Surviving Nam Test Game

All,

Okay, this one catches me up on all the batreps.  And to all my friends that actually subscribe to my blogs, I sincerely apologize!!!  I didn't give any thought to the unintended consequences of what I was doing, I just knew I wanted to get all this stuff off my plate and posted.  It took a buddy to email me and ask what the hell was I doing for me to realize I just spammed everyone's feed with a million blogposts.  So, again, my apologies, I didn't mean to do that to you and I'll try and do better in the future about spacing my posts out.

But not yet, I've got to get caught up!  Last weekend (10 October 2026, mere days ago, when some of the batreps I just posted are literally four years old!) I played this game.  I had seen the rules "Surviving Nam" on TMP and went and purchased them.  Got the PDF and hard copy, read'em, liked'em, and resolved to play'em.  One problem, my 28mm Vietnam miniatures are not yet ready for show time, so what to do?  Hell, I'll bust out some WWII US Marines and take on some Japanese.  So "Surviving the Pacific" rather than "Surviving Nam," in my case.  I'm working to rectify the situation with my Vietnam minis, and my boys saw it and want to play this weekend, so I set up a modern fight.

The Surviving Nam rules are pretty cool, being specifically designed for solo or co-op play.  It's skirmish level, one figure = one man and each figure activates and acts individually (well mostly, there are certain team provisions for LMG teams and the Platoon Commander and his RTO, but that's an exception and neither here nor there).  Each man is rated for quality and you roll a D20 against that quality rating to activate him.  If you roll equal to or higher than his quality rating all is good, if you fail a card is drawn and something happens, mostly bad.  There are 'wait a minute' vines, snakes, the Skipper calling up to make demands on your time in the middle of a firefight (I really like that one, very realistic), and, of course, lots of cards directing you to bring on a enemy troop, squad, LMG team, RPG team, or some such, usually in randomly determined numbers to randomly determined locations.  And then they shoot at you!  So I thought that was pretty cool and wanted to give it a try.

The table, 4' x 4', north is up, as close as I could make it to the map for the first scenario in the book.  I did screw up in that I had the US troops enter the table via the road in the south rather than from the west board edge...

The Marines are on a combat patrol, tasked with checking out the village, clearing it of any Japanese forces.

My force of U.S. Marines.  And boy did I go overboard...  My initial plan was to go with a US Marine rifle squad on the mid-war TO&E, where they'd have a Squad Leader and two Fire Teams of four men, each team with one BAR.  But then I got scared and decided to plus up; I didn't just bump up to the late-war TO&E of a Squad Leader and three four-man rifle teams (each with a BAR), a also added a headquarters element that had a Corpsman, a Demolition NCO, and two runners (pretty much a platoon HQ element, no such thing at squad level).  Yeah, not sure what I was doing or thinking...  More is better, right?

1st Fireteam comes on the board and the 'Countdown to Contact' begins.

Second turn, 1st Fireteam moves up, followed by Squad Leader and the HQ element.

Yes, I named all of the men; hell, I didn't just name them, I gave them back stories, motivations, skills, etc..., I just don't feel like typing all that stuff out right now...

Turn 3, 1st Fireteam is across and into hostile territory, Sqd Ldr and HQ are on the bridge, 2nd Fireteam on the road.

Turn 4 sees 1st Fireteam head left, Sqd Ldr and HQ begin to head right, 2nd Fireteam onto bridge, and 3rd Fireteam onto road.

And Countdown to Contact has ended, we have Contact!

I place the mandatory beginning enemy troops, four individual soldiers and two smallish rifle squads.

On the west end of the ville is a Japanese straggler (far left, with 1st Fireteam at right).

On the east end of the ville we have a squad of six Japanese troops in one of the huts.

At the north end of the ville we have a Japanese soldier pop up behind some sandbags (bottom right), another in a nearby hut (center bottom), and a the last straggler joins a squad of Japanese soldiers at top left.

The game is afoot!  One of the HQ runners spots the Japanese soldier on the west end of town and fires his Garand.

While Big Sarge moves up to the cover of a Japanese truck and cuts loose with his Tommy Gun on the Japanese squad in the hut on the east end of the village.

Two Japanese go down and the other four are pinned.

1st Fireteam's BAR man (left) opens fire on the Japanese soldier in the sandbagged position.

The Marine misses and the enemy soldier returns fire, pinning him.

The Japanese guy in the nearby hut also fires.

So does the guy on the west end of town.  I believe the card was "All Hell Breaks Loose," which allows all enemy forces on the table to shoot.

In the north, the Japanese squad there moves up into the cover of a stand of trees (center, from right).

1st Fireteam is maneuvering under fire.

2nd Fireteam, exposed on the bridge, fires on the enemy troop on the west end of the ville.

And he goes down!

But the Japanese rifleman in the center of town fires and puts one of the HQ runners down.

The other runner moves up to the truck and fires.

Dropping him!

Then an ugly card comes up "RPG!"  Well, WWII Japanese don't have RPGs, but they do have those nasty little 50mm 'knee mortars,' so I throw one of those on the board.

He's in the bushes at the edge of the board (top left), and his round falls short of the bridge.

2nd Fireteam (bottom left) engages the Japanese squad in the trees (top right).

As well as the knee mortar.

And, quite luckily, he goes down!

2nd Fireteam's BAR man fires into the hut on the east end.

Two more Japanese soldiers go down, the remaining two are pinned.

1st Fireteam's rookie scout moves up, into a hut, and fires on the Japanese guy in the northern hut.

And puts him down!

Another bad cards sees a Japanese MG team come on the board in the northwest, but they're not yet in a firign position.

And then another bad card sees us outflanked, where a Japanese squad shows up on OUR side of the river, in the southeast!

They (bottom center) immediately open fire on 3rd Fireteam (top left).

2nd Fireteam, still very exposed on the bridge, returns fire on this new threat.

One of the enemy goes down.

Back in the center, Doc rushes up to grab the 'down' runner and drag him to cover behind the Japanese truck, but he only passes one dice and so just manages to get up there and hug the runner.  Typical Navy...

3rd Fireteam engages the flanking Japanese on our side of the river.

And two more go down, with the other two pinned.

I think I may have given the BARs too much power...

3rd Fireteam's leader spots a snake in the bushes and runs off, screaming (far left, from far right).

Oh, also, I had the 'Fire Mission' card come up three times, but since it's WWII and comms to supporting fires weren't nearly as good/tied in as during the Vietnam War, I just ignored them.

Japanese flankers (bottom left) fire on 2nd Fireteam on the bridge.

The Japanese MG team gets into position atop the hill in the northeast.

While the Japanese squad in the trees to the north fire on Doc.

And the two remaining Japanese in the east hut also fire.

I don't know if it was just lots of luck, but Japanese marksmanship left a lot to be desired.

1st Fireteam's BAR man cleared a jam and opened fire on the Japanese in the trees to the north.

Dropping one.

More Japanese troops enter the fray, this time in the northwest (bottom left).

3rd Fireteam takes on the flankers on our side of the river.

One of the riflemen moves up, firing, gets caught in the 'wait a minute' vines.

After putting another Japanese soldier down.

"I'm stuuuuuuuck!!!!!!"

The last remaining Japanese flanker returns fire.

3rd Fireteam's leader is back (bottom left) after dealing with the snake.

And Big Sarge has finished off the Japanese in the west end of the ville with his Tommy Gun.

1st Fireteam's BAR man continues laying down Japanese in the trees to the north.

Two more, with the last two pinned.

1st Fireteam's leader moves up to the north side of the village.

And finishes off the last two enemy soldiers there.

And then, quite unsatisfyingly, I had to quit!!!!  Yeah, don't forget, I have a wife and kids that make me do things other than wargaming during my time off ;)

So, what's the verdict?  And please keep in mind these are just impressions as it's an extraordinarily limited sample size (one game), and that I probably sounding overly critical but I really like the game and will be playing again this weekend, I'm just already thinking about things I need to change about what I did and/or tweaks to the rules to suit my tastes because I'll definitely be using these going forward.

1.  I really enjoyed the game, but it took a looooooooong time (which is why I didn't finished and didn't feel compelled to go back later to finish the game, I felt like I'd put in plenty of time to one game).  What you see above was 3 and 1/2 hours of play which, to me, is a lot for a squad-sized game.  Having said that, it's almost assuredly my fault since I decided to go with a whopping 17 Marines!!!!  That was undoubtedly the problem and my next game will be quite smaller, probably eight good guys.

2.  There wasn't a lot of movement.  How much of that was down to lots of failures so that my guys only got one action instead of two?  Not sure; it feels like, despite all the terrain I had on the board it was still too open and thus I didn't need to/get to move very much.  I think the answer is to add more line of sight blocking terrain.

3.  It felt a bit like a video game; there was a never-ending stream of bad guys entering the table and I was just mowing them down.  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet, just something that certainly occurred to me.

4.  Speaking of mowing them down, casualties were drastically uneven.  By the time I finished I had put 17 Japanese soldiers out of the fight, and I only had one man 'down,' not even out of the fight (wouldn't know his status until I got someone over to check him; I got Doc to him but didn't check him yet as I only played one whole turn and had just started the second turn).  To that end, the rules feel more like a Special Forces/Commando-type game versus hordes of unskilled bad guys, rather than a fight between relative equals, where both sides' troops were professional soldiers.  My next game will be Special Operations-types against relative rabble (how about some Western SOF vs Russians in Ukraine?  Going modern will also allow me to use the rules' weapons as designed, with RPGs, Grenade Launchers, and LMGs, though I still want to figure out SMGs and BARs).  I think that will fit better, or WWII Commandos vs Germans/Italians/Japanese, or Recon/MACV vs NVA than 'regular' Marines vs Japanese, in which traditionally the Japanese were annihilated but the Marines also took heavy casualties.  But maybe it was just my dice...

5.  In terms of troop quality, the rules break it down into Veteran, Grunt, and FNG.  The quality ratings only differ by 1, so I didn't notice much differentiation between Veterans and FNGs.  Indeed, it seemed my FNGs were the only ones that ever passed two dice!  Not this weekend, but going forward on my own I believe I will spread those numbers out a bit, i.e., make FNGs worse, keep Grunts the same, and make Vets better.  Maybe even work out a more fine-tuned system for improving/degrading quality (don't misunderstand, the current system works great and allows for improvement/degrading, I'm just talking about tinkering to make it more granular and more incremental).

6.  The cards were great in terms of making things happen without consulting a bunch of tables, and it was clear exactly what should happened and how it should happen.  The only thing I questioned was when bringing enemy troops on table you roll to see which board edge they will come on (awesome, no problem there), then you roll 2D6 and multiply them to give you how many inches in from the board edge.  Well, leave it to me to roll boxcars, so those guys came in 36" from the designated board edge, which put them... on the other side of the table!  I guess not a huge issue, it just felt a bit weird, and there were other times, too.  When guys come on 20" from a board edge on a 4' x 4' table that puts them almost smack dab in the middle of the table, which seems a bit strange when my troops are dominating the center of the table, so I need to give them some thought.  I get how, in dense jungle, it can make sense, but in my situation the center of the village was pretty open, so it was kind of weird to have guys supposed to show up in the middle of the village.  And I suppose we could wave it away as tunnels or something.

So, there are my thoughts.  Again, I really enjoyed the rules and hope I didn't sound too critical, I'm really looking forward to playing this weekend and will post ASAP.

V/R,
Jack