"Weird War Vietnam" Topic

Despite the fact I've decided to shelve my main Vietnam project for the time being, at least for a year or so, I was thinking that something different in that vain would maintain my interest and I could still utilize my terrain for the period. I thought a Weird War Vietnam scenario or campaign would be pretty cool. I know Pinnacle has that "Tour of Darkness" adventure and I've given it a read thru for inspiration, but does anyone know of any more sources for ideas? Most weird war stuff seems geared towards WWII.

Also, potential figures (like beasts and monsters) which would be a good fit for this period (in 28mm)? I'm open to any and all suggestions if anyone wants to weigh in.

-B6

Giant bug, hidden in a deep jungled valley!
There were reports of "hairy men" seen, and even killed, by both sides during the war, not to mention "known" to the Yards.
Perhaps zombies could make an appearance, a whole NVA regiment killed in an Arc Light strike, brought to life by the mixing of the chemicals from the explosives and an experimental defoliant known as "Agent Green".
Heck, maybe Agent Orange could produce crazy flesh hungry mutants.
Some of the religions of Vietnam have some odd stuff you could draw on, like the ghost of Oscar Wilde, or one of teh other Cao Dai saints, coming to "re-life" and doing whatever.
And then there are always the secret Chinese "supa solja" experiments of the early 1960s based on old WW2 Japanese secret research…. (ooooo, super sappers!)

TIME TRIPPER!!

PRobably the best scenario idea

Look at Delta Green stuff. They have some pretty neat ideas about the Tcho-Tcho. IIRC there was a story about Vietnam with Nyarlothep.

Ah Darby, always nice to hear from you. You're chock-full of good ideas.

Delta Green, Peachy? Whassat?

-B6

Immortal ancient wizard powerful in the ways of eastern magic. His lair is deep in the jungles or swamps of Laos where it is hidden by powerful magic. He is capable of summoning demons and raising the dead.

A LRRP team fleeing a NVA battalion stumbles across his lair by accident. Radios will not work due to magical interference so there is no air strike to take out the wizard. Fight your way to safety across a table full of rough terrain.

Ever read "Doomfarers of Coramond"? Typical Sword & sorcery fantasy, up to the point that one wizard magically summons an APC and a bunch of grunts from SE Asia to deal with the dragon summoned by the other wizard.

'A LRRP team fleeing a NVA battalion stumbles across his lair by accident. Radios will not work due to magical interference so there is no air strike to take out the wizard. Fight your way to safety across a table full of rough terrain.'

I'm sorry, I read that as LARP team.
Well, it was funny for a moment…………..

That WOULD be funny. And weird. Perfect for this kinda thing. ;)

-B6

Interesting topic, Bravo Six, as I bought my copy of "Tour of Darkness" just last week.

Picture this: There are rumors of a…..well, "monster", that have been reported in and around the Mekong Delta. The brass and grunts pretty much think it's total bunk and generally ignore it, but there have been some strange "incidents" recently. For example, there was what appears to have been wholesale massacre of several little villages around and along the Delta. Intelligence thinks it could be the work of VC, but the evidence seen doesn't correlate to something "Charlie" could pull off with such total brutality.

One traumatized villager who survived an attack described the "monster" as looking something like this:

picture

There's also a report of a "thing" that's been seen along the Ho Chi Minh trail that can swallow a man whole. Fragmented reports gathered say that the "thing" (or possibly "things") look very much like these:

picture

picture

Of course, investigations of all reports are still ongoing as of this writing.

That sounds awesome Saginaw.

I was considering something like this for a Central Highlands game:

link

Mythical troll bashing the skulls of US, Charlie and Montagnards alike.

-B6

Cool! Now i am thinking about getting into another line of miniatures… Not again!

Sorry Beo. My bad. TMP is bad for that ain't it? ;)

-B6

VERY appropriate for the Vietnamese highlands, Bravo Six. I'll have to add it to my personal Vietnam Weird War bestiary list. Thanks!

Everyone has some great ideas here. Seems like we should be playing The Animals "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" or something for inspiration. ;-)

Here are a couple of suggestions for "hairy men", per Darby E's idea. The first pic would indicate that these creatures were once human:

picture

picture

And here is an article about them:

link

Suggestions for an appropriate temple deep in the jungle, anyone?

Excellent suggestions Saginaw. I wonder if they'd look okay with Chiltern?

I have the Angkor Gate resin peice which was intended for fish aquariums, which Badmoon from FOF was nice enough to pick up for me at PetCo in the USA. Seen here:

link

-B6

BEAUTIFUL, Bravo Six! I gotta get me those two pieces!

I got an idea. Here it is:

The excellent Thornback Troll miniature from Reaper that you suggested could be a sort of "guardian" of a highland temple that Dragon Gunner suggested. Vietnamese mythology suggest "fairies" and spirits, but maybe their interpretation of a fairy and what we would envision could be two different proverbial animals.

To represent the "magical interference" around the temple on the gaming board, I would suggest a ring of cotton or a similar material dyed purple ("purple haze" – get it?). And for the wizards of the temple, how about this group?

link

And don't forget the Buddhist monks. Perhaps they'd be unwilling allies of the grunts?

link

Excellent post! Great seeds for a memorable game!

Oh, about the Chiltern minis. No idea, but I'm sure they'll work fine. They certainly have a lot of character!

Delta Green:
delta-green.com/home.html
Easy to mine for all sorts of ideas.

There was a David Drake short story (sorry, don't remember what collection it was in) in which horrific flying creatures would swoop down on an unsuspecting unit, eat some of them, then disappear, and nobody could figure out what was happening as the beasties were never seen, and when the few survivors tried to follow, they just seemed to disappear. I won't spoil it, but it was fun, and would be easily turned into a great solitaire game.

Cool link, Peachy! Thanks for the info.

nvdoyle, on Great White Games/Pinnacle's website, they have a .pdf file scenario called "Bats" that sounds very similar to what you describe.

Here's the link. Just scroll down to the "Articles & Downloads" section and click the last line:

link

In the 90's version of the X-Men's early days (Professor Xavier & The X-Men), the Prof and his half-brother, Cain Marko, serve in Viet-Nam instead of Korea. Just imagine Juggernaught emerging out of the jungle right into an unsuspecting column of GI or Charlies…

When the LRRP team attempts to use the radio you could role play a little.

Red Dog this is Lunch Crew requesting air strike over.

DEAD BY DAWN (In a demonic voice coming from the radio)

Yeah, 'Bats' brought the story back to mind. I think it was in one of the 'There Will Be War' anthologies, back in the '80s. I'll hunt it up tomorrow, hopefully.

If "Apocalypse Now" wasn't weird enough for you already, you could always throw in a Nameless Cult.

"The horror…the horror".

In a "Weird War Tales" comic I read waaaay long ago there was the story of a GI who ran away from his platoon during a firefight, then got lured into this subterranean tunnel network (labyrinth!) by a VC he captured. As it turns out, they were worshipping a minotaur in the center, and would bring American prisoners in to sacrifice it. Fun!

The David Drake book was "The Military Dimension". Lots of good short horror stories centering on Vietnam. How about a "Deep Ones" colony in the Mekong. SEALs, PBR's, and The 9th Division riverine troops in Tango boats. As an added twist, the U.S. player knows the NLF has a special hate for the village and tries to enlist them before they know what they are dealing with.

How about a "Predator" type scenario,with a south east asian mythological beast stalking everyone instead of and alien."Same moon,same jungle"
Or something like that.

Yeah—I'd say do a Lovecraftian spin off of Apocalypse Now! wherein Kurtz is actually an evil High Priest. Instead of Willard beheading him that night, the Montangnards' sacrifice of the bull actually summons Yog-Soggoth or some other appropriate ugly.

Ax

"""The David Drake book was "The Military Dimension". Lots of good short horror stories centering on Vietnam. How about a "Deep Ones" colony in the Mekong. SEALs, PBR's, and The 9th Division riverine troops in Tango boats. As an added twist, the U.S. player knows the NLF has a special hate for the village and tries to enlist them before they know what they are dealing with.""""

You beat me to it, I was just going to mention Deep Ones.
You know, that Ankhor hgate reminds me of teh ruins in western Cambodia.
You could always have a SOG team WAY into Cambodia, like during the invasion when their AOP was extended, and they run across some ruins, full of nasty things. Bad part would be that they couldn't get any airsupport because they were too far out (well, maybe a rescue Jolly Green out of Thailand).

Ooooooooooo, what if teh Marines that landed on the island during the "Mayaguez incident" found a bunch of cultists and their evil spawn mutant beasty buddies, rather than Khemer Rouge?
Also, another thought could be zombies (yet again) brought to life during the '68 Tet offensive, due to the time of year, and the 'magic' that village priests cast to creat good crops.
Having said that, who knows what else those priests (they'd have to be animists, like Hoa Hao or Cham, not the Catholics or Buddhists!) can conjure up?!?!?! Who needs a tank when you can have an unkillable evil beastie that snorts fire?

Wow, this topic is all that I could have hoped for and then some. Thanks guys.

Saginaw, I'd like to hear your impression of the "Tour of Darkness" book. Though I don't play Savage Worlds, the book seems like it'd serve as a sourcebook for ideas alone for this type of gaming.

-B6

Bravo Six, I don't play Savage Worlds either, but I think the 'Tour of Darkness' sourcebook has some great ideas and inspiration for playing Weird War Vietnam scenarios.

It's contents are pretty typical for a sourcebook, such as a TO&E for both the French and American forces, a condensed history of Vietnam and the wars fought there by the two forces, and a chapter for game masters on organizing and guiding the game. It also has pages to reprint (with permission, of course) a troop sheet, operations order, character sheet, and weapon effects templates (which are available in color at Great White/Pinnacle's site). All in all, I'd recommend the book for it's interesting contents.

By the way, here's another "creature" that would be perfect for Vietnam:

picture

He somewhat resembles the beast pictured in the lower right of this pic, which is better illustrated on the back of the book:

picture

Check your local gaming or comic book store for it, Bravo Six. I really believe you'll want one in your personal library!

Thanks Saginaw. I found a local seller on eBay who has it, so I'm going to pick it up. My FLGS doesn't have it.

Anyone have any idea how big those West Wind Yetis are? I know they're bigger than the standard WW figures which are 25mm thereabouts, but wondered if they'd be too small for chunkier 28mm.

This Heresy Snow Troll is mainly geared for artic stuff, but could work for Nam as well:

link

-B6

This also could be a real "SNAFU" to run into deep in the jungles of Nam or Cambodia:

link

I was planning to get that beauty for use in pulp gaming eventually, so he'd have dual use.

-B6

True story, over in 'Nam new guys would often times lose it or nearly so during their first nights in country. Out in the jungle and expecting charlie to infiltrate or mortar their position at any moment, nerves keyed up almost unbearably and then came the cheery cry of "&^%$ you" from the jungle. That could mean only one thing, your position had been found by the dreaded "obscenity lizards." To add to the madness, there was another kind of lizard which had a deeper voice and specialized in saying "re-up, re-up" to which the obscenity lizrds would reply. It sounded like the army career counseling session from hell was the way one grunt who nearly soiled himself because of hearing it described it.

Of course you could also do what I call the "Governors' Special" (ie Arnold and Jessie Ventura) and have a trophy-hunting, very effective space alien try to do a little human-bagging in the midst of a fire fight too.

More seriously I've heard of some vc who liked to sneak into American positions and reverse the facings of Claymore mines. These were above ground pre-positioned mines which you placed on the lines of possible approach by Charlie and detonated by command to stop his attack. Some really hot vc sappers delighted in turning these around so they faced towards Americans instead of the jungle and then simulating an attack. So when you set off the mine it might be aimed in your direction. Nasty but clever. Even in a game not knowing if your claymores were or weren't turned and you really needed them for defense could prove messy.

One night I was trying to get back to my base but my plane couldn't land at Cam Ranh Bay because the local sapper battalion was rocketing it, thankfully no injuries or damage resulted. So a gunner off a scout helicopter, for some reason, recided as an air force type I knew nothing about tactics if the vc ever fought their way onto my over-blown sand box "True Grit" namely Cam Ranh. Anyway being polite and an amateur military historian I let him talk.

According to my new friend the whole point about 'Nam in the jungle was you were going to be ambushed simple as that so you really needed to know how to fight your way out. My friend explained standard field tactics. Back then M-16s had a full-automatic position for the safety-selector switch. When you got ambushed, you hit the dirt pointed your M-16's muzzle in charlie's way and went to full -auto. When that very quickly emptied the magaazine, you ejected it, replaced it with another 19 round mag and repeated the process. After your second mag got ejected and replaced, you went back to semi-auto. At this point you and your buddies had thrown out enough fire to make charlie and friends get their heads down – ie suppressive fires, so you and your fellow grunts could start maneuvering and working your way out of the ambush.

Hopefully there might be something here which might help you.

Bravo Six, West Wind's "Yeti Leader" (GHY0001) measures 56mm from the bottom of the base to the top of it's raised left fist.

By the way, Discount Hobby makes two excellent looking "abominable snowmen", which I think could be used in the jungle:

picture

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This next group is pretty comical. The "normal" looking one on the left bears a striking resemblence to some sketches of the Vietnamese yeti:

picture

Jim, those are some very impressive stories you've related here. Sounds like you did a tour or two there "in-country". My brother was stationed at Cam Ranh Bay back in '69-'70 at the ammo dump, and he's told me of times when the air force base across the bay was attacked by VC. Pretty hairy stuff.

I've checked the 'Tour of Darkness' book, and it doesn't describe Charlie's tactic of reversing the facing of the Claymore mines. If I was a game master, I would definitely allow the tactic since it's historically accurate and would make for a more unpredictable game. Who knows. Maybe one of those nasty jungle creatures might run across one!

Actually I was only in 1971-2 which happened to be in time for the big August 25-6th ammo dump explosion courtesy of our local sapper battalion. That was interesting because it meant stacks of 500 pounders went off. At the time I was struck by how un-war movielike the explosions were. Mostly you felt the pressure wave of the explosions like a sudden gust of wind on a calm day, rather than heard the bang, which was more like a dull thud instead. Afterwards one day I had to take shelter in the base gym when our EOD folks cleaning up the damage thought a couple of my unit's 15,000 Commando Vault/Cheeseburger 15,000 pounder instantaneous jungle clearing bombs were going off. Fortunately we lucked out as the bombs were safed and cleared without being our being so from 30,000 pounds of bombs exploding.

I can't remember the source of my Claymore story. It's probably my Irish side and having kissed the Blarney Stone once but I don't take notes and do relish a good, hopefully true tale for the telling. But it sure fits the activity pattern of the hard-core guerilla over there – meticulous planning, reconn, assembly, rehearsal, and all other perparation etc before the action followed by a lightning strike cleaning up the battlefield, dispersal and regrouping to repeat the whole process again.

I lucked out by being the person who got to listen to our weekly intelligence briefings bcause I showed the transparencies on our vue-graph projector. Heck at one low point my detachment commander got so embarassed over how few people were attending them, enjoyed them so much he didn't want them to end and couldn't for some reason order important people to attend (our morale was getting low as the base was going to close in a few months so people were starting to mentally at least bail out) so that they were thrown open to anybody who wanted to attend regardless of your need to know, which was a real violation of security provisions indeed.

On the attacks across the bay, once the local Special Forces camp was being early one evening attacked and our alert siren went off. In the barracks next door some fairly new soul tore off into the revetmented lower floor of his barracks wearing his flack vest and helmet. I was with a bunch of drunken airmen sitting on the upstairs landing watching the action. One of us had his stereo out and was using the loud speaker function to give a very bad color commentary and play by play analysis. When Neil caught sight of the only person responding to the alert as he should, by roaring "Oh look there's John Wayne, can I get your autopgraph John?" The victim tore off both his helmet and flack vest as he cussed for ten solid minutes and finally stalked over to glare at us. So Sam gave him some nice neutricious alcohol so he felt better and actually came to like us.

Cam Ranh was so big that it seemed once a month the news back home was fond of reporting the base was blown up with awful American casualties. That always triggered frantic letters from home, mom was the air force civil servant in charge of administring the care of remains contract for the funeral service so she took it very personally. The reality was that things were so quiet during my year there, our most frequent rumor was that due to insufficent dead airmen from Cam
Ranh, we were going to lose our combat pay.

One caution about these stories from January 29, 1971 to January 27, 1972 Cam Ranh Bay was very lucky in that we didn't even have ab unjury due to the rockets, mortars and sappers. Our luck ran out shortly before and after I arrived in that we had fatalities. The month before I was supposed to fly over there, the flight I was going to take ran off the runway during a refueling stop in Alaska and several folks died. On the other hand when I was there Cam Ranh Bay was on the path way of a typhoon which went ashore well north of us at the last minute causing some more fatalities to the poor Americal Division. Boy when you're lucky, you're really lucky. So I can be a little bit flippant about my experiences there because they could have been a lot worse indeed. Then again during the 1950's and 60's I was influenced a lot by service comedies. Perhaps too Vietnam encouraged a certain warped kind of humor too. The day after the attack a lot of us got a laugh out of the plane bringing in replacement flying by the very tall smoke plume from that morning's explosions, since the runway was closed to all traffic and diverting to Saigon instead. Many witty (?) comments like "how about that as a welcome to 'Nam" were heard. Even though we couldn't get or send mail untill the runway reopened, it still seemed funny.

Saginaw, those Discount Hobby apes are pretty cool. Still prefer the Scooby-Doo Snow Monster look of the West Wind ones. If the Yeti Leader is as big as you've established, are the grunts AS BIG or smaller?

Jim, thanks for sharing all that excellent info and experiences. As I stated before, this thread has far exceeded my expectations for inspiration and information.

-B6

Jim, I found your stories humorous and engaging. Seems like the media was like it is today; looking for the worst in a story. Sad.

I'm glad my you and my brother made it out fine.

Bravo Six, if you mean the soldiers then they should be smaller than the Yeti Leader.

Thanks Saginaw.

I think I may even use the VOR Growlers I have as well for some type of weird abominations.

-B6

Watch the Korean movie R-point. imdb.com/title/tt0417072
No monsters as such, but plenty of inspiration and moodsetting for Weird War Vietnam.

Saginaw, you were right about "Tour of Darkness"! Excellent book and great info/ideas/food-for-thought for Weird War Vietnam. :)

-B6

A band of undead Huns who never die permanently, they are cursed for having failed to conquer Vietnam for their Khan. Perhaps they try to enlist US aid to help complete their invasion and end their curse. For a great figure, add an opposing Cham elephant with a ballista mounted on it who thwarts the Huns conquest for eternity.

Have to say I've been giving this some thought myself just recently. Having got alot of Graven Images stuff, alternative WWII and their Disturbia ranges, I've been considering doing Weird War Vietnam in 40mm hopefully with DZ's figures. Not sure if they're still available though.
Alot of the replys to Bravo Six's initial topic have really got me itching to go ahead with the project. Thanks everyone. Now where can I get those DZfigures from.

Gothic

Actually Gothic, if you like Bowen's work you'll LOVE his 28mm Vietnam line from Chiltern. I was skeptical myself, being a fan of TAG, but TAG's stuff is very "historical" and generic in look while Jim's Nam stuff is very robust and full of character. Despite the limited amount of stuff he did for the VC, there's enough US troops to choose from for Weird War Nam stuff. I am very pleased with these figures and my eyes thank me daily for a break from straining over the typical delicate fare.

On another note, I've been looking at Conquest's Pygmie Army as a perfect jungle faring adversary guarding temples and tombs hidden deep in the jungles of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Though they have a South American type flavour about them, I still think they could be used as supernatural headhunters for Nam.

-B6

Hi B6

I have quite alot of Chilterns Vietnam stuff already and was only last night looking at the larger figures and comparing them to Jims stuff. Not alot in it size wise.

Alot of Chilterns later stuff has been alot bigger than the original releases in this range. Also forgot Jim was responsible for them. I've posted to your post on Conquests Miniatures Pygmy Army – which got me thinking of using them with Chillterns figs. Not sure whether they'll look silly against the Ciltern figs though them being on the more larger size
.
Have to say I like Chilterns figures. All my WWII and modern figs are theirs.
Cheers

Gothic

Gothic, I found the opposite with the Chiltern stuff. Their hunched over, overburdened grunts which look to be some of his first stuff, look a tad different and slightly bigger than the Command Packs, or bareheaded/SF troops. Of course this all could be a matter of perception.

I think the pygmies may be a good idea and your tyranid idea also. Of course all the ideas mentioned above are great. The Savage Worlds supplement "Bats" has also got me thinking about getting some GW Bat Swarms, and of course what would weird jungle stuff be without big bugs (like those for SST) and of course… SPIDERS! The beauty of all this is, I can re-use this stuff later for pulp gaming jungle settings. :)

-B6

B6 – 'Bats', I think we maybe thinking along the same lines on this one. I've just painted up four of GW Fell Bats which are larger, for my Graven Image Alternative WWII Rumanian army (bat swarms undercoated). They fit in well with the 36-40mm stuff.

Had the same idea on SST bugs stuff, particularly the new 'overseer' bug to be released later this month if thats the correct name. Hadn't thought about spiders though. The list of possible enemy for the poor grunts is getting bigger. Wont need the VC.

Gothic

Let's not forget the possibility of Something Else having made the Tunnels of Cu Chi…Be a good use for Cthonian worm-types. I could see some very pitched battles going extremely badly as Things start grabbing soldiers and dragging them beneath the ground..

Yet another idea for more foes.Hadn't thought about tunneling creatures, but since you've mentioned it Bobcat, don't SST do a worm like creature in their bugs, big gapping mouth and rows of sharp teeth. Yet more food for thought. This topic just keeps throwing up more and more interesting ideas. Thanks everyone.