The game is a turn-based operational level 2-player contest based on the battle for LZ X-Ray during the larger "Battle of the Ia Drang Valley" in Vietnam, 1965. There was a successful movie starring Mel Gibson made about this well-known battle for the Landing Zone. The game is challenging for both sides and historically accurate, but only takes a few hours and can be played at one sitting.

They Were Soldiers: Battle of the Ia Drang Valley lasts 15 turns. Each turn, players alternate moving and attacking each other’s forces on the game map, which is divided into hexes. Combat can include small arms firefights between adjacent units or fire missions that target hexes with artillery, airstrikes, helicopter gunships and mortars.

At the end of the combat phase, once all fire combat is complete, adjacent units may conduct close quarters combat (CQC) to decide which force will occupy contested hexes.

Each turn, after all movement and combat is completed, both sides draw cards to determine special actions for the future turns and may get reinforcements according to a preset schedule based on the history of the battle.

History - At 10:48 A.M. on the morning of November 14th, 1965, the first 80 soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the U.S. 7th Cavalry landed in a small clearing at the foot of the Chu Pong Massif in central Vietnam near the Cambodian border. The Americans had landed in the middle of the base area for an entire North Vietnamese division, and were almost immediately attacked from multiple sides of their small landing zone - called ‘LZ X-Ray’.

The battle raged over the next several days, with high losses on both sides. In the end, the Americans had proved their new airmobility tactics and had inflicted high losses on the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers they faced. The NVA had also learned how to fight the Americans - and had inflicted serious losses on a high-tech superpower enemy by using classic light infantry tactics with only a fraction of the firepower available to the Americans.

This game challenges the players to re-fight the first day or so of that battle - the critical time when the NVA forces had the chance to overwhelm the Americans and overrun the landing zone. Can you, as the U.S. player, hold your ground and repeat history? Or will the NVA player triumph and overwhelm the perimeter - cutting the Americans off from supply and reinforcement? Get ready to re-live or re-write history in the battle for LZ-Xray!

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