The new Vietnam Campaign Mission book from the upcoming Fields of Fire Deluxe is now free to download from the Fields of Fire Deluxe P500 page at GMT Games for anyone with the original game to play with.
About The Campaign
Most Fields of Fire campaigns take place over a series of missions that are set days or, at most, a couple of weeks apart. They depict your company as it fights its way through one intense period of action.
However, the nine-mission Vietnam campaign presented in FoF Volume I, sees you in command of a 9th Infantry rifle company for just over 2 years of action. During this time, instead of the continuous promotion of your surviving units and gradual progress towards a completely veteran company as you may be used to in previous campaigns, your company will likely degrade over time. Not just through casualties, but you’ll also see your best units rotated out of the battalion and sent home and will experience a restructuring of the regiment half-way through the campaign that leaves you with yet more green units to lead into battle.
All the while the missions themselves ramp up the intensity as you are sent into ambushes, or try to lead single platoons on patrols through VC strongholds. Even the safety of the Staging Area is not guaranteed in this campaign. Missions see you dropped by helicopter into the middle of the jungle or trying to defend far flung outposts with no place to fall back to.
It’s a tough campaign, probably the hardest of the four, with some brutal enemy ambush packages that have been known to cause new players who skipped the easier campaigns to rage-quit in despair. The campaign is also somewhat more complex than the earlier Normandy and Korea campaigns due to a handful of special rules that flesh out the Vietnam experience; the organization of helicopter assaults, special support units like Fixed-Wing gunships, and the chance of enemy units appearing where you don’t expect them to, popping out of tunnels to engage your unsuspecting men at point blank range. It’s a long way from Normandy, and very much aimed at the player who already has a bit of command experience under their belt.
Patrolling is fun (really)
One of the most fun parts of this Campaign that I’d like to highlight are the single platoon patrol missions. Patrols have somewhat of a poor reputation amongst Fields of Fire players; the ones in the Normandy campaign tended to be quite uneventful, and the patrol missions in Vietnam 2nd edition didn’t occur until the very end of the campaign so were often overlooked.
The missions in FoF Deluxe have been shifted around into chronological order, so you’ll get to these faster. Being dropped into the middle of the jungle as a single platoon and asked to take a look about is quite a different experience to being in command of a whole company with tank support. The mission book instructions have been updated to clearly indicate what you should be doing and how command & control works at this level. You can try the patrols with each platoon in your company (though you don’t have to play with all of your platoons if you just want to move on to the next mission).
What’s New in Fields of Fire Deluxe?
The campaign has been updated and features two new missions designed by Ben. The first is an optional alternative mission for Mission 7. This was a complex situation historically in which one company ended up being sent right into an ambush and had to fight their way out (mission 7A) and another company was sent to rescue them after radio contact was lost (the new mission 7B). The player gets to choose which company they are going to play. The final chapter is a new defensive mission set at Mole City FOB. It’s an exciting night of human waves, desperate close quarter fighting and so much ammunition usage that the MG barrels melted. It’s a good way to finish off the campaign.
Upgraded Mission Book
The new mission book lays out all of the special rules clearly, along with maps for each mission to assist with set up. The set also features new player aids to make planning the various helicopter assaults in this campaign easier.
New counters
FoF Deluxe will contain various new counters to use in the Vietnam campaign. The first ones that will stand out when you see the counter sheets is a complete new set of HQ counters. These have higher VOF ratings on their Fire Team side to represent the more heavily armed units of the Vietnam War. Long-time Fields of Fire artist Domhnall Hegarty designed new counters for these so players can easily tell them apart when picking out their counters for the game.
We’ve added the WP Rockets counter from FoFII for the Airborne FAC to fire, a marker for the turn track (on the new Command Display that will come with FoF Deluxe) to mark how long the FAC will stay on the map and finally, as well as recolouring the NKPA units so they never get accidentally mixed into Vietnam games. We’ve also made a complete set of VC and NVA counters with slightly different colours so you can separate them and only need to pull out the set you need for the mission you’re playing.
Andrew Stead
Fields of Fire Series Developer
Vietnam Campaign Mission Book [PDF Download]
Author: Andrew Stead
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