Stumbling through Year of the Rat

Aug 16 2015

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Year of the Rat is notable for several reasons, one of which is the game was designed, developed and published concurrently with the 1972 Easter Offensive conducted by the NVA, which it attempts to simulate, by what would now be considered a superstar team: Prados (design), Dunnigan (development) and Simonsen (art).

We played through the whole game without any trouble in 4-5 hours. Similar to Sealords, a lot of the action seems to take place in the early turns, with the later turns moving much faster. For Year of the Rat, this turn time decrease is in part due to NVA forces having limited supply, hence limited combat capability after the first two turns. For the first two turns, "Attack Supply" is assumed and the NVA are free to attack as many times as possible. After the first towo turns, Attack Supply must be provisioned, and there aren't many supply caches available (6, if I recall correctly).

Given the supply problem faced by the NVA player, the strategy has be to snatch as much territory as possible, as fast as possible, then make ARVN pay dearly to get it back.

Game play

One of the more interesting aspects of game play is the high cost of engaging and disengaging from zones of control, with ARVN paying more movement factors than the NVA. Along with that, moving from ZOC to ZOC controlled by the same unit is prohibited. This leads to a tactic for the NVA where ZOC control can prevent ARVN from engaging due to stacked ZOC penalties exceeding the movement allowance.

We (AS) did not use ARVN's airborne capabiltity at all, which likely contributed to his decisive loss: not getting enough battles in to drive NVA away from objective hexes.

The NVA (me) wasn't able to use up all the supply available, due to being out of range for certain objectives. The NVA player has to carefully plan in advance what the overall strategy will be, and commit to it. From this first play, it seems likely that a good ARVN player could really stomp the NVA if the NVA attempted to wing it.

Conclusion

We like the game overall, and plan to play it again.

What to play next?

Deciding what to play next is always a tough call when faced with a closet full of games, all of which were purchased with intent to play. Here's one I'm dealing with the decision.

Something New: this means both something new to me and a game which has been published recently, within the last two or three years.
Something Classic: I've acquired a number of games properly considered "classic" which haven't yet been played. The current example would be PanzerGruppe Guderian.
Something Again: mastery requires constant practice, which means playing games many, many times to allow nuance to appear.
Something Vietnam: as I'm on a Vietnam binge. I don't have all the Vietnam games ever published, but I can say that I have a lot of them, and probably more than most people.
Something Obscure: as it's fun to poke around in the dustier corners of game design.
Something Different: break away from the same old publishers and try a game from one of the new kids on the block. Or, conversely, dip into legacy with a classic tried and true.
Something Light: once in a while it's nice to actually finish a game all the way through in one sitting, in an hour or two.
Something Heavy: if possible, it's nice to set up something big and complicated which can be left out for days or weeks or even months, for a leisurely stroll through a very large or long game.

There are surely many more ways to choose, but the above method keeps me busy enough, helps me get both breadth and depth into my play, and provides me with a sense of progress.

The odd man out

When there is an odd man out:

Have a solo game ready to play.
Keep score or advise on a game in progress.
Referee a game in progress.