'Nam: The Vietnam War Miniatures Game (Battlefront)

Having purchased the original Flames of War Vietnam range to completion, I was initially very excited by this release. However what arrived in my hand today is less than what I expected. In short it was an average product, that really just updated my FOW Vietnam rulebook and supplment to the current rules. Size wise it fits more with my Bolt Action books - not a Team Yankee (Flames of War) book size.Firstly Flames of War / Teak Yankee has gone to a single core rulebook - which can be received for nearly free with other product. In 'Nam those rules were repeated, in addition to the standard rules. That did not need to occur. As it stands there has been a discussion of re-vamping the Team Yankee rules to whatever is minorly different in Flames of War 4th edition - so again a waste of space.Secondly, FOW / TY has gone to an all hard cover book, and kept it at $20 for each Team Yankee faction - or $20 for their Late War compilation of 4 major Axis and Allied armies with a number of force lists. With Osprey involved it should have remained at that price, but rather doubled in cost. The upside is it does include the original material plus the Brown Water Navy supplement.Third the book is the size of a standard Osprey / Bolt Action hard cover. This means the font size is shrunk down, but otherwise the pages have the same amount of information as a standard FOW / TY bookFouth - Osprey ran a sale including this book, yet did not have it hooked up to their shopping cart for the sale, and did not answer their emails. Also Battlefront has removed all of their Vietnam product from their Webstore, and placed the Book and Unit Cards on a separate website, during the re-release of this product. Fortunately in my case I am not trying to purchase miniatures at release as I already have what I need to play. However it has caused an issue for me as my local stores do not show this rulebook or the Unit Card Packs as orderable from Battlefront.Fifth, with Osprey co-producing this book, there is a standard of including some of their artwork. All that appears inside of this book are photos of miniatures, and some recycled painting art from the previous release. Yes many of the photos are NEW or they were cropped different. However, there is no roll over art from Osprey's vast library like in the Ambush Alley and Warlord Games co-productions.Again for $40 and a pair of major game companies - this was a very lack luster release - and if you needed product to go with it, good luck.*****************After getting more into the book I also wanted to add the following************************Yes I will still use it. Yes I am happy to have it. Yes I am buying the Unit Card packs. I just think this is a sloppy cut & paste job, lacking some info, in a smaller font, and with varying statistics does not "plug and play" as Early War Team Yankee like it and 6 day War are suppose to.Anymore more specifics...1) Missing Helocopters... The new NAM book has omitted the Huey Hog model they made. Less significantly, it has combine the Cobra's Grenade Launcher into another Machinegun. And along the same lines that maybe do not matter, dropped the 2-3 Huey Hog variants and 1-2 of the Cobra variants.2) Minor Stat Changes... The PT76 got a much stronger Anti-Tank (AT) rating, and the Walker Bulldog, M48, and T54 all benefited from some positive tweaks in armor - as did the Centurions main gun. Conversely almost all of the ADA weapons Rate of Fire (ROF) was dropped to 3 halted and 2 moving. This is very ABC and loses a lot of the flavor. In this same vein the ZSU's 57mm cannons ROF was dropped, and its AT also took a nose dive down from 11 to 9 where the Vietnamese (and other early Russians) depend on that to help backup the Infantry against intermediate armor.3) Significant Point Value changes... I do not see a correlation to TY point values, and this is suppose to be "Early Modern Wars" series. It also did not equal out to Late War FOW even though some of the vehicles are usable for things like the Korean War and appear differently in NAM and their Late War books.4) A break from STANDARD mechanics... I noticed that FOW in version 4 has lumped all Machinguns (MG) together if they have the same AT rating. You now get all the dice as before, but sometimes like a Stuart, all of the MGs accidentally can now be Self Defense AntiAir. However in NAM, they keep the weapons separate (which is fine) implying arcs (which is fine), but reduce the ROF of the heavier MG's when on the move. Inconsistent with Flames of War (FOW) and Team Yankee (TY), and either sloppy editing or elitist gamer mentality on the part of whomever set the stats - either is not good.5) Also while reading the text adjacent to Units... there are a couple with no Unit text, or the text is on an adjacent entry, and that other entry's is missing. Again a sign of Copy and Pasting on Ospreys part. Flames of War (especially v4) is not Bolt Action, and it would have served Osprey better to play version 4 of FOW and/or TY before assembling this rulebook.6) Again no mention on the cover or main pages that this as an Early War product for Team Yankee. Its on its own website, all the product is lost in transition, a different size book, and no mention it is suppose to be part of that family of game products.I hope this helps folks not be surprised by the errors in a product we had been waiting for.

Book arrived in good condition. This is an update to battlefront's older vietnam tabletop wargaming rules. Army lists from a multitude of countries are included in this book, giving you several options for forces without seperate purchases of additional books. However there are several misprints and typos in the book (all currently being addressed and clarified by Battlefront staff). If you make this purchase, make sure you visit the company's website, where any clarifications and errata are posted for free download.

recommend this..lots of information,lots of color pictures(to use as a painting guide) and covers ALL sides in the war(helicopters too).very nice book.