I found my copy of Buckle for your Dust today in the loft, so grabbed it to photocopy the Mouth of the Dragon riverine rules by Paddy Griffith that are included at the back, as well as Andy Callan's One Brain Cell Vietnam rules for 1/300th that are also included. The Mouth of the Dragon looks like an almost perfect fit for 1/600th scale Dinassault games, with only a few tweaks and extras needed to convert it from 1971 to 1951. In fact, as the rules are only six pages long, it shouldn't take much effort to edit them and rewrite them out in full, complete with some pertinent illustrations.
The main amendments would be to replace helicopters with fixed wing air support, figure out the equivalent types of landing craft, monitors, patrol boats and so on, then do the same for the Viet Minh and CEFEO units. It's a company to battalion level game, with stands representing platoons, so close enough to what I was thinking of in terms of scale. The rules are written for 1/300th scale figures and vehicles on at least a metre square area, so in 1/600th this would work really well, especially as it represents only nine of my terrain tiles.
I think this would be an excellent project and more than achievable on a fairly limited budget of time, effort and investment. I will do a costing of the bits and bobs I'd need to get hold of, primarily the 3mm figures and vehicles from Oddzial Osmy, a few planes from Tumbling Dice and a Vietnamese village from Brigade Models, to see it if it is an affordable plan. If it squares out, I'm sorely tempted to give it a go, even if it's going off on a tangent from what I was planning for the next couple of months. I just need a pithy title for the project and it really should be in French....any ideas?
Looking forward to you doing this Jim. I've played a couple of games with 6mm Nam riverine stuff myself. At 3mm you should be able to fit even more on.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Pete.
It's a way off yet but it's looking like it would work well. I've got other things to do in the meantime but it's a potential project for later on the year.
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