Rochester Gamers Community

Vietnam Solitaire is a simple solo wargame designed by Dave Kershaw and available for purchase in electronic format on the wargamesdownloads.com website. In this strategic-level game the player assumes the role of the commander of American and South Vietnamese forces and plays against the simulated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces.

The game is purchased as a PDF file of only about 200KB, so it is fairly quick to download. The file prints out as seven pages of rules, one page of counters, and a single page for the map. The 56 counters and the map are in full color and at least the map needs to be printed out in color so that you can distinguish between the various terrain types on the map.

What You Need

To play the game, you need to print out at least the last two pages which are the map and counters. I printed the map on heavy cardstock and gave it a light spray of fixative to keep it from smudging or smearing during play. I printed the counters out on a self-adhesive paper which I then affixed to heavy cardstock before cutting them up. I like doing this to make the counters a bit thicker and therefore easier to pick up and move during play.

You’ll also need a single six-sided die to play.

What You Are Told

In the design notes included in the rules the author claims that Vietnam Solitaire will reflect the historical struggle for Viet Nam, including the inevitable result which was of course victory for the North Vietnamese. The design notes further say that the game is intended to demonstrate relative effectiveness of the various forces involved. This includes Viet Cong irregulars, the North Vietnamese Army, the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam (South Vietnam) and the infantry, air force, Special Forces, and air cavalry of the United States.

What You Will Discover

If you didn't know it already, after playing this game a few times you'll tend to agree with most people that the war in Viet Nam could not have resulted in a victory for the United States, despite overwhelming American technical and military superiority. This was because the political cost, at home and abroad, of driving the war to a successful conclusion was more than the American people were willing to bear. In playing Vietnam Solitaire you will get a good feel for the frustrating dilemma faced by the American government during its involvement in the Viet Nam conflict.

The game is played in roughly nine phases, including raising, moving, and combat between opposing forces. Each complete turn represents a year of real time, starting in 1963.

Political Points are the currency of the game, and are used to purchase new units and launch offensive air actions. Political Points are also expended when a friendly unit is eliminated, and are added or subtracted at the end of each turn depending upon how many areas are under the control of the American or not. The game ends at the end of a turn in which a certain limit of Political Points has been reached. The game assumes that the North Vietnamese will ALWAYS win, so the goal of the player is to try to match or exceed the historical outcome from the American perspective.

The map is an abstract representation of South Vietnam, and is divided into six distinct
areas. Each area is further divided into sub-areas which are either Jungle, Urban, or Paddy terrain. The terrain type is important because the various units have different
capabilities depending upon the terrain. This is pretty standard stuff -- very simple but very effectively used in this game.

The rules use area movement, fairly conventional combat and movement mechanics, and a simple system for simulating the non-player opponent. I wasn't surprised or confused by any of the game mechanics, but I was pleased by how the rules were never more complicated than they needed to be to get the job done. Also, I never felt like I was reduced to the role of an accountant simply pushing numbers around instead of playing the role of the commander in chief of the American effort and making decisions based on their military value and political cost.

What's Good

The rules are very well written. They are concise, clearly, well organized, and include a table of contents, examples of play, and all tables needed for play. The map sheet is attractive and functional and includes a summary of the sequence of play and tracks for keeping track of the turn number and Political Points.

The game itself is multi-dimensional despite its simplicity. US Special Forces (Green
Berets) and B-52's are used to control the expansion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Tactical
air forces (in the form of Napalm strikes) can be used to destroy enemy units. The
player can opt to expend Political Points to purchase ARVN, Grunt (US infantry),or Air Cavalry units. Each of these different units have different capabilities and costs, leaving it up to the player to decided the optimal mix of US and ARVN forces.

In general the game does exactly what a good game does. It allows the player to make decisions about where to invest and what risks to take and provides varying degrees of rewards based on the wisdom of the investments. Of course, fortune plays a part in the outcome of individual events and a string of bad luck can quickly end the game, as it does in real life.

The game has a high replay value. There are optional rules for a faster game, a game in which South Vietnam receives a higher level of support, and an historical game. A player could decide to use different strategies each time the basic game is played to experiment with different options. A few examples would be a strategy in which no US forces are involved, a strategy in which only US air forces are involved, a gradual escalation of US forces, a rapid escalation, etc. With a few "house rules" the game could include more military options (Soviet intervention? nukes?) or introduce more peripheral political events (liberal media? Hanoi Jane?) to make the game more colorful.

What's Bad

The first time I played this game, I lost badly on the first turn. I think that is
because the game starts out with a VC counter and an ARVN counter in every area, and a heavy US investment and a few bad rolls which leave VC or NVA in control of three or four areas on the map can cause you to lose the war in 1963. I could have misinterpreted the rules, or simply played the first game poorly, but the play balance of the first turn seems to make it more difficult for the US player to stay in control than later turns.

The second time I played I managed to survive the first turn and stabilize the situation
for a few more turns. Around the fourth turn a specific rule prevented me from using B-52 and Green Berets to attack the growing Ho Chi Minh trail. As a result a large number of NVA showed up by turn 6. A roll of the dice decided that the NVA would launch a general offensive and attacked the US and ARVN forces in almost every area of South Vietnam. The combat results in almost ever area favored the Americans and the NVA and VC offensive was crushed. I checked, and interestingly enough this corresponded to 1968! I still managed to hold on for a few more turns, but eventually (as the design notes suggest) the game ended when I had a bad turn.

About the only negative thing I can say about the production values is that I didn't care for the counters. I don’t like the artwork on the counters, which includes a "Rambo" like character on the Green Beret counters, and something I can't recognize on the Trail Counters. I think I would have preferred more military terminology and symbols on the counters, but that is a personal preference. Also, the counters could be a little larger. At one centimeter, they are a little hard to pick up and move. They have to be small enough to fit on the map but the map has some room to make the areas larger so both could have been a little bigger to make it easier to move the counters around.

Vietnam Solitaire is very playable as is. I found it matched much of what I already knew about the conflict and it stimulated my interest to learn more about the war in Viet Nam.

Since I have a personal interest in the air war in Viet Nam, I am tempted to develop a "plug-in" module that would replace the original very simple air war rules with
something a little more complex. This might include allowing the player to deploy
different aircraft types – air superiority or Wild Weasel electronic warfare aircraft for example -- and rules for SAM, triple-A, etc. The outcome of the air war phase of each turn would determine the availability, effectiveness, or Political Points cost of offensive
air operations in support of the ground war.

A very interesting possibility is that Vietnam Solitaire could be used as the highest layer of a solo miniatures campaign system, setting the stage for tactical battles using your favorite scale miniatures and rules. Each combat, which is normally resolved abstractly with each side rolling for "hits," could be instead the impetus for a miniatures game using a programmed scenario. You would need an intermediate layer to generate the forces, terrain, objectives, etc. for each combat. Something like C.S. Grant's “Programmed Scenarios for Wargames” would be an excellent resource for creating scenarios. For example, if while playing Vietnam Solitaire, during the NVA/VC offensive phase an NVA unit moved into a Paddy area which is occupied by a Grunt (US infantry) unit, combat is required. In a campaign game, this would trigger a miniatures game between NVA and American forces. A die roll could be used to randomly pick the scenario -- for example, on a roll of 1 the scenario is a holding action, on a roll of 2 a blocking action, etc. In this example since the combat occurred during the NVA/VC offensive phase, the NVA would take the role of the attacker (Blue forces) and the Americans would be the defender (Red forces). If the miniatures game was triggered by American or ARVN forces moving into an area occuppied by VC or NVA forces during the player movement phase, the roles of Red and Blue would reversed. A campaign like this would likely require days to game out, but of course the player could always opt to use the original combat resolution mechanic in lieu of a miniatures game for any of the combats.

Overall I am very pleased with the Vietnam Solitaire, and at the price it is a real bargain. Dave Kershaw has also designed at least two other solo games which I believe use a similar system – once involving the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and another simulating Operation Barbarosa. I intend to check out these titles and add them to my solo game collection.