Fire in the paddies: Flying Lead AAR

 

Our much-anticipated limited return to FTF gaming happened on Saturday. Kevin Smyth and I played our first game with our freshly-painted 28mm Vietnam minis from Gringo40s. The venue was Zulu's Board Game Cafe in charming, renaiscent Bothell, WA. This was our first gaming since Kevin hosted a redo of the Battle of Manilla Bay in his garage in subfreezing weather on December 12.

I loaded up the car on Saturday morning, something I haven't done in what seems a very long time, and headed south to Bothell, which is just a short distance from me (St. Brendan, my home parish, is just north of the main street area of Bothell, where Zulu's is). 

For Kevin it was a longer trek up from Puyallup. Yes, readers from beyond the region, Washington state has a town named Puyallup, which is just a bit less odd a moniker than Humptulips, which is also in Washington.

We reserved the space at Zulu's for 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. Zulu's has been expanding since its opening. The building was formerly a residence right on Main St. What was once the basement now has some larger tables that can be used for miniature gaming, although they're not as large as the 8' x 6' (or 12' x 6') we were used to at The Panzer Depot. 

The table we used is custom built for gaming and has a 4' x 6' recessed well. That worked fine for us. I used my 8' x 6' relish green felt folded in half. I finally got to use the roads I bought a year ago from the UK, just as COVID was shutting down our gaming activities. Kevin brought some buildings, his rice paddies, and some bamboo stands—all terrain he has for his 1898 Philippines project.

The scenario I came up with pitted two equivalent squads of 10 men consisting of one NCO (leader), a LMG, a 'grenadier' (in my case a guy with a RPG, in Kevin's a guy with an M-79 "blooper"), and seven riflemen (AKs and M-16s).

We used Flying Lead by Ganesha Games for our rules. Because we use single-mounted figures, we can pretty much use any skirmish set and we have others to try.

I ran the NVA squad (I only have NVA painted at this time).

Kevin ran the Marines (Kevin has everything painted).

The Marines' mission was to search the three huts on the board for weapons and/or document caches. They got 1 point for each search successfully completed (a successful search required two actions in the same initiative), 2 points for finding anything (a D6 result of 6 after completing the search; a 1 result would be a booby trap!), and 1 point for every NVA casualty. To win they needed to get 10 points. The NVA got no points for nothin', they just had to keep the Marines from getting their 10 points.

We deployed on the short ends of the table and got right to it.

For reasons that I understand less now than I did at the time, I had most of my troops moving slowly through the woods. We were far enough away with intervening terrain that being in the open wasn't an issue. It took me a while—and several failed initiatives—to get my men forward.

Kevin got right in and searched the nearest hut to him. He found nothing, but nothing blew up, so 1 point for the Marines.

I soon learned—scratch that, I soon experienced what happens when you have men in the open. I learned nothing. Kevin made a long-range shot at a guy I had well forward crossing a road, which resulted in the first casualty of the game. In this case and Out of Action result, which is effectively WIA.

This would not be the first time I had men out in the open getting shot. I trusted too much to luck and luck buggered me. Indeed, my dice rolling was almost entirely ill favored. After my second initiative, I resorted to attempting only a single action per figure lest I tempt the angry dice gods to abort my activation phase. I was a bout 50% on single attempts, but whenever I tried to make two or more actions for a figure, disaster struck. I had a few snake-eyes results and a couple of the dreaded snake-eyes-with-a-third-eye results.

Kevin's rolling was a bit better, but not great. He, too, tended to stick to single action activations.

We soon got into a firefight in one section of the table that drew our other forces in. At one point, Kevin seemed poised to dash for the second building, but instead moved to consolidate his forces around the first hut. I had a few figures in some scrub and one in the third hut, which were facing Kevin's growing mass of men in a patch of scrub just in front of hut #1.

Kevin continued to advance his men through a rice paddy to reinforce his position.

I was able to put his M-60 gunner out of action, but that remained my sole success for a while.

Meanwhile, I got another two of my men shot in the open.

In all this, I never got my LMG into action. Several failed activations while he was deep in the woods, prevented me getting him anywhere where he could make any effect on the game. For few turns, the wood-creepers got the benefit of my NCO with a +1 to their activation attempts. That turned a few failures into single successes. However, I soon moved my NCO across the road and out of range so he could have some influence on the escalating firefight.

Getting him in soon made a difference. I managed one good shot using a group fire that resulted not only in a KIA, but a gruesome kill (tripling the defender's role along with a natural 6 on the die sort of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version of a combat result).

The gruesome kill required everyone nearby (which was everyone) to check morale. This caused a lot of men to run backwards at least one move distance. Only one Marine held his position.

At this point, Kevin decided it was time to withdraw and call in a Thud strike.

The game went pretty well for a first try of the rules. Ganesha Games basic engine is pretty simple and easily modified if you want. The rules aren't well laid out, however, and we spent some time flipping through pages to find how to do a specific thing. I need to make up a cheat sheet that has the most encountered questions right at our fingertips.

Gaming at Zulu's was nice. They serve beer and some basic eats; we enjoyed chicken tenders and tater tots for lunch washed down with beers (a Belgian ale in my case). Their full kitchen has been shut down for COVID, but they say it will be reopening soon.

We'll return to 'Nam gaming soon. Our next game will feature the Giac My rules from 1978(!). They may be a bit more fiddly than we like, but it will be nice to give them a play.

I also uncovered WRG's old Infantry Action 1925 - 1975 rules from my stash. I'm keen to give these a try as well.