To stop China from drilling for oil in contested waters, Vietnamese environmental activists sink a Chinese drill ship with limpet mines. To appease a stridently nationalistic public, China launches air raids on Vietnamese air bases, quickly establishing air superiority. More worrying for Vietnam, Chinese forces also move into Laos and Cambodia. With clandestine support from the United States, Japan and India, Vietnam sends troops into Cambodia to stop the Chinese military buildup. China and Vietnam are now truly at war. Vietnam plans to pursue a three-pronged strategy to defeat China: 1) send special forces into the jungles of Laos and Cambodia to disrupt Chinese operations, 2) mobilize reserves to try and halt China’s northern offensive, 3) force China to withdraw by disrupting the PRC’s economy and war effort with cruise missile strikes. Imagine the Vietnam war, but now the Vietcong can blow up Newark Airport. You play the Vietnamese, and you must hold out for 10 turns.

The (x) and the [x] units represent large conventional combat units: mechanized divisions for the PRC, infantry brigades for Vietnam. Since China will almost certainly have air superiority, the game also assumes that Vietnamese units have no movement value. Once you place them on the map, they stay put. The (o) and [o] units are special forces units. For Vietnam, they are valuable because they can be deployed to enemy controlled hexes.

To envision this conflict, imagine thousands of Vietnamese reservists getting a text message telling them to report to a random parking lot that night. Trucks are waiting, and each reservist is issued rations, some kind of high tech US weapon, and a bicycle. This fully equipped brigade then bikes under the cover of darkness, to a location at the front determined with the help of images from US and Japanese spy satellites. Indian cruise missiles fired from trucks hidden in the forest occasionally pass the soldiers overhead as they ride north. The PLAN Air Force cannot do much about either of these threats.

Good luck!