets as they flew straight and true and exploded with a shattering impact among the shadowy figures in black pyjamas.

Lieutenant Carter Beauford jammed another magazine into his M16 and fired again. He could see very little, but the firepower produced by his platoon must mean that he was winning the firefight, and that is just what they’d told him to do in OCS.

To the right of Beauford’s platoon Lieutenant Randy Buckmeir had already won his firefight. Well, he presumed he had as Charlie was no longer firing at him.  He had brought his men forward to the edge of the clearing, but with the firing continuing to his left he was loathe to cross the open space. God, this war is Hell.

Movement down to the right. The pilot was signalling to Sergeant Gi as the Huey descended. This was the moment of truth. They were landing very close to the fringe of the jungle, ripe for ambush, but there was no choice in this small clearing where only one slick could drop its men at a time. The first squad of ARVN Rangers leap down as the chopper hovered eighteen inches above the ground, the door gunner liberally spraying the edge of the jungle. In seconds they were gone, the squad forming up and deploying their weapons as the Huey lifted off. Almost immediately fire came from the far side of the clearing. The pilot had been right; VC. Gi tapped the M60 gunner on the shoulder and pointed towards the muzzle flashes, and a stream of bullets stitched their way across the clearing even as the next Chopper approached.

“Burn the Goddam place” Lieutenant Brad Whitford looked at the pile of AK47s and ammunition that had been found below the floor of the hooch. In the previous building they had found stocks of rice that were suspicious, but could have been the store for the hamlet, now there was no doubt. Sergeant Leroy Burlesque flicked his Zippo and enjoyed the momentary aroma of fuel.  They light every time.

“Move you mothers!” Captain Butch Taylor had never been know for his patience and he was convinced that a charge with the bayonet would overwhelm Charlie. It was a matter of a dozen yards, but in this terrain it was slow going. Three men were killed as they crossed the intervening ground, and when they got there Charlie had gone. Mind you, he was clearly beaten as he had abandoned the bodies of three of his dead. Taylor grabbed the radio. Nothing. He swore. Little did he know that the bullet that had destroyed his PRC 25 would otherwise have killed him.

“Holy mother, the artillery”.  He ran across to Lieutenant Buckmeir, with the first ranging shot coming in from Firebase Hillary he needed comms!

Lieutenant Hung Lo was forming his sweep line now. The clock was ticking. If he could move across behind the pagoda he could cut the line of retreat. From the radio traffic he knew that Charlie was starting to move out, and he was sure there was movement to his front, he did not want to walk into an ambush.

Pac Choi emerged from the tunnel. Yes, they were behind the Americans. His men spread out silently as Choi watched his enemy preparing to move on. The volley was violent and brief, the effect of the AK-47 fire more shocking than anything else, and the American troops dived for cover. Pac Choi and his men ran. They had done all they could, they had been betrayed by traitors, lap dogs of the American Imperialists. They would pay with their lives! Now his objective must be to keep his force intact and reach Cambodia.

Up to this point the US and ARVN forces had killed six VC and lost five men dead. They had discovered weapons and food in the hamlet and most importantly the tunnel complex. The discovery of the latter was solely due to Pac Choi’s emergence and parting ambush before he ran for the border. Had he simply slipped away it is likely that the Free World forces would have missed the tunnels. A further dozen VC were cut off from their exit route, six being captured by the ARVN Rangers. So the operation was a military success for the Free World Forces, but verging on a political victory for the VC due to the losses they inflicted. Had Butch Taylor relied on his firepower rather than going in with the bayonet he’d have saved the lives of three men and won a complete victory.

The game was designed to test some of the victory conditions in the rules which, as suggested above, are two-fold; military and political. One of the things that has taken the time with developing Charlie Don’t Surf is getting the game to tick two key boxes that are interlinked. It must represent the reality of the war in Vietnam without being a parody, and it must give both sides a real challenge and an opportunity to get a victory on a very uneven playing field. It would be easy, far too easy to produce a game that is a parody of this complex conflict, and even easier if that parody was that seemingly appealing winner – the war as it “should” have been rather than the war as it was.

What do I mean by this? Well, one of the frustrations of any counter-insurgency campaign is that one side generally won’t play fair. The Free World forces in Vietnam were, above all else, seeking to bring the enemy to battle and defeat him. Had Charlie played ball and done the decent thing, standing up and fighting, then he would have been in big trouble. So quite naturally he stuck to his own game plan.

This can be a real issue for wargamers and in particular game designers. We could make the assumption that in our games Charlie is particularly rough, tough and nasty and ready to play the stand-up fight game, and then the Free World forces could deploy all of their very sexy assets to gun him down wit style and aplomb. Easy rules to write, easy game to play, probably very popular, but frankly a complete load of hog wash. Nothing more than a Vietnam version of ‘Whack a Mole’, with Charlie popping up from his tunnels and Rambo blasting him to the Stone Age.

The real challenge in designing Charlie Don’t Surf has been to develop a game where both sides can fight their own war; where both have strengths and both have weaknesses and both need to attempt to dominate the battlefield by developing their plans to take these into account. The net result this far is a game where the double whammy of a military and political victory is hard to achieve, where there is frustration on the ground as the enemy won’t do what you want him to do, but where by playing to your own strengths, by clear thinking and careful planning either side can dominate the battlefield if his opponent allows him to.

Images

In the first image (above)  I have marked the contours in orange for clarification. The Pagoda stands atop a small oval shaped knoll and to the north (i.e. the top of the image, is another similar hill with a clearing on top. The rest of the table is relatively flat with a wide river along the western edge. The VC have to name one table edge as their line of communication – the edge off which they will retire if Free World Forces are too tough for them.

Stage One

In the second image we see the US sweep line of the 1st and 2nd platoons advancing on the right and running into two ambushes. On the left the 3rd Platoon is able to form a base of fire and bring its weapons to bear on Charlie in the treeline. A Hog arrives and adds its fire.

Stage Two

In the third image the VC who sprung the initial ambushes are largely withdrawing to disappear from sight, whilst one squad remains in place to cover their withdrawal. US firepower is overwhelming, but it hangs in there long enough for its comrades to get away. Meanwhile the ARVN Ranger platoon arrives by helicopter to seal off the potential VC escape routes to the north and east. 3rd Platoon are searching the hooches.

Stage Three

The game is up for Charlie, a charge by the US 2nd Platoon finally clears the enemy from the treeline, whilst the ARVN Rangers are successful in winning their firefight with the assistance of the Hog. They also move two squads round to cut off the retreat of a dozen VC. To the south Pac Choi gives the game away by emerging from a tunnel and springing one final ambush on the 1st Platoon before running for the border. Meanwhile 3rd platoon evacuate the civilian population and burn the hooches.

Critique
This was a “nearly but not quite” operation for the US forces. They lost too many men, largely due to the lunatic charge when firepower would have done the job better. They were too late bringing in the ARVN platoon; in essence the hammer was striking before the anvil was in place and that allowed many VC to leave the table unchallenged. Part of this was the limited size of the LZ stopping a fast deployment. All the more reason for putting the ARVN in early.

For the VC a failure to concentrate their forces meant that they never really hit hard in any one place. They did, however, take full advantage of their ability to sneak off and set up another ambush. Bizarre they left two HMGs they had in the tunnels, the extra firepower could have really hurt the US forces. What has been interesting over the months of playtests has been watching the players learn to use the correct tactics. The US forces are aware now that avoiding ambushes is almost impossible, so you move tactically to limit their effects when they are sprung. You also make sure that the supporting troops are close enough to add their firepower when it is needed.

The VC players are really learning to hit hard and then slip away. They now know that in the confusion after the ambush the US player’s knee jerk reaction is to form a base of fire and get himself organised, providing the VC with valuable moments to simply disappear. Our game saw a full company of US forces (the weapons platoon was off-table with its mortars) plus an airmobile platoon of ARVN Rangers and a Huey Hog gunship in support faced with just two platoons of Main Force VC imbalanced game if we were to use any points system, and yet the VC came very close to winning a political victory, and could easily have avoided handing the US a complete military victory if they had not given away the position of their tunnel entrance in the final moments. What was more both sides really enjoyed the game.

Great game for me as umpire. My enthusiasm for these rules is almost boundless at present and I get a real sense of satisfaction as we finally declare the rules watertight and now move on to work on the final presentation and wording. After eight long years it seems that Charlie will, at last, surf.  Projected release date is May.