Steve Carey - 07:28pm Apr 10, 2002 PST (#1543 of 1550)
"The Colts have the ball 1st and Goal at the Giant 9 yard line. Unitas
with the pitch to Lenny Moore, he breaks one tackle....to the
5...Touchdown!" (BSO FOOTBALL)

On the Table today was Green Beret from Brian Train/Simulations Workshop.

Right up front, let me state this is a very fun game. Really captures
the 'feel' of Vietnam era combat as we perceive it. My opponent (Mike
Panikowski) and I each had early struggles with mechanics and the
somewhat loose rules, but once we got the hang of it, things went
smooth. Here are some highlights to give you an impression of game flow.

The campaign opened with the VietCong (VC) player and the Free World
(FW) player both starting with too few initial forces. We tried to
recruit like crazy, but I got lucky and drew a New Forces x2 Event to
bring on 2 large NVA Battalions in Cambodia. I also used VC Cadres
(Political Rating of 3) to snatch 3 empty spaces away from my FW
opponent.

VC troops (and Dummies) swarmed all over the board causing Mike many a
headache as he seemed surrounded with not enough FW firepower on the
board.

VC forces thus got the upper hand in the early combats, but FW Airpower
then made its presence felt and can suddenly turn any combat around.

FW troops increased the number of Patrol missions to reveal hidden VC
units, then set them up for possible Assault. When so revealed, the VC
player needs to decide whether to use a mission and move out of the area
(but risk an Ambush) or stay put and risk a subsequent combat.

I pushed more VC forces forward into a weakly held Pleiku (the central
position on the 'map'), but Mike quickly reinforced and I didn't have
enough troops to Assault this key position.

Instead, I later committed all 3 of my NVA Battalions into Kontum where
Mike had a Camp, a Strikeforce, and the ARVN Tank Regiment (firepower
9!) defending. The game really turned around as all NVA forces were lost
on the 1st round of combat - 27 VPs gone. I managed to later get 2 of
these units back via a Rally event, but the damage had been done.

We had to call it quits before finishing, but I was down only 1 VP when
we halted. Green Beret is a tense, fun, cat-and-mouse design that has
many clever features. We should be playing this one a lot.....