5th Marines 1967
So, I am playing the first campaign in the list, and this is how it went.
The first time I tried this, I bought a light infantry company and a mortar platoon, which seemed reasonable at the time. Seeing that the first battle was up a big hill, I decided to avoid the obvious approach (straight up the middle), which I was sure would be heavily defended, and instead climb up the north side by trudging through some rice paddies.
Well, that didn't work out at all. I got into a few firefights with 3-man VC squads on the northern side of the hill, which wasn't so much of a problem. However, the game ended before I had a chance to even try getting up the hill. 25-turn limit, that's it. That wasn't very satisfying, so I tried again, from the start. Took my mortar platoon, fired a lot of smoke, shot off my guns like crazy, and charged up the center, because the gods have decreed that that's the only way to go. Sure enough, there were plenty VC dug in along that approach, and it seemed that no matter how many trees I shot they weren't afraid to pop out and get some of my men. I was unable to advance without taking obscene casualties. I got fed up and quit. This was a year ago.
Recently I thought I'd try again. This time, instead of buying mortars and artillery support, I got a section (3) of M50 Ontos, which realistically would not be attached permanently to a company, but then A) What would? and B) When else am I going to get to use the ontos? For support, instead of getting any artillery at all, I got 2 M67 Zippos, a single ammo truck (essential if you want to use ontos tanks) and a VNAF spotter plane, because I couldn't afford an American one. This went much better. I used alot of suppressive fire to compensate the lack of artillery, let my zippos lead the way, burned everything up, captured the first objective and... 25 turns! Marginal victory it tells me. Determined to get this right, I started over again. And I got it right. I went at a crazy pace, exposed my zippos to ridiculous risk, got lucky, and captured all the objectives at a loss of just two men - both of those to a landmine. This involved splitting off a platoon to capture the southern objective individually, and splitting off another platoon to march north as soon as I got up the hill. That is, when I captured the first objective, my three platoons went in three different directions! Even doing this, I couldn't make it to the northern objectives on foot. I had to send my zippos to ram into buildings just to get to them, while the infantry watched. Hey, they're not really mine anyhow. I got a decisive victory with 2 lost vs. 78 enemy casualties. That was pretty damn lucky, but now I think I'm learning how to do this, and feel optimistic about the next battle.
In the next battle I'm told I'm supposed to assault a heavily fortified complex east of the hill I just took, that two companies failed to do this over the last two days, and that I will be facing MG and RR fire. I am allotted an evil amount of artillery and air support.
Since I only needed to repair one unit from the last battle, I had 99 points leftover. I used them to buy another ontos section for my core, so I now have the whole platoon. Again, not exactly realistic, but I really love this thing (no pun intended). With the 300 support points I was assigned, I was inclined to get M728 CEV's, which would seem to be the tool of choice for assaulting a heavily fortified, probably heavily mined bunker and tunnel complex. However, looking at their stats, the 165mm main gun is loaded with 30 rounds of HE ammo, and no HEAT. That means they can't touch bunkers. (I thought that HEP/HESH was supposed to be represented by HEAT... but anyway....) So instead I bought a company of ARVN engineers. It came with 3 bazookas, 6 flamethrowers, and 8 properly armed (M60 & M79) engineer squads. I figured on using a lot of walking fire and smoke, and letting the flamethrowers attack the bunkers when I found them. I also got two ammo trucks and an ARVN mortar section (2 tubes).
Well, I didn't want to pile everybody together, so I decided to attack from two directions. 2/3 of my force will come in from the northwest, where there are two relatively wide avenues of hard ground. One marine platoon plus one ARVN platoon will approach from the south, where there is a narrow bridge of grass between the mud and rice paddies. There is, of course, fire support to go around. My ontos tanks won't be able to reach the southern group, though, until a path around the stream is secured. Due to the RR's in the area, I plan to employ them conservatively.
This battle was hairier than the last one. I started off with the mistake of holding back my artillery until turn 3, figuring I would want to actually spot something first. There was no danger of running out of ammo, so this was the wrong thing to do. To make a long story short, I advanced cautiously, firing like mad, and took a few losses but generally was able to overwhelm the VC with superior numbers. My fixed-wing air support proved almost useless; they didn't bomb anywhere near their targets, and one actually attacked my helicopter, but missed. My ARVN flamethrowers did actually manage to take out a couple bunkers, but it wasn't enough. On turn 19, I was just capturing the first line of objectives; I had two hexes flagged, and three with a unit adjacent to them. The battle ended just as my assault was coming into full swing; I had 25 casualties to the NLF's 89, but got a marginal defeat, which, I guess, is how Viet Nam ought to be.
I'm definitely not going to retry battle 2, but I wonder if anybody who has played this has any idea how you can possibly get to the objectives in just 20 turns? I just can't see it happening.
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