So what brings you to Vietnam?

What makes you want to wargame Vietnsm?

It is the history? The strategy and tactics? Why Vietnam?

(I'll answer this, but I'm curious about other people's responses.)

The Vietnam War(s) (1945 to 1979) have it all: exotic locations (from downtown Saigon to the Central Highlands, or even Over The Border if you want...), a host of different nationalities, colourful uniforms (Napoleonics have nothing on an ARVN Ranger in tiger stripes with a panther emblem on his yellow and green helmet), scaleability (you can do everything from skirmish gaming to battalion-level or higher), low-tech and hi-tech weaponry (from punji stakes to laser-guided bombs), land, air and sea operations (in spades - what other period allows you to feature bicycles, cyclos, Lambretta taxibuses, propeller aircraft, jets, helicopters, tanks, hovercraft, landing craft, riverines, and even those Everglades fan boats?). On top of which, the period allows you to cover conventional and asymetrical/guerilla warfare. Plus we have Hawaiian shirts, cool as f**k music, great booze and beautiful hookers. BEST. WARGAMING. PERIOD. EVER.

Besides my dad having served there, I find it fascinating as it was such a different sort of war. No frontlines, new technology being developed and used, new tactics and weapons systems, and constant political changes making the grunts life difficult. Sledgehammers used where scalpels should have, and scalpels used when an Arc-light was the right solution. Infinite possibilities.

My early years were in the 70's so knew and heard about men that fought in Vietnam, then the 80's highlighted it some more so.  So it was always a topic of interest for me.  Even did my junior year term paper was on the Vietnam War.  So when I got into miniature gaming I always knew it would be a period I'd jump into.  Like OTB and Darby mentioned though, once you really dive into it you realize all the different ways you can play the war.  It so interesting and a bit crazy.

My first name, Rodney, was after a friend of my Dad's who was KIA over there with the Marines.

FlyinSquirrel wrote:My first name, Rodney, was after a friend of my Dad's who was KIA over there with the Marines.

Oh wow. That's very cool man.

For me, it was a period I've always been interested in. From watching "Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War" with my dad on PBS, to learning about the war in my high school history class, I was fascinated. Remember back in the 70's/80's it was still the most "recent" war so lots of current information available about it at the time. I bought a copy of "Recon" back in 1983 and by 88 a friend and I had modified it into our own game "The Nam" after the Marvel comic. In 1993, I found some RAFM Platoon 20 WWII figures at my local Ottawa gaming store (Fandom II) and painted them (and the Germans as VC proxies) and that was the beginning of my miniatures interest in Vietnam. The rest, they say, is history.

BravoSix wrote:"The Nam" after the Marvel comic.

I almost mentioned that B6. Interesting art style for that comic, but I read all that I could find.

Yeah me too. Excellent even by today's standards.

Wargaming had been a hobby of mine for over ten years before going to Vietnam. I had been exposed to the war only from television news. Of course, that portrayal was very negative. Also I did not think helicopters over rice paddies could ever compare to a charge of French Hussars over the fields of central Europe. It just did not interest me at all. I got to Vietnam in 1971. I was not in combat. Nothing I was exposed to there instilled any interest in the war from any idea of an historical perspective in the future.

Exactly how the change came about for me is a bit of a mystery. I think it was seeing the air cavalry scenes in Apocalypse Now.  Those gunships looked pretty cool. I believe that led to my reading Matthew Brennan’s Brennan’s War.  He served with a blue platoon in the 1/9th Air Cavalry, which was the squadron portrayed in the movie. I read his other books and got hooked. There was so much variety of potential scenarios and units. I discovered SOG and that opened up a whole other world across the fence. One thing kept leading to another

My wargaming has always been heavily influenced by my reading. There are so many books on Vietnam written with an emphasis on the “one figure equals one man” level. Those can really spike your interest. It convinced me that was the type of game I wanted to play. Thus FNG rules.

Another thing that really got me into it is the great number of true heroes in that war. How different from what the biased press and most of Hollywood showed. So, so many men performing truly heroic acts.

Tom

I was born in the end of the 70's in the Netherlands. But second part of the 80's we all rented VHS on kids/young teens paries.
Most were action movies like rambo, missing in action, platoon, hamburger hill (and martial art movies offcourse).

Then Tour of Duty hit the TV-screen...
Then I read books about the war from the library.
An interest was born, but slumbered for years.

When I finaly got into wargaming, after the initial steampunk/sci-fy stuff the first historic purchase was 20mm Nam from britannia.
I dove more into the history and stories, found podcasts. Renewed my interest in movies, old and new ones.

Couple of years ago I went on holiday to vietnam. (i can really recommand that)

It is on of the most interesting periods in history with a lot of impact on the current lifes we live.
From the way it was reported to the guerilla warfare, to the social change, the loss of trust in the politics, the internal battle in a country. And off course the music it brought.

It has so much more then other recent conflicts.
The first gulf war and balkan wars I followed on the news and also have my interest but not as much as the one I was born after.

Jass wrote:Then Tour of Duty hit the TV-screen...

Yes, great show! Debuted here in Canada in the mid to late 80's I beleive. Was pretty good as far as TV goes, until it became Melrose Firebase in it's later years.

All of the above plus I was a boy/teen in Singapore and Hong Kong from 1965-72 and our house was often full of US service people - mostly Navy.

When I was growing up in a small town in New Zealand, the local public library had a surprisingly good collection of books by Bernard Fall on French Indochina. That's when I got hooked.

Many years later, I ended up working in Singapore, but with lots of travel into Vietnam. I was travelling through Pleiku and Kontum, and being paid to do so!

It's a fascinating period, with drama and colour!

Family histories.
My father spend service time in Indochina from 1946( against the last japanese allied to vietnamese) to 1956(to guard the new frontier between north and south).
When I was a child ,I read lot's of my father's books on Indochina war and saw all the pictures he took.
And for the Nam period, it's almost like you guy's,I was really young but I remember the évacuation of Saigon on tV and  most movies of the 80's.
I'm not in wargaming since a long time ,just 12 years.

I agree with the various points already made (variety of settings/weapons/soldiers/uniforms) but i don't think that's what got me into Vietnam. My family has not link to Indochina or Vietnam either.

I didn't watch "tour of duty" when it first screened in France in 88 (i was not even 10 !) but the 1st vhs tape my parents offered me was "operation nam" (no idea why my parents chose this movie). It must have been around the same time though... Anyway, i suppose that's what got me into it.
Plus, based on the war movies i could watch or history books for kids i had, Vietnam felt more appropriate for small scale skirmish (even compared to WW2 commando) that i could play with a box of 50-ish minis (not even painted) in my parents' garden.

As a small child, I grew up on war in Vietnam. Every day, as we sat down to dinner, the six o'clock news would get turned on, and we would watch and listen to the news, and the Vietnam war was center stage much of the time. As I would come to understand many years later, those broadcasts about Vietnam would have a huge impact on me in a lot of different ways. By age five, I became concerned about when it would be my time to go to Vietnam. There were some talks with my Dad, where a pre-school me tried to embrace the geo-political world of the Cold War. I didn't want to go to Vietnam.

Anyway, my Dad served in Korea, and WWII vets were family members and family friends, and I heard various stories of war, but the guys serving in Vietnam became my heroes, as I actually saw them in their war every day. When you mention the idea of the US soldier, I still immediately see a US soldier in Vietnam.

For whatever reason, my interest in playing with toy soldiers as a child, never really went away, and plastic army men evolved into little metal men. It was inevitable that I would go to Vietnam with them.

My first encounter with Vietnam gaming was with a group of vets, I was just out of high school, at my first or second gaming convention, playing a 20mm game with some M113s and infantry doing their thing. To be honest, the group was in sharp contrast to most of the others at the con. There was something different about how they behaved, and they were sort of off to themselves. Their intensity was intoxicating, and inspiring. They were reliving their experience, and it was amazing. Surprisingly, as I started watching the game, they welcomed me, and the experience left me knowing that I had to game Vietnam. It was about three more years before I could afford to go to Vietnam on the tabletop.

And all these years later, I'm still there.

What a wonderful experience!

Indeed! That sounds like a great experience Brian. Thanks for sharing.

irishserb wrote:When you mention the idea of the US soldier, I still immediately see a US soldier in Vietnam.

This has always been the case for me as well.  For similar reasons.

Great background account, irishserb. Thanks for posting it.

Tom