A second game of TMOCB against an actual opponent, this time introducing Dave to the rules. For a change I thought we could play the scenario where the White Star aim is to rescue a downed aircrew.
I used the VC again while Dave had the USMC with support from a Kit Carson Vietnamese scout, a dog handler team (Pvt Buster appears again!) and an extra base of men.
The scene of the crash:
The crew are nowhere to be seen but have managed to destroy the downed chopper:
The Americans arrive quickly, quite close to the crash site:
They begin by attempting to interrogate a local peasant. Unfortunately during the course of the interrogation the peasant dies. Even worse there is a member of the press to record the incident:
Sgt Elias has better luck, searching in a bamboo thicket with the help of Pvt Buster the search dog he finds one of the aircrew dead and recovers the body:
Sgt Rambo searches an area of jungle and is ambushed by the sneaky VC! One Marine base is hit:
The VC begin to gather in the villages:
Recruitment goes well and more peasants join the fight against the Imperialists:
Sgt Rambo searches another area of jungle and finds two aircrew alive! The search is going well with three out of the four crew being found before the VC have even engaged:
The Lieutenant and his men search for the last crewman but are ambushed by a VC sniper who takes out one Marine base:
The Marines begin to consolidate their forces, will they try to find the last crewman or accept that three out of four isn't bad?:
As the Imperialists have not split up the VC can't try to pick on an isolated group and are finding it difficult to come up with a plan, mostly they just recruit more peasants:
The VC try to concentrate their forces to attack the Imperialists:
The Marines seem to have given up on the fourth crewman and remain on the defensive:
Finally there is some action as two VC groups move into a village and prepare to attack the Marines:
An initial firefight goes in favour of the VC with a couple of Marine bases down:
The Marines bring Sgt Barnes' section on to support the rest of their force, it is unlikely they will find the fourth crewman now:
The firefight continues:
More VC attempt to join the fight:
Remarkably the VC seem to be gaining the upper hand:
The Lieutenant calls down an artillery strike on a VC held village. Unfortunately no VC are injured but another innocent peasant is killed, once again the reporter is on the scene to record this atrocity:
The Marines are slowly falling back:
The fighting is dying down now:
One last artillery strike is called down by the Lieutenant. The fire isn't accurate though and the barrage lands on Sgt Barnes who luckily survives. Doubtless he will be having words with the Lieutenant and the artillerymen later!:
At this point the game ended with the Marines holed up in a corner awaiting extraction and the VC unable to make much further progress.
After being very successful initially in finding the first three downed crew Dave played a careful defensive strategy, keeping all his men together so they could support each other and be controlled by the Lieutenant as well as successfully evacuating most of his casualties.
Given this I found it hard to mass the VC to pick on any individual US unit and was lucky in the firefights (or Dave was unlucky, or both!) as my VC consistently out-shot the Americans despite being raw and, in theory, being hit much more easily.
The final VP score was 50 to the VC and 44 to the Marines so very close, most of the VC VP came from the fact that the Marines had not searched many areas and for just turning up! Dave's casualty evacuation was especially efficient as, despite taking quite a lot of hits, he only had two casualties on table at the end of the game.
So that's Dave and Gary introduced to TMOCB, both enjoyed their games and we may try to play a few more in the future.
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