After a year-and-a-half of being “in country”, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and many in the Pentagon were becoming increasingly concerned that the war in South Vietnam was not going according to plan. Despite increasingly optimistic reports and news conferences from the head of MACV, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, the Viet Cong insurgency against the South Vietnamese government, although bloodied and beaten in several major engagements, was still dangerous and growing thanks to increasing aid from Communist North Vietnam.

General Westmoreland put forward in the Fall of 1966 a bold plan to invade the southern “pan handle” of North Vietnam as well as neighboring areas of Laos through which the Communist’s supply line (dubbed the “Ho Chi Minh Trail”) ran. The plan was to take and hold these areas to interdict the Communist’s support to the South, as well as compel the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) to do battle in the open against the US and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) to take back their occupied homeland and supply lines. General Westmoreland reasoned this was a fight the enemy could not avoid, and one we could not lose. The cost to conduct the planned invasion was for another 206,000 men (six additional divisions plus support personnel) to be deployed to the region. This would dangerously deplete the US military’s strategic reserve, as well as escalating the conflict to the point of risking global war with China and the Soviet Union. Would this plan have worked in bringing about a military solution to the Vietnam War, or would it have just “widened the stage” of this tragic quagmire for the US?

Can you do as well or better than your historical counterparts? Learn and enjoy!

Players will need a standard deck of playing cards including both Joker cards, a D6, and one D10 to play the game. A custom card set, that replaces the standard deck of playing cards is available from the publisher.

Each turn represents 3 or 4 days of time. A hex is about ten miles across. Combat units are either battalions (II) or companies (I). Kind of a Drag is designed by Paul Rohrbaugh and features graphics by Ilya Kudriashov.

Kind of a Drag: Operation Durango/Frisco City, April 1967

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