I may have been quiet on here but rest assured I have been toiling away behind the scenes. We have some fun stuff developing in the Iron Dice Incubator (TM) not to mention the half dozen articles I have started in the past 3 week… stay tuned I suppose?

Excitingly, in the past few weeks we hit 50,000 lifetime site views and we are closing in on doubling our view total from last year. So, thank you for hanging out with us dear reader. We never set out to do anything other than give something back to the community but it’s cool to reach a milestone like that. Oh and thank you too Russian bot trolling our work for memes to use. Thank you.

But alas amongst the rampant 50k celebrations Hobby Butterfly Ben (HBB) has struck again! I broke out my 15mm Vietnam US Armored Cavalry troop. After pawing the sprues up I broke down and ordered some Charlie for them to play with. It started with a well timed eBay auction that netted me most of a company and then another eBay sale I stumbled on… one thing led to another and now I have a company of NVA regulars with support plus some new kit for my Americans.

I have to say that everything is on the table for Vietnam. US armored cavalry, highly mobile US aircav, trolling Brown Water Navy, ARVN beating the bushes… each has an allure all their own. The problem is narrowing the projects down and finding a suitable ruleset.

In a motivated mood, I reached out to Long Shot Wargaming to see if they would share their Battlegroup adaptions for Vietnam. Then I looked into Iron Fist Publishing (Battlegroup Authors) NAM ‘68 Tour of Duty. The skirmish rules are intriguing and have a few unique mechanics but I really feel like the main Battlegroup rules can support Nam in a more pleasing way. It may not have happened all the time but company on company size combat with vehicles and air power sounds awesome. Vietnam can be a happy medium of WWII and Cold War with a hefty jungle seasoning.

Evan also started reading Charlie Don’t Surf by the Too Fat Lardies. So far he’s given it a thumbs up with the only hitch being the force sizes. It seems to be a company sized game and that would take us both some time to assemble and paint. Who knows we may be writing our own adaption if we can’t find something suitable.

Quick plan of attack is… everything is on hold until after Adepticon in March. I managed to pick up another project that has, predictably, spiraled out of control. So until I have a handle on all of my commitments I need to focus myself down. Maybe an M113 here or there. I can indulge in some model building while listening to The Black Angels for the new age Vietnam vibe right?

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I did hem and haw at which mortar to give my Armored Cavalry platoon. It seems 4.2” M106 mortar tracks were the first to be deployed but soon is inability to traverse 360 was identified as a substantial drawback in the jungle. Usually the platoon’s 4.2” mortar track was lumped together with other platoons’ mortar tracks at a firebase. This allowed easier resupply and coordination of larger fire missions but didn’t allow coverage for units operating out of range of the base.

The smaller 81mm armament on the M125 mortar track was able to rotate 360 degrees and had a shorter minimum range (46-72 meters vs 840 meters) allowing it to be used as an integral part of a platoon’s firepower. This switch happened around 1967 but some units didn’t get the 81s due to supply issues so the four deuce can still be appropriately used throughout the war.

So all that said I started with the M125 and will make a M106 when I get the need. I even managed to magnetize the mortar to allow it to spin 360 degrees like the real deal.

Oh what’s that you say? You started with? Yes dear readers I wrote that part of the article then but one night this past week my mother in law came over. Thankfully we have a good relationship but she and my wife wanted to chat at the kitchen table. I figured why not build an M113 while we talked? After a 2 glasses of wine I had three M113s built. Oops?

My apologies for the relative radio silence! I’ll try to be back in a flash, until then here are some more cool ‘Nam pictures from across the web.