"First Indochina War" Topic

Lately I've been getting spooled up on the First Indochina War with Legion Games and Kim Kanger's games Tonkin and Dien Bien Phu, Bernard Fall's books Street Without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, Martin Windrow's book The Last Valley. I have some 28mm French Foreign Legion troops and can make do with several hundred other WWII figures for skirmish games in this period.

I'm wondering if anyone has done any BA rules mods to adapt the WWII era to this immediate post war period. It would seem that it could be done with almost straight-up BA rules, but I'd like to hear if others have thought about this. Also, I'm curious to know if there may be any AARs available on this period.

Thanks very much!

Jan

I have thought about this also especially as the force lists for WW2 are so easy to adapt and the game would get some interest with a few locals. My only hurdle is cheap affordable figures for this conflict in 28mm . I have been considering converting a bunch of Warlord plastic s, I think the French would be rather easy but allot of work needed for the Viet Minh , also I wouldn't know which plastic set to start form to get the basics of the uniform .
There is however a few ideas about using 15mm from Eureka Miniatures , good figure s, cheap price and local for us, cheers Tom

You really don't need to mod all that much; it's almost all ex-WW2 kit. We intend to proxy Japanese for N. Vietnamese troops for Dien Bien Phu game…there again we're not too picky.

Hey sloop,

I was exactly where you are now a few weeks ago. The french gang has put together a very nice supplement for indochina. You need to show a proof of purchase of the original rules and they'll send you the pdf.

It is called "Croire et oser", you should find the team by googling it. It is in French but it is possible to figure out most of it.

For miniatures go with link

or empress miniatures if you are in Europe

Beautiful, beautiful miniatures

Thanks very much for all your advice!

The miniatures link from "repaint" look great, but I'm going the same way as "…bloke" for now using about 100 Japanese troops for Viet Minh. I have some French Foreign Legion and I'll also probably use some commandos with berets to fill out the French ranks. Perhaps not very elegant on the miniatures, but I've played a lot of games with cardboard squares representing the troops, so I should have enough to get started pending further admiration of the FNG range.

In Street Without Joy, many of the ambush descriptions mention VM armed with bazookas and also recoilless rifles. Recoilless rifles are included in the weapons chart posted by "sotek486" for Bolt Action Modern, so I'll be using his chart for the few items available in the early 1950s that are not in the BA WWII charts.

I'll see what I can do with "Croire et oser," I'd really like to have that, but I'm having a hard time finding any French speakers, or readers either, here in South Carolina where "you" is pronounced as a four syllable word …

Thanks again for your ideas, I'm well on the way now!

Jan