Monday, October 14, 2019

Deep Dish Lard Day - Hamburger Hill





This past weekend we held our first Deep Dish Lard Day at Noble Knight Games in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. We had a good turnout and hope to build from this in future, overall we had 20 players and put on five games in morning session and four in afternoon.

Want to thank everyone who came and either put on a game or just played in some! And a thanks to Noble Knight for hosting us, their gaming space was great for the day.

Giveaways for the Lard Day

I ran two games so did not have a chance to take pictures of everyone else's setups but I know Paul was running around taking pictures so check out his blog at Scrivsland I'm sure he'll be posting those shortly.

Morning Session - A Hard Day for Charlie Company

First game I ran in morning session was from Skirmish Elite- Screaming Eagles at Hamburger Hill using a variant of Chain of Command called Chain of Command: DMZ. Created by Jason Sendjirdjian you can check it out yourself on his blog here.

Edit: I see Jason actually just published Version 2 of his variant downloadable HERE

I had two players in this game, Matt and Brian who came from Milwaukee and Racine. They have been trying to learn the rules so this allowed them to get a grasp on regular CoC and see some of the funky bits added in Jason's DMZ variant.

The scenario followed Charlie Company of the 187th Airborne Regiment working their way up a hill adjacent to Hamburger Hill. Objective was for the Americans to destroy Five Vietnamese bunkers in order to continue pushing.

Matt's American's pushed up slowly and took their time taking the front line bunkers out one at a time. Brian attempted to have his NVA charge down one flank to overwhelm a jump off point but int he ensuing melee they were beaten back and opened the left flank. The NVA Political Cadre (Senior leader) was killed leading the assault, which took a toll on the Vietnamese morale.

After a hard fought battle the Americans emerged victorious as four Vietnamese bunkers were destroyed and the NVA morale was dropping very low, we agreed to call it an American victory.

Battlefield, still under American bombardment

American squad moves slowly to first bunker line
VC recce squad command section
After destroying frontline bunkers, Americans push on

Afternoon Session - Stretched Thin

In the afternoon, I ran another scenario from the Hamburger Hill booked called Stretched Thin. In this scenario the Americans have to withstand Vietnamese assaults form two sides as they try to evacuate wounded off the board.

I play tested this a few times to play around with the jump-off placement being on two sides of the table for the attacking player. But thought the game worked well and resulted in a bloody American victory, I faced off against Paul, who was also trying DMZ for the first time.

As the Vietnamese I tried to use their Local Knowledge special rule (can move a jump off point 18" closer at start of game) to try and pounce on the American lines, but Paul rolled up a full American squad with M60 support right away and made short work of my desperate charge. Vietnamese manged to remove one American jump off point and contest a second after a Vietcong charge. But in the end the Americans got all stretcher parties off the board as well as took out two NVA jump off points that resulted in the Vietnamese breaking and fleeing the field.

Battlefield - Stretcher parties attempting to run off


NVA result is met with brutal American fire
Vietcong assault onto the road
After routing the Americans, the Vietcong push a jump off point
NVA forces capture and remove a jump off point