I Love the Smell of Dice in the Morning

Stuart and I have been trying to get more wargames played in 2026 -- our goal is at least one a month -- and last week we played one that was new to both of us; The Nam (not that one).

You can read Stuart's in-depth summary of the game here. I am in agreement with him for the most part; it's a fun enough game that runs well, if a little lacking in specific Vietnam War flavour, and it seems to have a lot of vague and ill-defined mechanics, or at least organisation that obfuscates key terms.

That said, there were two mechanics that jumped out at me as quite interesting: activation/initiative, and game duration. Unit activation is handled in a system very much like the initiative token system of Troika! and it worked just as well here. It's not quite the same, as The Nam doesn't have simultaneous combat like Troika! so there's an element of imbalance, but as most of my force was hidden for much of the game, I could miss turns without repercussions.

Game duration was also interesting. The game is measured in "minutes" rather than turns, and our mission had a 60 minute limit. At first I thought we were going to be playing in real time -- which is itself a fascinating prospect, and one to which I may give some thought -- but they are in-game minutes. At the end of every turn, the player that went last rolls a dice and adds that many minutes to the clock; if the limit is reached, the game ends. The tactical element is that the dice size is chosen by that player, so there's an element of clock manipulation.

In our game I needed to slow things down to have time to push my force forward and capture objectives so towards the end I opted to roll 1d4 for the clock each time. Stuart, who was losing troops too quickly for his liking, would much rather those had been d12s!

As it was Stuart looked at his depleted force, and having to choose between sucking up fewer activations or gambling on keeping his activations or suffering an automatic loss, put his faith in the dice, which of course betrayed him and ended the game with 25 minutes to go.

(Stuart had two objectives to my one, so he was technically in the controlling position. Could he have held out for 25 minutes and won? I think it was possible but very difficult; I had realised that activations were the key and targeted his force so as to reduce its possible activations, so I suspect a death spiral was more or less inevitable. The question is how long would that spiral take?)

Will we play again? Perhaps. It was fun enough for an evening's entertainment, but aside from a couple of mechanics, it didn't grab either of us. And we do have plenty of other games to play.

Marvel 1991: The 'Nam #52

I promise, these aren't all going to be Punisher comics.

Well, I say that, but this is 1991 so there's a fair chance that any Marvel comic I pick is going to feature The Punisher, Ghost Rider, or Wolverine as a guest star.

Anyway.

Welcome to The 'Nam! I had a vague awareness of the existence of this title, although I had no idea that it ran for 84 issues. To my eyes, born four years after the war ended, in a country that -- surprisingly -- wasn't involved, it seems like a very niche subject for a comic from a mainstream publisher. Is this the last great English-language war comic? I can't imagine anything like this running for 84 issues these days, although Garth Ennis is probably up to #187 with something over at Avatar.

The comic makes a great first impression with the cover art, which I adore. Click on it to see a bigger version and have a look at all those chunky lines. Jorge Zaffino's art is jagged and rough, almost untidy, but I think it looks great. It's got a raw, visceral feel, which I suppose is appropriate for a Vietnam War comic. The 'Nam #52 gets one Cable for the cover art alone.

They should have got Zaffino to do the internal art as well. It's not bad, but it doesn't have any of the energy or style of the cover. "Functional" is a good description. Given that The 'Nam was intended to tell realistic -- if not actually real -- stories about an actual historical event, perhaps a more stylistic approach to the visuals would have been seen as inappropriate. It's fine, it does the job, but it's not interesting or memorable.

Which, alas, is also true of the writing. It trots along from A to B to C in a neat linear path, but there's nothing exciting going on. There is a twist of sorts, in which -- SPOILER FOR A COMIC FROM 1991 -- the "villain" is killed and then -- ANOTHER SPOILER FOR A COMIC FROM 1991-- revealed to be a double, but it feels unconvincing and arbitrary.

There's a second attempt at a shocking twist with the cliffhanger ending in which it is revealed that our protagonist is dead! Oh, sorry, A THIRD SPOILER FOR A COMIC FROM 1991. Except there's a second part to this story in the next issue, and said protagonist is the Punisher, so we know he's not dead.

(Although apparently this is the Punisher of Earth-85101, so they could kill him off here, as anticlimactic as that would be.)

The characterisation isn't any better. The NVA sniper the Punisher is sent to kill is a caricature at best, coming across like the "Achtung! Pigdog!" Germans in the old WWII comics I read as a child, and with more than a hint of Yellow Peril at times. I'm not naïve enough to expect a balanced portrayal of "the enemy", but I would have expected something a bit more nuanced by 1991. Not that the "goodies" come across any better; if the other characters didn't refer to him by name, you wouldn't have any idea that the Punisher was even in this comic, as he is as generic as the rest. Which is not to say that I want this comic to be a full-blooded appearance by 90's Punisher, because that would be, to say the least, a significant clash of tone, but it seems a bit pointless to stick a specific character in and then write them in such a way that they could be literally anyone.

Would I Read More of This?

In fairness, I do feel a slight urge to find out how the cliffhanger is resolved, but I am confident that it will be a cheat to some extent, and I am not confident at all that the second half of the story will be any better than the first. So, no, I would not read more of this.

I would read an issue drawn by Jorge Zaffino though.

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Based on the main story I would The 'Nam #52 a score of one Cable, because while it's not awful, it is naff and uninspired. I did promise to give it one Cable for the cover art, so it gets a slightly undeserved two Cables out of five.

I am pleased to say that the next comic does not, as far as I know, feature the Punisher. I hope I like it, because I like what I've read of the writer's other work, and I know his run on this particular comic is considered definitive.