Ia Drang Design Notes

Ia Drang Design Notes by Phil Yates The Ia Drang project was inspired by the book and movie We Were Soldiers. Our goal was to refight the rather dramatic battle at Ia Drang that pitched the new air-mobile tactics of the First Cavalry Division against the guerrilla tactics of the regulars of the People’s Army of North Vietnam. After watching the movie and reading Chickenhawk, an account of a helicopter pilots experience in and around that battle, we just had to have some helicopters (even if only to be able to make twop twop noises and play Ride of the Valkaries much too loud!)

The size of the battle lent itself well to our existing Flames Of War rules, so we decided to extend them to cover the US and Vietnamese forces involved, and of course helicopters. I think the result was well worth the effort as I’ve really enjoyed every step of it, from the initial research, through the design, to playing the battles out. I can’t say I’m any sort of Hal Moore (or Mel Gibson for that matter), but I have managed to hold out in this modern day Custer’s Last Stand on occasion.

The First Cavalry One of my design goals was to keep a sense of continuity between the US Army of the Second World War and that of Vietnam. Although 20 years had passed and the Korean War had been fought, the US Army entered Vietnam confident that the updated form of the war-winning force it fielded in the Second World War was the best in the world. Their equipment was better, but the core of the army was very much the same. The key to achieving that goal was to provide new weapons, but keep the core rules the same.

The resulting US Rifle Company (Airmobile) looks very much like the WWII Rifle Company, just with smaller squads and the machine-guns moved down from a company-level weapons platoon to platoon-level weapons squads. The big difference is in the new M16 rifle and M79 grenade launcher combination. American tactics in Vietnam did not use the M16 like an assault rifle, just as an improved M1 Garand, so we kept them as Rifle teams, but increased their ROF to 2 while shortening their range slightly. We played around with quite a few rules to reflect the effect of the M79 grenade launchers, but in the end, their main effect seems to have been their deadly flechette rounds used to break up attacks at pointblank range. This inspired us to use them to give the US Rifle teams an extra dice in defensive fire, including when pinned down. The result seemed to work well. The platoon relies on its M60 machine-guns for its firepower, but in close it can chuck out a huge amount of firepower if it needs to. As an aside, the First Cavalry received the new M16E1 rifle, not the original M16, so the myriad of problems experienced by the first units issued with the M16 did not affect them and they found their new rifle reliable and effective.

Helicopters The helicopter rules were another challenge. We knew from the start that we wanted the helicopters to operate more like fast-moving tanks than aircraft, but that proved to be more awkward than anticipated. The basic ideas are fairly simple, but every game in the first few weeks of playtesting introduced another place where they weren’t quite like either aircraft or tanks, such as in assaults. It also quickly became apparent that we needed different rules for the troop-carrying ‘Slicks’ and the ‘Hog’ gunships. The Slicks land on the LZ, while the Hogs roam the battlefield causing havoc. While the resulting rules are longer than I would have liked at a whole two pages, I think they do a reasonable job of bringing helicopters into Flames Of War.

The Vietnamese Writing the rules for the Vietnamese was another interesting challenge. The forces available at the battle were very lightly equipped and took horrendous casualties, but managed to keep the American forces off balance by launching attacks from different directions one after the other. These two facets prompted their two main special rules: Guerilla Warfare and Born in the North to Die in the South. The Guerilla Warfare rule means that the Vietnamese bring on their reserves in a random table quarter, regardless of normal deployment areas.

A force facing them cannot rely on the enemy appearing from a predictable direction and needs to be ready for attacks from any quarter at any time. This rule makes for interesting challenges for the American player. They have to mass their forces in one direction to achieve their objectives, but the Vietnamese could be anywhere, requiring the diversion of significant forces to flank and rear security. If the Americans spread out too much, they get picked off by ambushes, but they can’t leave the Landing Zone unguarded either. The resulting tug of war between conflicting requirements tends to produce many of the situations found in the historical battles we were recreating.

The Born in the North to Die in the South rule (named after a popular saying amongst North Vietnamese soldiers) is intended to handle the horrendous casualties they took in these battles. Even the Vietnamese accounts have units taking 60% to 70% casualties in a few hours and give mind-numbing casualty totals (far lower than US claims of course, but then the Vietnamese claims were even more inflated!). Rather than require players to amass huge collections of models, we allowed them to bring their basic infantry companies back on again after they were destroyed. As well as saving models, this reflects the escalating forces as Vietnamese units marched to the sound of the guns.

Combining these special rules with Soviet-style big battalions and Fearless motivation produced a force capable of overrunning poorly-deployed American units, but they needed more to handle a well-prepared American defence. That’s where their weapons mix came in. The post-war Soviet rifle battalion organisation adopted by the North Vietnamese is well provided for in the weapons department.

The basic rifle squads have a mix of SKS carbines and AK-47 assault rifles giving them plenty of firepower on the move (even if only at short range), and a B-40 rocket-propelled grenade launcher (the Soviet RPG-2) for knocking out dug in machine-guns. At the company level, they have light machine-guns giving them a longer-ranged firepower. Battalions and regiments have heavy machine-guns, recoilless rifles, mortars and 12.7mm anti-aircraft machine-guns to back up their rifle companies. Interestingly, this array of weaponry produced a wide variety of strategies. Some players opted to leave the support behind and attack with massed infantry. Others took a more fire-power based approach using the anti-aircraft weapons to drive off the helicopters and the recoilless guns, and mortars to weaken and pin down the enemy ahead of their infantry attacks. None worked perfectly, but all produced interesting games.

Missions None of this would have been much fun without some new missions. While the forces work well in the standard missions, and bring a whole new dimension to those classics with air mobile tactics and guerrilla warfare, we really wanted to capture the fighting around Ia Drang itself. The result was two new missions and some new rules for wounded soldiers and medevac.

The first mission was based on the initial landing at Ia Drang (the Cauldron mission makes a great basis for the later part of the battle!). The mission starts with just a single American platoon landed in a clearing with orders to check out a reported arms cache or headquarters. The battle is a race between the Americans attempting to land enough troops to achieve their mission and the Vietnamese trying to build up a coordinated attack to capture the Landing Zone to isolate and destroy the Americans on the ground. Since both sides saw the Vietnam War as being about ‘body count’ at this time, the players gain victory points for destroying enemy forces as much as for preserving their own.

This leads to the new medevac rules. In line with the emphasis on ‘body count’, the Us Army made prodigious efforts to evacuate its wounded, even in the middle of combat. To reflect this, we allowed American teams to be wounded rather than destroyed outright. To restore these teams back to full combat capability, they need to get to the medic to hand over their wounded buddies, or to a helicopter to evacuate them directly to hospital. The resulting rule gave the American forces a little more staying power, as well as introducing a bit more colour (and headaches for the American commander) into the mission. Which brings me to the other mission. This is based on the ambush that happened while the Cavalry were marching from LZ X-ray, where the main battle was fought, to LZ Albany where they were going to be picked up. Enroute they ran into an ambush by North Vietnamese forces marching to join the battle. The mission uses parts of the Roadblock mission to ambush part of the American force while the rest arrives at LZ Albany at the other end of the table ready to march to their rescue. I really enjoy this mission as it is quite ‘cowboys and indians’ with the ambushed force trying to hold out as the main force attempt to rescue them. Lots of fun all round. Happy gaming, ~ Phil