Introduction to Wargaming Vietnam with 10mm scale figures

By 'skirmish' gaming I mean using forces of Company size at maximum. To date I have been happy with this but it does not really afford the opportunity to hold 'big' games, i.e. battalion scale search-and-destroy missions, full-scale airmobile assaults into multiple landing zones, major attacks on firebases and so forth. Now, I know that many people will say that Vietnam was, for the most part, a war of small scale fire-fights involving platoons and companys and that, whilst battalion sized operations were frequently the norm, battalion-sized battles were not, simply because it was so difficult to entice the NVA and VC into such large-scale engagements.

Nonetheless, such big battles did occur and, besides, wargaming has always been as much about the 'what ifs' of a particular War as it has been about the actual historical events themselves. I wanted to examine the possibilities, as well as actually re-create on the tabletop, some of the 'what ifs'. I also wanted to do so on a large scale and consequently chose to 'down-size' my collection to a smaller scale and, by using 'little' soldiers, be able to fight 'big' wars.

My intention over this course of articles is to make an attempt to introduce more Vietnam wargamers to the benefits to be had of gaming at this scale. I shall attempt to clearly describe my own particular trials and tribulations as I slowly came to grips with a totally new wargaming experience. In doing so, I shall look at many facets of the subject: organising and collecting your forces, rules used, figure-painting, model and figure reviews, terrain making, scenarios, battle reports, research materials and so forth. It is my hope that the information I present will be of help and interest to other Vietnam wargamers who, like myself, would also like to explore the many 'what ifs' of the Vietnam War.

Why choose 10mm?

One of the major limitations wargamers face in relation to the size of the battles that they wish to recreate is the physical constraints placed upon them by the size of the available playing area. A good-sized wargaming table, say 8 feet by 6 feet, may appear quite large but, once you have deployed a full Company of 20mm figures those seemingly wide table-boundaries begin to shrink alarmingly.

Certainly there is room for that VC village that you are going to search, and there may even be room to send your platoons off to the flanks in order to approach it from different directions. However, what if the VC simply decide to bug-out through the back-door? More importantly, what if they decide to bloody your nose first and then bug-out?

There is little room on the table-top for artillery blocking fires and even less room for the insertion of a blocking-force? The situation is not easily resolved, even by using 15mm figures. You could, at a stretch, and on a suitably large table, field a battalion-sized force at this scale. Nonetheless, even if you now have the room to maneuver such a large force, you also have to move an awful lot of miniature soldiers every turn! And, finally, when your game is over, where do you store your 8x6 table?

Comparison of 10mm and 15mm figures

These were some of the considerations I looked at when deciding whether or not to change tack and start a 10mm collection.

A 10mm figure is not only half the height of its 20mm counterpart but it is also about 1/4 the mass and therefore the frontage of a 10mm figure is also considerably less than that of a 20mm figure. So, using 10mm miniatures means that you can place a lot more soldiers into the same sized area. More soldiers is good (that's almost a wargamers mantra, 'More Soldiers is Good') but this also increases the problem of moving such large numbers of figures. The answer is simple, place multiple figures on a single base.