State of Play: Brief Border Wars (2/6): Third Indochina War

    

 

Our second run at Brief Border Wars (Compass Games, 2020) took us to the north of Vietnam in early 1979 for the Third Indochina War. After the French and American Wars, the national government of the newly reunited Vietnam were resistant to any foreign power trying to exert influence over their country. Erstwhile ally and material supporter of the North Vietnamese in their American War, the Chinese Communist Party were of the opinion that the uppity Vietnamese government needed to be taught to know their place. The limited engagement took twenty-one days to resolve, at which time the Chinese forces withdrew, claiming victory and insisting their objectives had all been accomplished.

Situation at start. The  two artillery units on the East/West Front border and the infantry
 unit on the Tongmianzhen/Dongxing border (South-East end of the border) are free
placement  units for the Chinese player. The two Vietnamese units in the Damaged
box were actually mobilised from further south; this reflects the time it took for them
to to reach the front.

Taking a lesson from our last game, T took the Chinese aggressors, while I played the defending Vietnamese forces. The Chinese have superior numbers and this on its own could spell victory, but the Vietnamese units tend to be a little tougher, and they have the home-ground advantage the terrain bonus in defensive combat). Still, the numbers can play to the necessary Chinese aggression strategy. Remember, victory is determined by the points-value of the provinces controlled by the aggressor nation at the end of the final turn, and control is defined by at least one undisrupted friendly unit in the area with no undisrupted defending units in that area. BBW rules dictate that the Attacker in a combat situation can dictate which units participate in that combat on both sides. This way, they can single out individual Vietnamese units for targeting, while managing the risk to their forces more effectively. The Chinese player doesn’t need to place every Vietnamese unit out of action, but merely to either disrupt or force a retreat on each enemy unit.

That said, it’s still going to be a hard task. The Chinese are also impeded by an arbitrary partition in the battle-scape; the PLA forces are split in two and restricted to operating in either the Western or Eastern area of the border region. Units from one sector cannot cross the dotted line to support their comrades in the other sector.

Unprovoked Chinese aggression (West front).
Note on unit orientation: because of the smaller 17" x 22"  map, it was easier
 for both of us to sit at the corner of the table instead of on opposite sides.

The Vietnamese have an inverse advantage; roughly a third of their overall strength is invested in Local Forces (LF). While the rules prohibit regular professional army units from leaving an area with undisrupted enemy forces present, the LF units can ignore this rule. Not only that, LF units can be moved from the Vietnamese Rear Area directly to any province bordering China. This came in very handy in the last round.

T came out swinging in the first turn. The card distribution of the first draw was four Chinese (white band) activation cards to two Vietnamese (grey band). The cards, have two values – movement and combat, and can be played for one or the other value. The value tells you how many units you can activate to commit to the chosen action on that card-play; if you have a card with a Combat value of 3 and a Movement value of 8. You can commit three units to engage in combat for that card-play, or you can choose to move units to the value of eight points (units can move from one area to an adjacent area each card-play; road movement costs a unit one point, while off-road movement will cost two points). In the first turn, T mobilised nearly all of his forces, pushing into nearly every province bordering China. I played coy, and in the Eastern Front, began to withdraw units in the northern provinces, hoping to lure T into following, so I could encircle his units and put them out of supply. Alas, he didn’t fall for it, instead choosing to fight some of the units still occupying border provinces in the Western Front, singling out the more powerful Regulars.

Unprovoked Chinese aggression (East front).

In Turn 2 we drew an equal number of cards, but the grey Random Event card came up, effectively robbing me of another opportunity; this was to be the pattern for the whole game. I rolled a 4 – Rear Area Chaos. Another roll was required: on a 1-3 the Chinese would be affected; on a 4-6, the Vietnamese. On the subsequent roll (a 2), it was the Chinese who couldn’t move anything up from their Rear Area for that turn. As it turned out, this was a small sacrifice for T as he’d moved all but three of his reserve units forward already.

Brief Border Wars is a game of skill and of chance. I wouldn’t say in equal portions, but both play their part in a given outcome. Turn three saw a 4-2 break in the cards in T’s favour again. I mostly concentrated on conservation of my units while T cherry-picked the most valuable provinces to try to take and hold. I could have told him that, in this scenario in particular, it probably matters less what you do in the first three or so turns, because of the room for reversal in the subsequent turns.

Random Event Card (not always a good thing).

Turn 4 saw the white band Random Event card drawn, and T rolled a 5 on the table: Diplomatic pressure for cease-fire. The game would now finish on turn 6, and to ensure this, the next six cards are drawn from the activation deck and discarded. These happened to be five grey-band cards (Vietnamese) to one white-band. That hurt me a little, but not too much since I’d avoided initiating combat for the last two hands after putting up a show of resistance in the first turn.

I had taken hits on some units rather than choosing retreat to soak a hit, gambling on bringing them back into action at full strength. T had been doing the same thing, I think, and we had both been using our Special Action cards for this purpose. T had burned through his in the last round. T lead each turn because he held the majority of cards (and the Aggressor faction leads in ties). Coming into the last round, I had one Special Action card left, which gave us both an equal number of playable cards.

The situation looks desperate.

With his last card played, I think T was feeling confident of at least a minor victory. On my last card play, I had 8 movement points available. I had two LF units in my Rear area. I moved one each into Hi Giang and Cao Bang, two provinces previously devoid of Vietnamese troops, and managed to move a couple of regular infantry units into other areas T was sure he’d had sown up. In the final analysis, only one of the occupied provinces was secured by non-disrupted Chinese forces, a major victory for the Vietnamese (though I’m sure the outcome would have been spun differently in Beijing).

My final gambit felt a little gamey and I’m not proud of winning on what felt like a technicality. If I hadn’t garnered Cao Bang and Hi Giang (either side of the demarcation line between West and East Fronts), T would have finished the game five points up instead of one, which still would have only been a draw. There is an element of gaminess inherent in BBW due to the limitations imposed on the system. It was always intended to be a fast-playing, small footprint game, and the area movement and simple, handful-of-dice combat resolution lend an element of RISK (Parker Brothers, 1959) to the feel of play.

Final game state, end of Turn 6.

Upon deeper consideration, I don’t feel like that’s fair to the game. The simplicity of the rules (four pages, plus special rules for each scenario) bely what is really a deep strategy game. Like a lot of wargames, BBW gives both sides a complete and unhindered view of the battle-space, which itself is unrealistic. Allowing the Local Forces to move quickly and with impunity from the Rear Area to the frontier is reflective of the fact that by 1979, the Vietnamese army and irregulars had gained thirty-odd years of experience fighting a better equipped invading force, and had taken to heart everything they learned. On reflection, I can’t help but think that Ho Chi Minh himself may have smiled at my dog-move at the very end of the game.

COIN isn’t the only system that models asymmetric warfare really well.