Syt happens to play ...

[Syt]

Turn 35

NVA has been beaten back into the jungle. Time to make sure things in the East are still ... oh, a mine field. And an RPG. And another one. Well, at least I can eliminate a fair chunk of them.

An overview of the situation, with an overlay where NVA/VC contacts were made so far during the game.

[CountDeMoney]

Lt DeMoney would've been calling fast movers and Arclight to blow back the tree line 20 Knicks.

[Syt]

Lt DeMoney would've been calling fast movers and Arclight to blow back the tree line 20 Knicks.

Not an option. No defoliation campaigns, either. (Well, you can clear jungle with engineers, but it doesn't increase visibility much, but creatse more DZs for your choppers.)

The situation at the start of the last turn:



The situation is under control, except for two VC friendly villages in the South. The upshot of losing the Hearts and Minds score at the start is that it gives you more targets that, if you don't mess up, provide you with more political points to get more troops in.

Then again, this is regular difficulty, not veteran.

[Syt]

And the final situation, the silver markers are the (previously hidden) spawn points for the VC. Ideally, you would hunt for those and cover them with troops. But with the number of them it's not really possible to keep them all covered.



It was pretty rough for me in mid-game, and I was lucky to buy a tank at the right time. Once this was weathered, though, the remaining troops were more of a nuisance than anything else. You have to find a rhythm of checking the villages for intel and reacting to enemy contacts while keeping everything supplied.

I didn't do brilliantly, I think. At one time 4 of my 6 Hueys were in the repair shop, plus two of five infantry units. It felt pretty tight at that point. Still, a decisive victory on "Regular" difficulty. It might be different on another map (as said, I was struggling with a jungle heavy map which was much more slow paced). I find Cobras much more useful than artillery. They have good range, and while you have to return them to base to resupply, you don't have to ferry their supply in with additional units from HQ. I guess it makes more sense to have artillery at home where it's auto-supplied, and cobras in the field.

Green Berets are super useful for scouting. In fact so much so that I'm not sure if it's worth to use them to train ARVN (takes three turns per unit, and you need an expensive forward base for each two ARVN units). That's 6 turns that they don't spend searching for Charlie.

All in all, a very decent game (especially at this price point), with a distinct solo board wargame feel to it. You can play through a scenario in an afternoon.

BUT.

The interface sucks balls. The big pop ups for unit special orders are clunky, and I occasionally find myself ordering a move because I missed the button by a pixel. And vice versa, the buttons obscure hexes you may want to move to, and you have to aim between them. I imagine it might be a even more of a pain on tablet. Would be better if those buttons popped up in a separate non-map area.

I like what they do with achievements, though. Instead of just giving you the usual Steam achievements, they addes a uniform and medals:



Reminds me of X-Wing and TIE-Fighter.

It remains to be seen how the replay value is.