NAM 68 rules preview
Wargames, Soldiers, and Strategy has been given an exclusive preview of Warwick Kinrade's NAM 68 Tour of Duty Vietnam rules. The Plastic Soldier Company are running a preorder on the rules with delivery being estimated to arrive at the end of September. A full review will be in our next issue WS&S 132, but for now, here's a preview.
Nam 68 comes from the pen of Warwick Kinrade, who has a long pedigree of designing wargames, including the Battlegroup and Soldiers series of games. So, a lot of the content of the new Vietnam game will be familiar to those who play Battlegroup Kursk or Battlegroup Northag. That said, this is not a 'copy and paste' version of those games but a properly tailored version to reflect the distinct challenges that the United States Army faced while fighting in Vietnam.
The game is aimed at platoon level with individual squads and encourages players to use the official Orbats The rules use a standard D6 for almost everything, with a D8 being used to indicate the direction the shot scatters in for indirect fire.
The size of game can be scaled down, so only involving one or two squads or scaled up to involve a whole platoon or more, plus vehicles. This lends itself to multiplayer games where each person controls a squad.
The game is designed to be played on a 6' x 4' table but a smaller a 4' x 4' board can be used for smaller actions. The player will need a platoon of US infantry, so about 40 models. A good selection of VC and civilian models will also be required. The VC forces are generated by the use of cards, so are fairly random - the amount of cards depends on the game size. While most cards are different kinds of infantry (from barely trained local forces to 'core' VC), sometimes the odd support weapon will be needed, such as a machine gun or recoilless rifle. Bunkers and traps may also be encountered. Players will either need to be flexible or have a good selection of North Vietnamese forces.
While the US may have APCs, armoured vehicles and tanks, in this period, the North Vietnamese did not. So the VC aren't going to need any T55s or PT-76s. One thing I really liked about the game was the attention to detail. There are several good passages of text explaining the war in Vietnam in 1968 in detail and the tactics of the North Vietnamese forces. This information is useful for new players who are unfamiliar with the conflict and old veterans like myself.
The game does use civilians, which some may find distasteful. However, it has an interesting section explaining why they are included. They were certainly an important factor in the Vietnam War, so their inclusion and how the US players reacted to them is important.
The main issue the game tackles very well is how would you game an asymmetric conflict like Vietnam, particularly when the enemy forces are generated randomly? The answer is simple, a referee. So this moves the game away from a competitive narrative and to one where the players are taking on the role of commanders on the ground, a co-op game in effect. This gives the game much more of a storytelling aspect than turning up with 1500 points a side and beating the heck out of each other. I like this approach a lot.
There are eight missions to play of different sizes and complexity. The referee can also introduce extra complications 'in mission' to challenge the players further. I've not touched on the core mechanisms too much, but I wanted to give my first impressions of the game, which are very positive. I've yet to try it out on the tabletop, but will do so in the near future. The author has done well to capture the feel of this conflict. Overall, this game will be of great interest to Vietnam players who want to capture the feel of the war. Time to 'dust off' your Hueys and M42 Dusters!
