'Nam

I'd never much leaned towards miniature gaming the Vietnam War. I'm not sure why. I was too young to be involved myself, but I have known several Vietnam vets among my gaming friends and associates, some of whom were scarred by their experience there. I have played Vietnam-themed board games, however. Hue and Search and Destroy remain some of my favorites (I even have two copies of Hue).

Yet, there has been temptation from some very nice minis that have come out. The first that took my notice were the excellent The Assault Group minis. Phil Bardsley bought several of these when they first came out, but never wound up doing anything with them. I also looked benignly upon the range from Empress Miniatures. Empress makes a very nice range that includes ANZAC troops as well as US, North Vietnamese, and VC troops. They also make some nice heavy weapons.

Now, however, Kevin Smyth has suckered me into it. He enthused about the most excellent Gringo40s Vietnam range. I'd seen these before and gave them a very positive, "Hmmmm." But Kevin's entry into this field swayed me. I ordered a pile of NVA minis and then another pile after that. They ain't cheap, so it's good that were limiting ourselves to skirmish gaming. Nevertheless, with subsequent orders for VC and Marines coming, I'll have about 80 figures (I could tabulate an exact number, but that would take actual thinking).

Gringo40s are expanding their range and have recently added US Army figures to their Marines. I'm hoping they move on to ANZAC, ROK, and the much, much neglected ARVN (I don't think anyone makes ARVN in 28mm).

I've got five minis totally completed. 

There's another larger batch (12) that just need final touches to their basing. 

Another four that need a bit more than final touches, and—a surprise—another four that I just discovered on Saturday night during our Zoom chat that required cleaning, assembly, and primering. The primer is drying on them now as I write this.

I'm awaiting my last two orders for VC and Marines from Gringo40s.

Kevin has a lot of Marines painted, with smaller numbers of NVA and VC. He's also ordered an Ontos. To top it all off, he's ordered a 3D printed set of 28mm scale buildings for Hue, 1968. They'll be very cool when they get here, but that might be a while still.

Rules

For rules, we'll start with Ganesha Games' Flying Lead. I like the Ganesha game engine and find that it works for a lot of periods. 

I also managed to reacquire a copy of Giac My. I had a set I got used about 30 years ago. I thought I'd kept it, but couldn't find it when I actually wanted to look at it for this project. Mark Waddington stepped up and gave me his copy. Giac My is a more complex set than Flying Lead; it's old-school. There are a lot of modifiers for shooting, sighting, and such. With Flying Lead, I can see one person running up to 20 figures easily. Giac My will need to be smaller scale, maybe 8 figures max.

I also bought a PDF copy of Two Hour Wargames FNG: Tour of Duty. 

Ed Texiera was a WA resident for a while and quite active in NHMGS, our regional wargaming org. FNG is a different approach to gaming the conflict and looks to be interesting. Ed threw in a free copy of FNG: Unconventional Warfare.

Because we're sticking with single-mounted figures, any 1:1 set of rules will work for us.

First game

We've planned out first game for March 27 at Zulu Games in beautiful, refurbished, resurrected Bothell, WA. Zulu has been around for a few years now and has increased their space considerably since they opened. I've played there a few times with my friends Rick and Janet Martinez. They're a game pub, so food and beer is an option.

Now that Panzer Depot is no more, Zulu is the only public place to game with minis in the North end.

We'll start with trying Flying Lead with about 8-10 figures each, If that goes quickly enough, we'll dip our toes into Giac My using about half that number of troopies.