VIETNAM WAR RULES:
Charlie Company

Well, I'll throw in my 2 bits, but be forewarned, I have only read the rules and not actually played them.

What makes Charlie Company different is that it is designed for a group of players and a referee. Optimal is four players, with three commanding a small squad each (say 6-10) and the four player serves as overall commander and HQ. The ref runs all the Vietnamese figures. It assumes the players will always be US (or allies). It mixes elements of RPG and traditional minis game. You play the squad leader and are trying to make it "back home". Each minis battle represents the action of one month for your guy. So after 12, if you live, you get shipped back to the world. And win.....

They include lots of neat little rules for calling support fire, spotting, blind fire, napalm, etc. These are just brief, simple rules which work fine since these are supplemental items. But when you get down to the meat and potatos of any minis game - firing and taking hits with standard weapons - they use the same overly simple approach. Basically each figure gets a number of dice based on weapon type (M-16 and all modern rifles get one die per figure, while WWII surplus rifles get 1/2 die per figure). Any roll of 5 or 6 hits. Hits are done differently if they are on VC or US. On US you roll to see which guy is hit, but VC you just add all the hits inflicted in a turn and roll on a chart to see what happens to the unit.

The basic fire rules are too simple for my tastes. I mean if you are only running 10 figures, you could afford some variation between a shotgun and an M-16. And the rules for grenades are laughable. There is never any benefit to them over firing with an M-16. But I do really like the RPG aspects of the game. If you can handle the simpler firing system, I reccomend it without reservation.