Long Tan
A battle that is right up there with the greatest of Anzac traditions! That’s why Allan and I games it yesterday using Battlefront rule Nam.

Now I really like this version from BF, there is one really great reason, Allan and I have played it for a year and we didn’t need to keep flipping through the book for rules! Thanks to BF v4 is now playable.

Enough of that back to the game, now if you don’t know the history, then I’ll ask you to buy a book, watch a documentary or read something on the internet, but basically an Australian company bumps a NVA battalion, outnumber, short on ammo, fighting in a monsoonal downpour with help a long way away. Despite the shear bloody mindedness of the Vietnamese to wipe out the Australian company, the Anzacs held on in the true spirit of the Anzac.

So the terrain was pretty simple, one half a rubber plantation, the other elephant grass as tall as a man.

We had some special rules for the scenario, but if I were to recommend to anyone else who wishes to follow my example is to let the NVA get a free born in the north to die in the south rule, that said the special rules I devised was to randomise some of the events, like the monsoon rain, supply of ammo for the Anzacs, but basically the game was scenario 4 from the Nam book, blocking force. It seemed to represent the battle nicely.

Turn1 to 5, the NVA rushes forward attempting to swamp the Anzac’s but tru to form as the NVA got close the Anzac artillery were deadly! As in real life but you can’t beat a player who consistently rolls 6’s! Most of the NVA casualties came from the artillery bombardments and they very rarely missed.

But it was slow going for the Anzac reserves to arrive but equally bad for the NVA born in the north rule. However slowly the reserve arrived in the form of two artillery batteries from the fire base at Nui Dat, even some Phantoms helped out and (unlike history) dropped some napalm 🔥 burning several 82mm rocket launches.

After this the writing was on the wall for the NVA, they had one last hope, Allen bravely removed the depleted five NVA platoons on the table and brought them back on in the final turns of the game,  he assaulted an M113 platoon and an Australian infantry platoon. The m113’s gave two platoons a very bloody nose but three platoons of NVA managed to assault the Aussie platoon destroying several stands and forcing the Australian off an objective, it almost worked the NVA were just about to pull it off, however you can’t beat a player who rolls 6’s consistently, the Australian’s I’m pinned and managed to contest the objective and the M113’s assaulted and beat several NVA platoons, this was enough for Allan to concede!

A really enjoyable game, thank you Allan, a great set of rules and a fantastic period to study!

Oh, one tip for Nam, use sabot bases for the NVA force, you can thank me now 😁.