Marine River force in Vietnam

[Suhiir]

Well I finally had the time to finish the first scenario in the campaign.

That is probably some of the worst terrain I've ever had to deal with. The "hidden" shallow water hexes, the ones that show up brown rather then blue (and those could easily be interpreted as marsh) were a major pain. All-in-all pretty typical terrain for the Mekong Delta, excellent job on the map!

As mentioned the force ratio and number of AA weapons was a "bit" off.

Given the number of points allotted for purchasing your CORE force I suspect you assumed folks would have apx. a reinforced company.
Thus: 9xRifle Squads, 6xMMG, 3(or 6)xLt AT, 3xLt Mortar, plus whatever else they purchased.
Against this we had 44xSquads/Teams, 9xHv AAMG, 6xZPU-4 AAMG, 3xRR, 2xLt Mortar, 12xRocket Launcher, and 2xBoats (which were surprisingly well armed, smugglers usually don't advertize by arming their boat to the teeth).
I assume the rocket launchers (and the ammo ships) were the objective, so they can be semi-discounted in the force ratio.
Typically the military likes a 3-to-1 (or better 6-to-1) ratio when attacking. In this scenario we had apx. 1-to-3 to 1-to-5.
While it's certainly reasonable that there might be say a company of VC that intel missed in the area, a battalion is a "bit" much.

Typically in the attack a USMC Rifle Company would be supported by a pair of armed helos, no way you could afford them given the number of points allotted. Besides, given the EXTREMELY strong AA present they would have felt like ducks in a shooting gallery.
Also the USMC typically makes extensive use of it's own private air force as flying artillery (I read someplace recently the USMC dropped 70% of the close air support tonnage the USA used during WW II).

All that said it was a very interesting battle, and given that about half the VC squads were a counterattack that was hindered by the terrain as much (or more) as I was the force ratio wasn't as much a factor as it would normally be.

On to battle #2!

[duff]

Thanks Suhir. A couple of assumptions you made are not what I was trying to present: The boats aren't smugglers, they're pirates, The VC are all around and represent a regional force - the game intent is that whatever approach you use you will meet some enemy without the counter attack being too tough - It should feel like you caught them off guard and out of position. Any suggestions on wether/how I could give that effect - change the intro maybe?

Thanks for the links Kessu, I will certainly take that info into account once I've had time to read through.

Also - I understand the AA is OTT and when I'm able I will be redoing all the battles with less (especially less 14mm). I'd like to still have a campaign where choppers fear to tread as much as possible. Would it be a better representation of the way the marines operated to put the pair of gunships into some of the battles as support? The AA issue is a problem for each of the battles and will be addressed (so for those game enough to beta test the later battles you don't need to include that in feedback)