Combat Veteran 1
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Ok so this took a little longer than anticipated to get this on the table, but I just logged a first play with the usual opponent. We had a good time with it, and we're not generally tactical players.
The situation is an ambush in the Mekong Delta in a dry rice paddy, as described in the book The Boys of '67. Of note is that all soldiers are represented individually be their surname, even the VC who it turns out kept meticulous records, which were captured during this battle.
The US forces enter near the bottom edge of the map, with the VC already emplaced. What is not shown on the map is 11 bunkers for whom locations are recorded on the clipboard to the right. The US forces will have to cross an some rice paddies, open fields, fields of fire. Their opposition being already emplaced in a wide but very shallow line risks a breakthrough even they can't pin the US force in the open.
We played around 5 turns, which is half the 10 turn game, resulting in the situation as shown below. The US suffered some notably bad dice rolling, which a lot of soldiers in Crawl stance.
The US took a lot of casualties early, but is now in the VC line, with an imminnent breakthrough. Had we played through the rest of the game, the favor might well have swung decisively in the US favor.
AAR
We liked the defensive fire, close combat, and combat fire resolution. There may be opportunity for a bit of rules refinement with respect to a "Run" stance which would mitigate overloading the overheating mechanism and Crawl recovery, both of which consume a lot of die rolling. I'll post the results if I playtest it.
I'd really love to have Rice Paddy on a much larger map to remediate stackage. We were out of practice with 1/2" stacks, and made a bit of mess several times.