We're Airborne. We don't start reviews, we *finish* them.
I'm not a wargamer. I lack the patience, dedication and poor personal hygiene required to become one of gaming's elite. However, when I became aware of this title it instantly went onto my wishlist. Why is this? Two reasons...
i) Twilight Struggle. It's the greatest game ever, and as such I'm crazy for the CDGs.
ii) The Vietnam War. I don't know why, but I've long been interested in this conflict. Maybe it's because Platoon is my favourite film of all time.
All I know, is that when I saw a the Vietnam/CDG combination I got excited and decided that I wanted this game. So, after a few solo runs and an initial loss to a foe so sneaky that he stole my underpants mid-game, what are my impressions?
Card-Driven Wargaming. An eight-week college for the phoney tough and the crazy brave.
I like games where theme and mechanic work in harmony; where neither feels like it's been shoe-horned in at the expense of the other. Sometimes, a review will wait until the end to tell you how a game feels. For me, how a game like this feels is not a postscript but its raison d'etre. For a wargame to get my attention it has to grab me. I'm pleased to say that Hearts and Minds gets it right.
It's a wargame, but it's not about conflict. At least, not really. It's about politics. It's about public opinion. As the Allied player you curse the loss of every unit, not because you care about the young men who just died, but because every loss brings the South closer to a coup and public opinion to rock bottom. As the Red player you are happy to throw everything at the Allies. Your guys are expendable, because you know that whatever happens you will stay in the fight. You don't need to win battles, you just need to kill enough Grunts to make the US public think twice about sending their boys In Country to die. The Arsenal of Democracy is useless here, as modern media made Vietnam a war that a Democracy couldn't win.
The game employs a rolling score chart, much like Twlight Struggle. If the score is in the negative, it's on the <PERSON> side. This is good for the Allied player. 237
If it is on the positive side, it's on the <PERSON> side. This is good for the Red player. But there's no 'first to twenty wins' here. The Allied player will be haemorrhaging points from turn one, and they'll keep pouring out all the way to 100 if necessary. He doesn't win the game by winning the war. He wins the game by stemming the bleeding enough to save face. Reinforcements come too slowly, and turn up untried and vulnerable, and those blue tokens representing US and International troops might as well have 'Free Doves!' written on them. The North player picks up points without even trying. The South player has to claw together Hawks where he can. The VC will turn entire provinces against you, ambush and kill your troops, and then vanish like the mist. You'll plug one hole, and NVA will pour in through another thanks to the almost total freedom of movement that the <PERSON> trail gives them. Naval and air supremacy is useful, but it won't save you. The Red player will enjoy having the time and resources to probe, mislead and devastate the South. The Blue player will feel the despair of a futile war, but also bleed every inch of joy from even the smallest victory.
In other words, Hearts and Minds gets my attention. But how does it work?
I love this game at night. The dice...there's no right or wrong in them. They're just there.
As previously explained, this is a game where you are trying to get as many points as possible. The Red player gets points for controlling provinces, killing non-Vietnamese units, causing a coup in the South (mainly by killing Vietnamese units) and a few other places. The Blue player only gets points in a few specific situations, such as card events. Both players can benefit from making sure that their faction comes out on top in the civil wars in Laos and Cambodia, but those conflicts are sideshow - at least initially - to the main event in South Vietnam.
Each year you get to play four cards. A card will give you Resource Points to spend. If you don't spend them all, you can save them for future turns - Stored Resource Points. You'll need those SRPs. You can use one each turn to supplement your card points, but you'll probably try and avoid this if you can. You'll really need those SRPs. 597