Tacspiel - The American Army's Wargaming Rulesfor Vietnam

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Tacspiel, for Counter Guerrilla Operations, was a detailed map based-simulation of counter insurgency warfare used to develop many successful strategies that were used in Vietnam. Played with platoon- and company-sized units on typical operations. These rules are a very important statement on how the American Army, its commanders and officers fought the Vietnam War on a operational level.

The rules placed great emphasis on the order codes and order formats to allow each game to be reconstructed and analysed move by move by the operational analysts after the players had finished gaming. The analysts might spend days replaying a game for the purposesof study. Typically, they would spend 3 days work looking at just one day played out on the map. A modern wargamer can greatly speed up the game by dispensing with all the order codes and simply record which unit should move to where to do what.

Designed to be played with a blue team (the American and the South Vietnamese Army's) and the red team (the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army NRA) in separate rooms. The two teams would study their maps and issue written orders based on what they knew. The umpires would interpret these orders on the central map and then tell the players whatthey could now see. It is very practical to run the game for wargamers with all the players on one side, presumably the American one, against a pre-planned umpire-controlled guerrilla force.

The players need to have a clear chain of command, with each player having their own responsibilities in the game. Typically, you might have a battalion commander with company commanders and a support commander.

There is rarely a decisive finish to a game. More often, each side inflicts some casualties and one side or the other has maneuvered into an arguably better position by the end of a game. However, if you want to have some ideawhat it was like for junior commander in the Vietnam War, then playing Tacspiel gives you a strong idea about the operational problems they faced.