ARVN Forces in ‘Nam

By Charles Christy,

Yeah, come on all of you big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again
He’s got himself in a terrible jam,
way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up some dice,
we’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.

So Battlefront is revisiting ‘Nam… and it looks like it will be a whole lot of new rules and ratings as the game joins Version 4 FOW with a new look, new ratings, and plenty of new options to play with.

This article will cover the ARVN. When we played Tropic Lightning/Tour of Duty, my army was the ARVN. They offered all the right gear at a great price and, in fact, were very innovative in how they met the PAVN threat.

The first thing you will see in ‘Nam is that there are more options, paralleling the US options, allowing you to play through the last years of the war. There are M48 tanks, river warfare options, ARVN air power, and helicopters. Plus, you can add US direct support or ANZAC formations, using the multiple formation format now common to FOW V4 and Team Yankee.

The second thing is the ratings, now also in the new format, with some changes to vehicle ratings, troop categories, and additional equipment being available.

Third, the old Patronage system seems to have been removed, so the political corruption that plagued the ARVN is out of the game system. Now, we don’t have anyone to blame when the troops fail in their activities.

Completely new options are ARVN marines and river gunboats, dedicated anti-tank platoons available in the various infantry formations, medic and medevac options for the infantry just like the US or ANZAC forces and ARVN air support in addition to all the options that the other free world forces can provide.

So let’s look at the vehicles and some of the noted rating changes. I played the ARVN Cavalry so was used to M113’s festooned with M60’s and M2’s and recoilless rifles, riflemen hanging on, because the cavalry fought mounted a lot of the time. In the old game your platoon was 4 elements, but now you can get up to 5, with one replacing its M60’s with a 106mm recoilless rifle. The ‘tank rider’ option is gone, so you get a ROF 3 for the .50-cals and a ROF 2 for the M60s, with a total of five dice as opposed to the old version’s six dice.

The recoilless rifle now gets the brutal rating, but has a shorter range of only 20” and is considered “forward firing” so has a more limited firing arc. Nothing too horrible with all this, the extra track gives your platoon about the same firepower as before, and at 1-point each makes for a very mobile way to toss 25 dice at the bad guys each turn.

The cavalry has as its supports an 81mm M125 platoon with 3 tubes, or a 2 or 4 tube M106 heavy mortar platoon, 2 or 3 Zippo flame tracks, and the troop can still add 5 M41s, static artillery, infantry platoons, etc. and still come in for a modest points cost. If we go for a modestly sized game of 64-points, this assortment won’t expend half your total.

That means you can now take a full M41 tank company with 2 tanks in HQ, and two or three platoons of 5 tanks each! At 6 points for 5 M41’s you have plenty of light armor and can beehive the PAVN or Cong all day long. If you had much experience with the original offering, you remember that getting vehicles was expensive.

Of course, if you want to do the 20th tank battalion, with its M48’s you’ll pay a premium indeed. As the US downsized, the ARVN obtained these machines in increasing numbers, which gave them a serious edge on their northern antagonists in their T34s and T55s. They are far more expensive but way more survivable.

In addition, the “heat” rules similar to Team Yankee are in the game, with bazooka skirts or bar armor being available additions to vehicles (in some cases) and giving improved protection against RPG rounds as a result.

Artillery now has the repeat fire rules added, and a C2 helo is available to provide overhead fire control, both welcome additions to any free world force inventory. You can place your towed guns in “nests” on the table, or firebases off-table for support, which was similar to the original game, and with the reduced points costs overall can afford plenty of artillery support to keep the hostiles pinned and hammered.

To the left is a list I plan to use in an upcoming game with my PAVN adversary (Iron Tom, here in Kentucky). As you can see I have a lot of vehicles and not used a lot of points getting there. This is about double what I could field in the old Tour of Duty system.

I’m only using 4xM113’s in each platoon because that is how they are currently organized and ID’d; with this much stuff you really want to be able to tell who is in which platoon or have chaos on the table top.

Some other observations with the new ‘NAM book are the historical material is still interposed into the list sections to get you a feel for the force you’re working on. The text has been upgraded with the addition of a lot of new options as I said earlier. The text has been upgraded with the addition of a lot of new historical and background information so that anyone, young or old will be able to understand some of the complexities of this conflict. Also, the Billboard top tunes for each year are listed, so you will be able to have that musical background blaring in the background as your troops give battle.

The new ARVN lists are greatly expanded. In addition to the cavalry and tank units, there are infantry, airborne infantry, and marines as well as a full range of riverine forces. MACV was drawing down US participation so all the equipment in country was handed over to the ARVN as part of the Vietnamization process. All these assets are now available to the ARVN player and with the flexibility of multiple formations in a force you can tailor your force to fit any mission.

You can also use the allied rules to add US or ANZAC units to create either an allied formation or specific platoons as direct support for your force. The same assets that the US or ANZAC have available are now indigenous to the ARVN player as well.

Conclusions drawn from the first pass through the ‘Nam rules are a cleaner, more consistent game system that joins the other Battlefront offerings, plenty of force options and a large degree of flexibility with the multiple formations in a force that V4/Team Yankee have introduced. The ratings seem consistent with what we’ve seen in Team Yankee, leading to the possibility that you can take them into the 1980’s since much of the equipment used in Viet Nam is still found in inventories around the world. The first game coming soon!