Versus Vietnamese Verewolves (A Vietnam '65 AAR) (COMPLETE)

Started by JasonPratt, March 20, 2015, 05:33:05 PM

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JasonPratt

Village #3 will be named after you, Bes!

Quote from: besilarius on March 21, 2015, 04:05:47 PM
JP this atmosphere you have created, claustrophobia tinged with a Lovecraftian fear of the dark, is not so far from reality.

Great to have a vet on board the thread, btw! {bowing} Yeah, of course I'm not being insulting to the VC/NVA. Werewolves are awesome; it's a big compliment to think of them like that. Terrible, but awesome.

Fortunately not something my Dad ever had to worry about; he just helped resupply spec-ops observers in the field occasionally.


Quote from: besilarius on March 21, 2015, 04:05:47 PMIvory Snow was preferred.

99-1/4% pure!

Quote from: besilarius on March 21, 2015, 04:05:47 PMAlso, don't let your troops play with the Stone Monkeys.

ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!


JasonPratt

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day four

Dear diary,

Today I learned that even though Green Berets are so in synch with the locals that they can train local infantry companies (which one of them is currently doing in Forbase-1), they aren't so in synch that they can question locals for information.

This... frankly, this is so silly it must be a bug or a design oversight. If anything they ought to be better at it than standard infantry, if not so good as an ARVN company. I can't explain this by some kind of story jugglry. Blah.

Still, GB platoon 2 has gotten to THE VILLAGE THAT SHALL THUS NOT BE NAMED FOR A WHILE BECAUSE NOTHING HAPPENED WHEN I GOT THERE! -- the village south of HQ across the river in the jungle. Good job, guys, good hustle!

Company 4 was ferried out near Banzaicat village, as near as I can get, and the wounded company assigned to BC-V was resupplied as they retreated, even though I can't pick them up yet. Those two companies will end up getting in each other's way a bit, adding another day to C4's travel in-country.

Forbase-1 is now fully garrisoned with a GB, an infantry for security, and an artillery. (I could add more but probably won't for a while; and if so, it'll be arty.) As noted, the GB is on their second day pulling together a new company of ARVN. I think the rules say I can only do two this way, but I don't know what that means yet: two in a row? Two from this forbase but two more from any other forbases and firebase? Only two from this GB ever? We'll see.

Thus ends Day 4 with two werewolf packs on the map somewhere doing something wolfy. (A new one gets generated every day apparently, without one on the map day one. We've had three nights, three packs, one won a fight and went home.)

At least we're winning. By the slightest amount possible.

For now.







ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day five

A quiet day as various previous plans continued.

Except that the augurs said two werewolf packs emerged last night.

Now there are four in the region.

Somewhere.

Doing something.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day six

Apparently due to a bug or misdesign, I cannot train an ARVN unit one day, then click the "continue mission" for that Green Beret next day and still count that as another day's training. Despite having apparently "trained" thus for three days, I had to train again today, and that popped forth the ARVN unit immediately.

Go forth, little unit.

The first wounded company has been picked up and is on the way back to HQ.

The engineers shaved off the forest blocking the route from HQ to Forbase-1, and can be up near Banzaicat village, despite the jungle, in four days; so I'm going to send them up there to clear out a patch along the probable werewolf route so my infantry can be immediately evac'd and replaced in the event of a fight.

The 'oldest' two werewolf packs on the map should be pretty close to doing whatever it is they were planning to do, by now...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day seven, end of first week

Now five packs on the map somewhere. Maybe with two having been sent out to replace one, since our H&M score just dropped a tick back to 50.

O hai!





This time the Ugeek village is willing to talk about its wolfy problems, and we learn another pack is approaching Banzaicat village again -- this time from exactly the opposite direction!

This also means there's a good chance the second nether portal is somewhere in that red circle (possibly under the pack if they've only just spawned and haven't moved, not sure how that works). And not any farther away in that direction or the pack would have been moving toward Ugeek instead.

This however is troubling in another way. Either one of those two packs didn't have a mission to go after the village, or there are two portals equidistant to the village, so a pack can spawn from either one.

If so -- which isn't sure, since I don't know their mission and thus their target hexes -- that would imply the other portal is here, assuming the village is dead center on an odd-numbered hex line.




Fortunately, Company 4 hasn't moved yet, so I can redirect them to intercept and fight.

However, I won't have them fight just yet. I want to confirm (a) just how fast the VC can move in the jungle; and (b) if they're actually coming this way.

(b) would confirm a vector for their origin (assuming they go in a straight line from ingress to target, which might be wrong in practice, and might also be wrong in that the ingress could be off-line and yet still closer to this village than another one.)

(a) would confirm that I can use the jungle as a buffer for interception, so long as I can see them coming.

So I park my 4th Company in Banzaicat village for the night. If they show up outside tomorrow, I'll see them, and I'll know their travel vector and so I'll have a better confirmation of the origin vector. If they don't show up but my H&M ticks down a bit, that means they moved two hexes through the jungle and got in overnight.

This will also test whether a community eating-fire will relight (allowing questions) if I'm sitting in the village; and if that automatically results in an interrogation if so.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day eight, start of second week

Huh.

Well, the wolves didn't show up, so either they're waiting outside on an RPG mission, or they were going another way after all, or they planted mines somewhere and went home.

Who did show up was a pack outside Besilarius. Which ran into one of my first three companies coming out of the jungle, and got promptly shot in the face!




Werewolves 1, us 1.

Now, even more interestingly, the intel map for today shows that the pack we spotted yesterday DID approach the village. If it was still there, we'd see it (according to the rules of the game). So either it dropped off mines and went home, or it went two hexes through the jungle into the village over night.

I can test that by doing a mine sweep, which has a 100% chance of finding any mines out to at least a two (maybe three? can't recall what the rules said) hex radius.

Well, the minesweep didn't seem to work -- though in doing so I discovered that the fire does light if I'm in the village, but it doesn't automatically interrogate. It does however trigger if I do an action in the village like sweeping for mines. So there's my interrogation for the day. (They were uncooperative, btw. I can do more than one a day by entering another village where the central firepit is active, but I won't.)

That seems to indicate they came in. But my overall score went back up to 51, probably due to catching the VC incoming down at Belisarius! Incidentally, this also means I should probably aim to park a BG in every village for scouting at a distance, since the VC seem capable of going two hexes through the jungle at a time. (Which is reasonable, they're the VC.)

Even more interesting, intel now says an NVA unit has entered the map!!!

Now... this is weird. According to every rule I recall reading, in the tutorials and in the manual, an NVA incursion only triggers two ways:

1.) If the H&M score goes under 40. Which has certainly not happened.

2.) If the H&M score drops three times in a row. Well, it was up at 51, then to 50... it could have dropped again to 49 and then come back, but that wouldn't be three days in a row, unless I had gone up to 52 between days and the VC dropped me back to 51 somehow over that night.

But that's the only theory that seems to fit, and lends strength to the idea that the werewolves got into town last night (going two hexes through the jungle). Worse, that kind of incursion triggers a tank! -- at least, maybe also some infantry! It'll take a while to find out, but if I see a tank show up that'll be direct confirmation of what happened here.

The good news is that I can get a tank myself for only 1500.

The better news is that I'm saving up an airstrike, too, so I'll hold my money until I know for sure there's a problem.

Meanwhile, the incursion at Besilarius suggests there's a portal somewhere out in this wedge.




Any further out, and it would have been going toward Banzaicat instead.

I decide to send them out there to set up an ambush, and move my reserve company from Forbase-1 to keep scouting around Bes for now. But that reminds me, I should really buy another reserve infantry back at HQ.

Since the original BC company has healed now, but I need to save my choppers for a lot of resupplying tomorrow, they start marching back to BC to help set up ambushes later on that axis I detected.

Thus starts our second week in werewolf country.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day nine

Oh crap, there are now two NVA units on the map somewhere. And four VC.

I really need to ping the dev over in the relevant thread, and ask him what the hell the rules ended up finally being for NVA activity. They shouldn't be activating so quickly, according to the rules, should they??

I did end the turn up another H&M point to 52; and I confirmed that (despite how the rules said it) I could set up an ambush two hexes out from the village (just not next to it or in it, "not adjacent"). So Belisarius should be protected from that threat vector now. I'll still need tomorrow before Banzai cat can be protected with an ambush from the southwest, but I assigned a chopper to give the original BC Company a lift to the jungle's edge; and the engineers will be in position to dig a clear area by tomorrow. Also, everyone in the village south across the river (still not named!) got resupplied.

So a good day, not getting murdered by werewolves. Or their werewolf tank, or whatever it is. Yet.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Ubercat

Thanks for the AAR, JP. I'm getting closer to coming down off the fence about this one.
"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

- Thomas Sowell

JasonPratt

AND BEHOLD THE FOURTH VILLAGE SHALL BE NAMED "UBERCAT"!

And there shall be much rejoicing. Which in Vietnam may involve frying cats, I'm not sure. Dad has stories, but they're from being based in Okinawa...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Ubercat

Cool. That amazing beast deserves whatever immortality he can manage to achieve.
"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labelled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

- Thomas Sowell

jomni

Quote from: JasonPratt on March 21, 2015, 06:48:34 PM
IN WEREWOLF COUNTRY -- Day nine

Oh crap, there are now two NVA units on the map somewhere. And four VC.

I really need to ping the dev over in the relevant thread, and ask him what the hell the rules ended up finally being for NVA activity. They shouldn't be activating so quickly, according to the rules, should they??

I did end the turn up another H&M point to 52; and I confirmed that (despite how the rules said it) I could set up an ambush two hexes out from the village (just not next to it or in it, "not adjacent"). So Belisarius should be protected from that threat vector now. I'll still need tomorrow before Banzai cat can be protected with an ambush from the southwest, but I assigned a chopper to give the original BC Company a lift to the jungle's edge; and the engineers will be in position to dig a clear area by tomorrow. Also, everyone in the village south across the river (still not named!) got resupplied.

So a good day, not getting murdered by werewolves. Or their werewolf tank, or whatever it is. Yet.

Can I see your strat map with intel marks?

Vietnam65

Great thread JasonPratt , I am sure you will be happy about naming villages in the upcoming update...  :)

Vietnam65

BTW can you name the next village 'Johan' , if there are any available....  ;)

JasonPratt

ALL HAIL JOHAN! ALL HAIL JOHAN!!

Also, "Jomni" and "Johan" will indeed be the names of the next two villages visited.

Can we name our units, too, someday, or is that code element two different? Presumably the computer differentiates them somehow...

Also, do you have a diagnosis for why NVA units are activating without (apparently) three consecutive H&M drop days? much less without the score dropping to/below 40? And if it's the former (which seems slightly more in the realm of possibility), what can be expected for unit generation as a result? I've had an NVA unit a day for two days now; is that a tank and an infantry?
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!