[Palle]

AKA Viet Minh and represented in the game by North Vietnam (which is fair enough as that is what they became).

Some observations on playing the first battle in a campaign as French Para commander, with a reinforced French Para Batallion. The reinforcements being two platoons of Commandos, some snipers and a battery of 155 mm off map arty.

-The Viet Minh are incredibly tough. They fight to the last man in most circumstances and you have to kill their squads to the last man. Even squads with a mere 1-3 men in them will rally and fight on. Their morale is thus higher than both the Waffen SS, the Foreign Legion and the Marines. This puzzles me somewhat, but they were tough little buggers. So it is sort of OK.

-Human wave attacks are hard for the lightly armed French Paratroops to defeat. With no arty to speak off and no heavy weapons, the battles get hard. Again this is historical. I had my snipers, bazooka teams (what are they doing in Indochina BTW? I see no reference to them in use there in any source I know, but they are useful) and scouts run out of ammo and my infantry going very low.

-Jungle hides Viet Minh well... Mon Dieu they hide well. Which again is historical.



In conclusion:
The Viet Minh seem portrayed very well (if somewhat superhuman- we shall see when I add some support weapons), bring lots of heavy weapons. Historical setup for Paras will be challenging, but MGs and Mortars can be paradropped with them as well.


The next game, for which I am currently setting up, is an advance, with no Transports available and through lots of water, swamp and rice-paddy hexes, so no paradropping here; instead I will similate one of the Groupement Mobile supporting the Paras advancing.