French IndoChina Game Report

This is the report from the game we did on May 5th. It was our first battle with these figs and the rules were homemade. The game featured 4 of us versus' the ref. The Vietminh were already in place and all we had to do as the French was make our battle plan and execute it. The report was written by the ref for the game.

The premise was that the French were launching a three pronged search and destroy operation against a VietMinh valley. To do this the French came from three ways: a riverine column with patrol boat leading LTV-4s carrying an infantry company, a road column of trucks, tanks, and two infantry companies and finally a parachute drop of a battalion of Legion paratroops.The decision was made to delay the paratroop drop until Turn 6 to give the road column a better chance of co-ordinating the assault. In retrospect this was a debatable strategy IMHO but it certainly was well timed - they had predicted right where the road column would be. What they lost though was precious time which allowed the Viet Minh leadership to reach their tunnel in the church and sneak out of that place to a bolt hole in the jungle. Though the paratroopers eventually found that tunnel, it was too late by then.The riverine force was quite successful early, with its heavy MG firepower it blasted two sampans to bits and dominated the landing zone by the riverbank. The ANV company (which are Vietnamese troops fighting for the French and not very good troops at that) performed quite well, seizing a hill in the teeth of VietMinh resistance and sweeping the jungle quite successfully. Kudos to Rich who commanded them.The French did find most but not all of the supply caches hidden about the table. Once the paratroops actually landed a company almost right on top of two supply caches but never did find them.Overall the French commanders cooperated well enough and fought well, winning the battle as I expected against out gunned Viet Minh resistance. It wont always be this easy.Victory Point wise the winner of the game was DaveR, who ran the paratroops, with Dave F and the riverine force coming in second.I was satisfied with the rules, of course I will no doubt tinker with them a bit more but they worked fast. We got in a lot of turns. I liked the look of the table, yet I do plan on getting even more trees for my jungle.

My thoughts: The game was fun and played out rather smooth. I (Brumbar) played the paratrooper commander and that was challenging enough. I dropped numbered pieces of paper from a height of 16". Where they landed as the fell was where I started. Very challenging! I tried to drop one company onto a hill and a second company onto another. Out of 12 stands from the 1st company, only 2 hit the hill. The second company, had only 1 stand land on the hill out of 9 stands. I had a mortar stand from the 1st company land smack dab into the middle of a rice paddy. They were quickly eliminated by a Vietminh group who were walking down a road. The other rifle stand that landed with it, managed to run away and join the rest of the company.

The figs used are 12mm. I made a mistake in my previous post that they were 10mm. Again, a very enjoyable game and a neat scenario with all players on the same side.