I was a gen-X kid, and the Vietnam War seemed a very recent event growing up. Many of my friends' fathers had served in the war. One of my childhood friends was one of the "boat people" who escaped the communists by sea in 1975. When I served as a soldier from 1991-9, the training seemed focused on the guerilla war in southeast Asia.
The US's misadventure in Vietnam was too recent and too personal for me to want to game. Over the past decade, my attitude has softened a bit, thanks largely to two books: "Vietnam: the Necessary War" by Michael Lind and "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" by David Hackworth. Both of these books forced me to confront some of the myths that surround the Vietnam War, and both got me thinking about the conflict in a more critical way.
A few years back, Jon Freitag gave me "Front Toward Enemy" as a Christmas gift. It was the first Vietnam War game that I actually enjoyed playing, and I started to envision converting it to miniatures.
The figures I will use are from Orion in 1/72 plastic, and I like the sculpts quite a bit. These were block painted and followed by the dip.
The next box I am painting is Viet Cong. I hope to have enough to play a small scenario very soon.
I hope you have enough painted for a game too. I took FTE off the shelf for a read recently.
ReplyDeleteThe intro scenario was worth the play through!
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