The Final Battle
The last game of the campaign was played on New Year’s Eve, and was something of a 30th anniversary celebration. I bought my copy of Rolling Hot in Coles in downtown Montreal, Christmas 1991. What better way of rounding off another rubbish year than by remembering a time when travelling places and meeting people was an available option?
As the surviving vehicles of Task Force Ranson trail towards Hue, they receive word that NVA armour has encircled the city and is now attacking from the south. Ranson must turn and hold a hill line overlooking a river crossing to prevent communist tanks from reaching the city.
This all armour encounter seemed perfect for What a Tanker. I’ve had the rules since launch, but never played them until the day before this game when Home Guard expert and all round top bloke Pat Gilliland handed me a beating in a video conferenced early war clash. So now, fully qualified, I can screw things up solo. What with the holidays and all, time was limited, so I deployed the forces close together and let rip!
Task Force Ranson
1 M551 Sheridan, AP 8, Armour 2, Fast
2 M113 ACAV, AP 2, Armour 2, Fast, Rapid Fire
NVA
1 T54, AP 13, Armour 11, Fast
2 PT-76, AP 6, Armour 3, Slow
It might look a little daunting for the US, but they start off hull down behind the ridge line. Plus, I added another house rule that the gun shields on their turrets mean they count as unbuttoned for spotting but buttoned for damage purposes at all times.
Trung tá
Pham was not in the best of moods. He had envisaged sweeping into Hue at the head of a full squadron of the People’s Army of Vietnam’s finest armour. Instead, vehicle after vehicle had broken down or become irretrievably stuck in ditches and paddy fields, until he was left with only three working vehicles under his command. A small consolation had been the look on the face of the cocky young commander of the one remaining mobile T54, when he had commandeered it for his own use.
But now, the moment was here. As his tank approached a scruffy cluster of huts by a narrow waterway, with the smoke of burning Hue visible on the horizon, he spotted enemy armour, hull down behind a rise beyond the stream. So the enemy had tanks after all, but nothing to match the solid armour and 100mm gun of his own. A hero’s welcome on the streets of Hue was within his grasp.
The action opened with both ACAVs hosing down their opposing PT-76s with 50 cal fire, to absolutely no effect. The NVA tanks returned fire but one missed and the other one failed to cause any damage, the shell’s impact being absorbed by the hillside. Ranson, now commanding a Sheridan, managed to hit the advancing T54 but watched the 152mm shell bounce off the frontal armour as it advanced inexorably towards him.
Turn 2 saw the T54 advance as far as the stream, but was still unable to get the dice to fire, but then nor could Ranson. The PT-76 on the left finally managed to hit an ACAV, but only caused minor damage (1 Command Dice lost) as the hull down position once again provided better protection than the M113’s flimsy armour. The ACAV’s commander decided that he was not going to survive a straight shootout and pulled back from the hill.
Turn 3 began with a miracle. The ACAV on the left threw a double ‘6’ to hit the PT-76, giving it 4 strike dice instead of the usual 2. It rolled 3 hits, 2 of them critical, and the PT-76 failed to save any of them, turning into a ball of flame. A careless crewman must have strapped a fuel tank and a bag of grenades or something to the front fender, but Ranson wasn’t complaining. Flush with success, the ACAV advanced up onto the ridge to try and flank the T54.
No one was expecting this!
The big tank finally got a shot off at Ranson, but only managed to inflict the temporary loss of 2 Command Dice, which Ranson promptly recovered with a convenient pair of ‘6’s. More worryingly, the PT-76 on the NVA left rotated its turret and acquired the Sheridan as a target.
Ranson really wanted to be anywhere but here. He had fought through country thick with the enemy, losing more than half his force in the process. The wound to his shoulder was still more painful than he would admit to anyone, including himself. And now he was defending a nowhere little hamlet against actual main battle tanks, protected by nothing more than the thin aluminum armour of a recon vehicle.
Well, he didn’t want to be here, but if he was going to die pointlessly, he couldn’t think of anywhere better to do it.
How things stood at the start of the fateful turn
Turn 4, the magic ACAV fired on the side armour of the T54 and rolled another double ‘6’! 2 critical hits this time, but the T54’s armour shrugged them off. Ranson fired on the T54 twice and watched in disbelief as both rounds missed their target, which continued its advance. It was perhaps fortunate that he was focused on this, so didn’t notice the surviving PT-76 firing on him. The first hit did little more than attract his attention, but too late to do anything about the second round that tore through the Sheridan’s armour and blew it apart.
With its immediate opponent eliminated, the T54 swung its turret, acquired the ACAV that was machine gunning it from the flank, and destroyed it completely with a single 100mm round. Seeing this, the last surviving ACAV, which had been trying to outflank the Vietnamese, remembered what the better part of valour was. Managing to roll all movement dice with its 5 remaining Commancd Dice (2 ‘1’s, 2 ‘6’s and a ‘3’ converted using the ‘Fast’ attribute) it turned in place and left the field of battle.
The end of Task Force Ranson
So the campaign ends with a decisive NVA victory, even if only two AFVs are unlikely to have much impact on the battle for Hue. Ranson might have felt that his death, and that of so many of his men, was in vain, but fortunately they are just toy soldiers who live to fight another day, and I enjoyed the campaign hugely. I think it demonstrated the resilience of CoC and WaT under some pretty intense abuse, giving excellent performance both as solo rules and applied to the wrong period and mode of warfare.
The satisfaction of finally completing a campaign 30 years in the making helps too. Next up? A project I have been mulling for a mere 15 years, but could easily take another 15 to complete. Watch this space, just don’t hold your breath.
If you see him, say hello from Doug.