Silver Bayonet 32: 3rd Brigade rotates in
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My usual Vietnam (and most other games) opponent AS and I have been playing Silver Bayonet intermittently since it first came out in the mid 2010s. We've played all the scenarios except 9 and 11. I'm discounting Scenario 12 as it's a counterfactual PAVN free setup for the full campaign, and neither of us are interested in ot. Scenario 9 is the last third of the Pleiku operations, and Scenario 11 is the whole Operation Long Reach campaign.
We want to play out the whole campaign at some point, perhaps in 2026. We have plans to play Scenario 9 in late June, over a weekend. Today, we played a couple of turns of Scenario 9 as a "relearning" game, as there are no short scenarios which use the campaign rule set. (Definitely some opportunity for scenario development.)
It’s November 9, 1965. 1st Air Cav 3rd Brigade has rotated into the Ia Drang, kicking off Operation Silver Bayonet. The ARVN is manning Special Forces camps at Plei Mei and Duc Co, the brigade HQ set up at the Cateka Tea Plantation. The Headhunters (1/9) are on the runway at An Khe. But where is Lord Charles? That’s what 3rd Brigade aims to find out.
This is what the command faced at the time.
The game is set up and ready to play. The Hidden Movement counters model "suspected PAVN postions." FWA will be running patrols and aerial observation to confirm or deny.
Here's the situation EOD November 11, 1965: both belligerents are well positioned to achieve their objectives, decided to call it a day
This was a really good game despite taking two hours for each turn. Hopefully we'll be able to move much faster once we're immersed in the full scenario play through.
Star Realms Frontiers 5, 6
We played a couple of games back to back. We also added the Promo 1 and Promo 2 packs to both games.
Game 5:40 This game went long, and I got behind for a while, then pulled it out for a win. Did not have a great strategy. I don't think AS had a good strategy either as he sort of went with Trade Fed, but with some Blob and Empire mixed in there. I ended up having to "mirror" some of his purchases, for example, Trade Fed, just to be able to stay in the game. At some point I got enough synergy to knock him out.
Game 6:41 I got a bunch of Machine Cult Outposts in play and thinned almost all the starting cards from my hand. AS got very lucky and was able to repeatedly sweep all my bases on 3-4 successive turns with double digit damage. Really good luck! I managed to knock him out before my lack of purchase power put me way behind.