Versus Vietnamese Verewolves (A Vietnam '65 AAR) (COMPLETE)

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day thirty-five

I'm starting to think I've found a bug in how the game counts enemy squads. After last night (when the portal north of Ugeek village spawned a pack which beat 1st Company's ambush and ran away -- are the VC getting better as the game goes on!? -- the augurs still say 8 VC, 1 NVA, 1 base. That 8VC doesn't seem to be right, but I'll keep track if I shoot any today.

Unfortunately, today I didn't shoot any. I only moved various people around, got them resupplied, prepared to evacuate them.

End of day, back down to 67 HAM, 1699 PSUP. Naturally still 8 VC (supposedly) on the map, since I didn't strike at any.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day thirty-six

Ten days left in the campaign.

Yep, the northeast portal is good and locked down, for now. Could be trouble if the company there gets wounded, since they have no easy way to evac (or to get reinforcements to plug the portal.) Nothing I can do about that right now, though, without more engineers, which aren't forthcoming.

Augurs start the day with the same 8 VC and 1 NVA, but maybe one VC spawned last night and I shot it. Only I know that isn't exactly true because the tracking indicates one zipped past my southern GBs into that currently-unnamed village they're outside! And I thought I had plugged that hole, too! Argh! Will have to reposition.

So it's another day of moving people around, preparing for better things later. I desperately wish I could send that 2nd tank platoon home for a recoup of political supply; it's just sucking psup right now in the Firebase, and I have no real need of it.

Since I'm about to create a new Forbase and move my arty there, thus ticking up their target package, I preemptively send a copter back to HQ on the start of a new ammo run. Quite probably he'll need to stay on that run permanently now.

67 HAM, 1985 Psup, same 8 and 1 (and 1).

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day thirty-seven

Nine days left in the campaign.

Augurs confirm a new VC pack spawned last night, somewhere we didn't catch immediately; so if we kill one a day presumably they can spawn one a day and there's the constant 8. (Perhaps.) Anyway, nothing else new last night.

But oh, son.

You know I know what time it is now.




It's Davy Crockett time.

First, some of those Rocketwolves to the west have to go, because I need to move my scouts north-er looking for that last base, and I can't until they're done spotting.




Score another for the Gibson County Tennessee Pioneers, Long Distance Sniping Company! (Last home of Davy Crockett, before the Alamo.)

It's a good thing, too. My Psup was getting low.

I should probably send the tank home now, as it's getting out of range of resupply itself. We'll see.

With a new supply of infantry congregating at the Firebase, I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to start ferrying at least one unit around the various towns every day by chopper, getting intel. I'll put that idea into play tomorrow.

End of day score: HAM 68, Psup 1651, 8 VC, 1 NVA, 1 base still in the area.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day thirty-eight

Eight days left in the campaign. (Or seven. Something like that. Time does funny things out here. One of our patrols returning to camp last night swore they saw a naked bat-woman flying overhead. Glowing. True story.)

(Not in the game, unfortunately. ;) Actually happened in real life.)




In-game, the northern scouts saw this pack pop out of nowhere and make a run for that village.

I'll be putting someone on that pronto. First I have to make sure the area is secure for a chopper to visit. And take care of some other housekeeping.

During that housekeeping, a copter got shot by an RPG rocketwolf ambush between Forbase-1 and UGeek village, attempting to drop off a rookie infantry so that the local ARVN could go question villagers better. That copter will have to go back for repairs now (and carry a wounded troop there, too), and try not to get ambushed again. No one's fault but mine: I chose to leave at least one hole getting to that area, and the computer exploited it well.

Still, those VC heading to the far northwestern village, barely on the range of my guns? They don't make it.

Around this time I realize the copter I sent on an ammo run, actually brought back supplies. I assume this is my fault somehow and not a bug, and send out another copter. My guns will be silent a couple of days soon.

Since I don't want to move my northern GBs any farther right now, I spend their turn checking for mines (always a good idea for GBs to do that since they can't ambush), and amazingly find some! Huh. Apparently placed on a trail from the Firebase to that far northwestern village. I feel pretty sure the last base is up there, too.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day thirty-nine

Busted a spawning scout up at the far northeast hole; and my southern GBs seem to have found another portal.




That little wiggly VC track at the bottom was making a run for the village (and still is; I really need to shoot something else today, he'll probably make it.) He couldn't have come from the portal my infantry is camping an ambush one third up from the left side bottom of that screenshot; he might have come from an area near where a rocket ambush shot a copter a few weeks back. Or, did he wiggle his way down from somewhere far to the north? -- there was evidence a while ago of a final portal up there somewhere.

How many portals will the game generate? Every map I've seen on the tutorials and the manual seems to suggest six. Could it be seven? Am I misremembering or is six not a set number? There was strong evidence a portal was down somewhere south along my GB's trail westward, too, though I never saw direct evidence of it.

Known portals and their precise or general areas:




Red hexes are portals; red question marks are suspected portal locations. The end of the game should be in about a week, and I'll compare information then (unless I get better info of course.)

Notice that last night an NVA unit showed up somewhere (unknown yet). Now, I hadn't dropped my net HAM score three mornings in a row, to say the least; very much less than the least is my score down to 40; nor is any village on the map down below 40. So this has to be a mere random NVA spawn, right? According to Johan, it shouldn't be able to create a new base, right?

We'll see. We'll see.

I decide I can (and do) Crock-shot those VC down near that village after all; and save my intended target one more day. But only one; my northern GBs need some resupply in the next few days.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day forty

Dear diary. Today I experimented to see if a helicopter would be repaired at HQ overnight without engineers. It can!

I can't wait any longer; my northern GBs must be supplied tomorrow or die. Fortunately as I send them back east to get into supply range, they don't pick up any problems in the path of the chopper. The Crockets Crock-shot the RPG squad down south near my other GBs, and they hike back eastward, too, for resupplying, soon. I'm parking another infantry on ambush up near that portal north of UGeek village; I don't feel confident I've even located it precisely yet, much less properly ambushed it. Hopefully soon I'll get more definite info. I have a suspicion, based on a lack of enemy action down on that portal west of the Firebase, that if I plop a unit directly on the portal that will seal it off permanently (so long as my unit can stay there.)

Also, I have a suspicion I should park at least one of my tanks in Forbase-2. And maybe another infantry on ambush, if I can spare one somewhere.

Also, I have a suspicion I should park an infantry out where that RPG sniped my copter many weeks ago, west of the Firebase. If that isn't near on a portal, it pretty much has to be on the path of one.

Also, talking to myself like I'm a diary tells me my tour of duty on this campaign had better be coming to an end this week.

Love, me.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day forty-one

Another day, another Rocketwolf squad Crocketed, thanks to my ammo train running across the map to Forebase-2. I still really need more scouts, and probably a chopper or two.

Still, even if that second NVA unit wherever it is (I never did arty the first one, on RPG ambush duty outside Endfire Village) drops a base down -- which it shouldn't -- I've probably got this game in the bag. 74 HAM, with almost 5000 political support - 250 for the remaining base to go.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day forty-twothree

Nothing much happened on Day 42 (other than the usual upkeep things); but on the night leading into Day 43, an NVA rocketwolf squad ran up and shot Forbase-2.

My engineers can deal with that, but still. My tank wasn't in place to fight back; nothing was. I should get some more things out there pronto.

Unfortunately, the next two units I found (a VC cadre and some NVA infantry) were too far south to Crockett them. I suppose I had better keep track of that NVA if I can, with my southern scouts; just in case they throw up a base. I should also probably resign myself to never finding that last base; I'm running my northern scouts back down south, having looked around the limits of my arty shots up there (and finding another VC on rocketduty just outside my range.)

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day forty-four

Hah! -- those NVA rocketwolves came back (they don't disperse after a fight, just retreat to think about what they've done), and this time the tank was ready for them at the Forbase!

The NVA infantry way down south didn't move a lick, which is weird. They don't read as RPGs (though they carry one). The VC presumably went into the village, or maybe laid mines, which is also weird either way since I can't figure out what portal they came from. The first portal I staked out on the western third of the map threw up a VC which my ambushing infantry caught, though, so that's okay.

That and a visit by my ARVN troops to a village opened up some new intel, one of which was the other NVA company which seems to be hanging out near the northwestern village -- just out of arty range, argh! The other was a cadre not too far from my Firebase (which has no arty in it at the moment), so I was able to chopper some infantry out there to deal with them, woot!

Best of all, though, as my northern GBs were working their way back down the western edge of the map, they just happened to move west far enough to see...




More Rocketwolves.

And Wolfbase One.

JUST OUTSIDE ARTILLERY RANGE! (Which has to be by accident, as that base was one of the four pestering me. But the computer did the right thing, it's plopped one hex into the map on the far western edge, kind of near a corner.)

But not outside range of the Chain.

The chain... apparently misses. One hex east.

Dammit, Chain, you had one job. ONE JOB!

Fine. The base gets to surely survive. This campaign. Fine.

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day forty-five

Somehow a set of VC managed to run into my southern Green Berets after all. Somehow, my GBs managed to roll a 1 on a four sided die, and ruined them; picking up some intel which will be of no real use to me whatever. But never mind, there's no way for me to lose by now.

The NVA near Wolfbase One must not have noticed my arty range, because they walked right into it overnight. This becomes their undoing, and that's the final shot of the Gibson County Volunteers.

At this point the only thing I have to do is make sure no one dies from unsupply tonight, which no one will.

And that's the game; after one more night of wolfery, where an NVA spawns from the northwestern portal I discovered in that clearing (east of Wolfbase One), and runs east for some purpose.

Final score, 77 HAM. Psup is irrelevant to the final score of course, but I'm sure I was over 7000 at the end.

We took seven casualties (but no fatalities). The VC and NVA lost 32 + 9 companies respectively. (I can't recall clearly if bases count as an NVA casualty; probably so, I doubt I shot that many NVA companies.) MacNamara would be pretty pleased with that. ;)

There were still 6 VC on the map (with one having spawned at the end), one NVA unit remaining (that weird glowing one standing around on the southwest edge of the map), and one NVA base (which the Chain of Command managed to miss. One job guys. One.)

Did I figure out where the portals were?

Yes. And no.




Jesus. I sure didn't remember there being TEN PORTALS when looking at previous maps.

Blue hexes show ones I detected and pretty much locked down with ambushes.

The red hex shows the one in the clearing I had pretty well located but couldn't lock down.

The yellow hexes show ones I suspected -- kind of; I sure wasn't suspecting the river. {eyeroll} But I was suspecting one kind of near there, and I had it locked down temporarily, though not at the end of the campaign.

The black hexes I never even got close on. I thought I had found the only one to the northeast, so once I tagged it I didn't think there was a further one! And while I suspected there might be one kind of northcentral on the map (the big yellow question marks), my guess was not really near where TWO OF THEM were set.

Worth noting: the portals really do seem randomly scattered. The distribution wasn't even, and at least two were sitting right next to each other, with some others being maybe only three or four hexes apart.

[bob48]

Yeek, are they running those out on you already? How did that happen?? (Those are the NVA tanks, right?)

Theoretically, that should only happen if your net HAM score average drops three nights in a row.

Eek! No, this is just me getting it all wrong. I obviously have much to learn........It was my first full game and I got kicked very hard.

[JasonPratt]

I want to do a post-mortem later today: I was up until midnight finishing my campaign, and desperately needed to hit the sack. I learned a lot -- I mean a lot that wasn't clearly explained, or even contradictorily explained, in the tutorials and/or printed rules -- but aside from griping about the (possibly buggy but still ridiculous) NVA base rules, what I learned can probably be succinctly summarized as this:

play the game the way the Australians fought. Not the way the US fought.

I might have done that anyway without realizing it, but I have Unheralded Victory to thank for introducing me to the difference in doctrine a couple of weeks ago. So when I started the game, I could already see that fighting it the US way would probably lead to disaster and that (especially given how the supply rules worked) I ought to try it the Australian way out of the gate. And I wasn't disappointed.

And I can see why it's tempting to add the weird Victory Generator rules (which then have to be wildly nerfed to keep them from overwhelming the game). As close as the AI came to randomly winning the game about midway through, had it not lucked up and instituted its only real winning strategy that soon, I would have demonstrably dominated the game even harder in the second half of the campaign.

I think this points to a need to revise AI strategy so that it doesn't need gamey Hail Marys which have to be nerfed into being random Hail Marys to keep from wildly overwhelming the game the other way around. But I'm not the designer, so...  :-\

[bob48]

Just won a minor victory, which was very satisfying indeed. Air supply saved my bacon a couple of times! This really is a neat little game for the price. O0

[JasonPratt]

Something my AAR, by its nature, cannot accurately convey, is that a whole campaign can be played in maybe an hour and a half. I should add that to my notes at the beginning. (Now done.)

[JasonPratt]

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- post-mortem epilogue

Aside from getting a better idea of what the rules actually are (currently) and how the game is played, what did I learn about the game from this first campaign?

1.) FIGHT LIKE AN AUSTRALIAN!

This needs a little unpacking. US military strength was consistently decisive at the larger scale fighting of the Vietnam War; but routine day-to-day operations, on which this game is sort-of based (more on the sort-of soon), typically involved setting up a well-defended central base within a four hour round-trip march of areas to be defended, including villages, and then sending out patrols nominally to find, fix, and finish enemy groups (flanking wasn't much necessary with accurate artillery and air support) -- but due to the tactical idea of going out and back every day in different directions, the speed involved meant in practice that the patrols were bait to lure enemy groups into ambushing them, after which support could be called onto their position.

The Australian method was different, though by its nature not widely used (since ANZAC could only send relatively few troops). Patrols were meant to be long-range meticulous hunter groups, going out for days at a time to sanitize an area, ideally by finding where the Viet Cong were congregating before operations and then catching them at the group point with a concentrated ambush and fire support. At first this meant traveling with a light ammo load, though after a few near disasters ANZAC changed its policies to about twice the load -- though still shy of the heavy typical American loads. After all, the American policy was to send out one day round trip patrols, so they could carry a larger firepower load hoping to be able to stand and fight better in surviving an ambush.

It should be noted that while the Australian patrol strategy still didn't focus much on taking and securing territory (it couldn't, due to the severe manpower limitations), the American policy was practically antithetical to securing territory. But this fit the overall political position that the US was not there to colonize South Vietnam (like the French) but only to support South Vietnam in its own rule of the area. The ARVN was intended to secure and hold the territory.

This game, by its design and (to be blunt) wonky scale which combines, in effect, multiple scale-level issues, doesn't favor the American approach at all. So far as the map looks, the player ought to start by setting up a Firebase in the middle of the map, with plenty of arty support capable of multiple fire missions a day over a period of days (and ditto for off-map air support), and then having to manage the occasional chopper resupply to the central Firebase and also to any secondary Forbases (to coin a term) set up around the region. Troops would then march out to surrounding villages once a day, perhaps even several in an orbit, and come back at night. There would be no intention or need to supply troops in the field, except at the secondary Forbases naturally.

That strategy is altogether impossible in this game. It can easily take half the game to get a Firebase safely set up in the middle of the region, not even counting secondary Forbases, and even Green Berets can only cover two map hexes of forest a day, regular infantry one, then scaled upward for effect in clear and road areas. A regular infantry unit would starve to death over a period of day/turns marching out from the starting HQ to visit even one village and then marching back. A GB might feasibly make it, but would be unable to effectively fight any enemy units it finds, and the in-game cost would be prohibitive -- and most of the week would still be spent marching out to a village and back again, leaving the village free to be terrorized the rest of the time.

So the game forces the player to implement an Australian patrol strategy, except upgraded to an operational level: send troops out to discreet areas to watch and if possible ambush the enemy, calling in arty and airstrikes when possible (but there's never anywhere near enough of that); and looking for the congregation points where otherwise indistinguishable (and thus invisible) villagers 'become' VC units temporarily for an assigned mission that week.

Then project that effect westward progressively, supporting infantry units (which at the scale of movement must be company sized or larger perhaps) semi-permanently out in the field. PRACTICALLY NEVER BACK AT ANY BASES, except to help secure those bases against attack (or to recover from wounds).

Alternate strategies could be proposed, but due to the weird scales involved, and their limitations on troop movement, I think they would be necessarily variations on this theme. And proportionately more risky the more they deviate from this conservatively careful strategy; not least in creation and support costs verses subsequent gains in destroying the enemy. After all, early in the game -- when the player can kind-of afford to set up an alternate strategy, the enemy has a whole map range to play in without much or even any risk in giving the human player any return on the invested cost.

Naturally, next time I play (before the coming update anyway, which could change things around in unexpected ways, for better and/or for worse), I do want to try an alternate strategy. But my prediction is that it probably isn't going to work as well.