Dien Bien Phu at Gotcon XL

My PTCD (Post Traumatic Con Disorder) has faded and it’s time to start posting again.

Our very fashion-conscious Thomas showing off his new Casquette Bigeard . I don’t know if it’s the cap or the model, but…

We (me, Koen, Thomas and Laffe) had a participation game of Chain of Command and the as yet unpublished Indochina supplement at this year’s Gothcon. We set everything up on Thursday night and played all through Friday and Saturday with everyone who was interested to give it a go.

Here you have some pics from the different games in no particular order.

French Colonial Paras attack very unprepared Viet Minh troops (aka speed bumps)

A Chaffe, or Bison as the French called them.

Close combat is extremely costly unless the enemy is pinned and severely chocked. The poor Viet Minh are just that here.

Viet Minh reinforecements. At this stage of the battle it was just one very lonely officer who wondered where all his troops were (due to rather bad dice rolling)

All those Viet Minh look very intimidating

But so does the tank...

Notice the paras sneaking by on the flank. The victory condition was to exit a French unit off the Viet Minh side of the table and they did just that.

Another game another speed bump running for it

Undergrowth in the forest was judged to be very heavy, limiting sight to 6". Problematic when you're in close combat when you're within 4" of  each other.  This meant some very nasty firefights followed by close combat attacks. Incredibly bloody affairs for both sides, often totally eliminating one side while the other was severely decimated.

Another attack begins.

So you hit on a 4, 5 and 6 and roll like this... It was a hard day for Viet Minh...

You can read more on the build-up of the project at my friends’ blogs and Thomas already have a post on the event.

On the train-ride home we decided on the theme for next year. Think the Battle of Raate Road in 1/72 scale and you commanding a small unit of Finns in a game of epic proportions.

See you there!

Viet Minh/Viet Cong from The Assault Group

Viet Minh from TAG

The Dien Bien Phu project for Gothcon later this March is progressing. I got three packs of Viet Cong soldiers from The Assault Group last week and they will serve well as Viet Minh soldiers.

Pack #VCS001 Viet Cong with PPSh 41

You mostly have to buy Viet Cong soldiers as DBP Viet Minh but you have to be careful to get their weapons to match those in use at the time.
I picked three suitable packs from their Up Country/Viet Cong range. They are armed with the Soviet PPSh 41 SMG and French MAT 49 SMG and MAS Mle 36 rifle.

Pack #VCS002 Viet Cong with MAT 49

The figures are sculpted by Richard Ansell and rather pulpy in style. I intend to use them in pulp-games in the future, so they all got clear bases.

Pack #VCS004 Viet Cong with MAT Mle 36

Fast paint-work on all of them. Essentially just block painting with a wash.

A couple of pics of a test-game we did this weekend. The terrain is obviously not ready yet, we had to use some Soviet Winter War figures as Viet Minh and the Chaffee doesn’t really look like a Chaffee.

Viet Minh in their works-as-trenches

Tha back-end of the table with not quite finished rice paddies. The French forces' objective is to exit at least one unit off the left board edge.

French Colonial Paras attack. The white ovals will be bamboo-groves.

We use Chain of Command rules from Too Fat Lardies and play-test the Indochina lists.

Anyway, we had great fun and our courageous Viet Minh beat the snot out the French troops. I guess there weren’t that many Viet Minh left after the fight, but that usually didn’t concern the Viet Minh high command.

How about close combat against a foe on overwatch. We're elite after all, and French. For the glory! What could possibly go wrong?

Ooops.
To be fair, the Viet Minh human wave attack didn't fare much better... Close combat is short and brutal.

This is where you find us on Gothcon.

Terrain for Dien Bien Phu

We, in this case the Scandinavian Ladies, will have a participation game at this year’s Gothcon, and this time it will be Dien Bien Phu in 28mm scale and using the Chain of Command rules.

Thomas is the grand master of DBP and is in charge of everything, and I’m in the position of just following orders. One of the orders is to paint some Viet Cong soldiers, and they are bought and on their way (excellent stuff, that, as they can be used in pulp games also)

Painting the brown fleece to get something that looks like a muddy and shot-up field.

Another order was get some terrain finished. The best way to do that is to have a terrain-making-day and we chose a sunny and beautiful day to hole up in my cellar with MDF, filler, paint, fleece, foamboard, hot-glue gun, cork and whatnot.

The finshed thing, ready for some serious action.

An afternoon with a few tasty beers and without any burnt fingers got us (me, Thomas and Henke) a finished ground-cover and some started rice-paddies and bamboo-groves.

Thomas hot-gluing foam-board sides to cork-sheets (the excellent and cheap AVSKILD cork place mat from IKEA) to form the outlines of a rice paddy

Filler and a pre-paddy.

And with some filler applied with a brush it starts to look interesting. Add a crater or two and we start to get an idea on what to expect.

Bases for the bamboo-groves and also for stands of barbed wire

Thomas got the bamboo-not-groves-yet while I got to finish the rice-paddies. Stay tuned for more on that soon.