The Game
In March 1972, the North Vietnamese army poured into South Vietnam in a savage and largely unexpected attack. It took three months for the South Vietnamese army, with the help of massive naval and aerial bombardment assistance from the United States, to beat back the invasion. Year of the Rat is another of SPI's edge-of-the-past games covering a virtually concurrent event, the last being Grunt. As such, it is an admirable effort. But how does it play? That's what <PERSON> and I were tasked to find out as we went through our complete tour of the S&T magazine games.
The Components
The map is typical two-color of the time: cyan and black/gray/white. The palette was used, to my mind, to better effect in the contemporary games Winter War and American Revolution. It's hard to capture the lush green of Vietnam in cyan and gray. Nevertheless, it *feels* like the right scale. When you look over the map, you can imagine Generals looking at similar maps as they coordinated their operations.
The counters are reasonably distinguishable, the South Vietnamese and Allied troops in greens and the North Vietnamese in mustard and black.
The Rules
Year of the Rat's rules are pretty clear cut. Movement and combat are traditional. Zones of control (ZOCs) cost movement to enter and leave but do not require combat. You can't move directly from one to another. ARVN troops cannot move into non-clear terrain without a trail or road. American troops can't move *at all* except in an optional scenario. Supply is a big factor for the North Vietnamese: they only get the first two turns at full attack strength after which they must expend supply units to attack on subsequent turns. This limits the North Vietnamese offensive to essentially the first few weeks of the game. The Allies get tremendously powerful aerial and naval bombardments that pin/disrupt/eliminate North Vietnamese units, especially in the open. 100
NV units are deployed face-down, and about a third of them are dummy units so the Allies might waste bombardments on units with no combat strength (though they do exert zones of control and disrupt supply).
The CRT is incredibly bloodless: 4-1 odds give a 50/50 chance of inflicting a *retreat*.
Victory points are all for the North Vietnamese to get, and they are only achievable by capturing cities. If all the cities in a province are taken, bonus victory points are awarded. Even losing a captured city still usually nets the NV player some points.
Gameplay
Year of the Rat is definitely a game designed for effect. About the only strategic decision the NV player has is the set-up. After that, it's simply a series of die rolls and prayer to determine the number of cities taken. After the first few turns, the NV really can't take much in the way of territory, and the SV can airdrop troops in cities to keep additional ones from falling. The game then consists of punishing air and naval bombardments attempting to weaken NV forces such that the SV forces can take back some of their cities. It seems that historical set-up games will generally end in a Draw. Optional set-ups may switch things up a bit, but the general flow is the same.
Conclusion
Year of the Rat, for me, was a lot like Chicago, Chicago (and to a lesser extent, Winter War). It became apparent very quickly that there was just one way to play, and it was simply a matter of optimization and good-luck rolling. There just isn't much to *do*. Moreover, inverted piece games are generally a pain to me. <PERSON> would have graced my table far less often had I not turned it into a block game. I suppose I could to the same with Year of the Rat, but I just don't see the replay value. I'm happy to be contradicted. Maybe others have found something I haven't.
Here are what others have said about the game:
R
<PERSON>
@richfam
"Like many SPI games, Year of the Rat is an interesting simulation – especially when you take into account how soon after the actual battle it was designed – but it really isn't much of a "game."
You can play it once or twice and get some insights into the events that it is depicting, but there's little reason to play it again after that, as you will have then seen everything that can happen. I last played this in 2007, and as I recall the NVA has a few chances early in the game to try and get lucky and capture a city or two, after which the Allied player has a few more chances to get lucky by pounding the NVA with American airpower to try and weaken them to the point where the ARVN forces could actually launch a counterattack. 449