THE WAY IT WAS

◗ caliverbooks.com ◗ £18.95

Vietnam is a rich environment for gaming: there’s plenty of classic, asymmetrical warfare opportunities. Wayne Bollands’ The ‘Nam has taken a set of rules by Mike Bradford and adapted them to use in this environment. They are aimed at giving the gamer the opportunity to play scenarios ranging from military‘advisors’in ’61; to Marines in the jungle of ’65 to Air Mobile at Drang or Special Forces defending the Embassy during Tet. Ambitious stuff: but there’s more...

Published by Caliver Books, the sixty page, A4 colour soft-back also attempts to “embrace all combatants”, so VC guerrillas, Aussies and South Koreans feature, and it does all this by using fairly simple to understand mechanics like playing cards and“dice shifting”with multiple dice types (d4 to d12). It’s aimed at 28mm-sized figures but will work equally well with 15mm or 20mm without needing real changes to the rules or measuring. The game is focussed upon platoon level actions, although it should be possible to scale up or down as required (company to rifle squad).

Production is excellent with well laid out, easy to read rules. It has five scenarios, troop rosta and QR sheets, plus lots of army lists with basic vehicle rules. Optional rules include things like Leadership Special Ablitities where a dice role gives bonuses, though some of them – like‘rotten Shot’ – aren’t good! There’s also hiding, sniping, night and fog, tunnel fighting, choppers, air support, napalm and friendly fire. The presentation of the rule set is greatly enhanced by some superb photography and model painting by Empress Miniatures. This looks like a fun set of rules that I’d certainly recommend.