South Caobang 2

South Caobang is on the table this time with Scenario 2, which features tanks. My usual opponent is over for more China versus Vietnam, the conflict of 1979.

The small, 3 turn scenario simulates a PLA surprise attack, with tanks, apparently targeting the town of Dong Khe. Each faction fields about a dozen units, half of which on the VPAF side are Police units. It can be on the small map provided. The PLA comes in from the east, driving west to Dong Khe, with multiple Police units functioning more or less as speed bumps (perhaps literally) in the face of advancing armor. We did determine that issuing a Mobile command allowed Encounter combat to occur, and after a couple of rounds, house-ruled that Encounter combat with tanks could proceed multiple times against a single defending hex. From first principles, this makes sense. It turned out that once we found the Overrun rules, we in fact were correct: an armor column can indeed Encounter the same hex repeatedly.

From first principles, stopping in an ambush is usually the wrong thing to do, drive on through if possible.

We made a very large blunder: R - Retreat - results on the CRT can be nullified with a TQ check. We didn’t find that out until late in the game. This matters because without it a few lucky rolls can have a single, very weak Police unit stall out regimental armor. That’s highly implausible. Not impossible, but less plausible than the results we were getting. The overrunning units had 40% or 50% chance of nullifying and driving through, even if they took a step loss along the way.

The PLA managed to get about half way across the map, but would have been facing a vicious fight in a valley, which would have cost them more time than they had.

This is cool game. Some things to dig into for the next play:

1. Better understanding of the Command Point system.
2. Don’t forget about TQ checks.
3. Infantry can ride on tanks!
4. Get the rules into NotebookLM.
5. More as I think of it.

Here is the set up:

Here’s the end state: