The Chosin Few
The Chosin Few Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
On October 25, 1950, with General Douglas MacArthur's United Nations forces closing in on what would have otherwise been a quick victorious end to the Korean War, Communist Chinese forces began pouring across the border. In northeastern Korea, the US X Corps, led by Major General Ned Almond, was strung out with its units unable to support each other. Those units near the Chosin (Changjin) Reservoir included the 1st Marine Division and elements of the 7th Infantry Division.
Defeat
You lose the game if you are unable to achieve the third Order Objectives, or if one or more of your units is completely destroyed.
Victory
You win the game if you are able to successfully complete all Order Objectives.
Components
The game comes with the following:
- This manual
- 1 Game Board
- 3 Order cards
- 1 End of Order card
- 1 Player Aid card
- 1 Sheet of 11 counters & 2 standees
- 20 Activity cards
- 20 Cubes
- 5 red
- 5 black
- 5 blue
- 5 purple
- 1 Six-Sided die
Setup
- Place the board on a convienent flat surface.
- Arrange the Order cards face up in the following order:
- Top - Almond's Instructions
- Middle - Advance in Another Direction!
- Bottom - Breakout!
- Set up the Activity Deck
- A. Set aside the End of Order card.
- B. Shuffle the Activity Deck.
- C. Shuffle the End of Order card into the bottom 5 cards of the Activity Deck.
- D. Place the Activity Deck face down in the area marked Draw.
- Place the Marine and Army unit on the area marked C.
- Place the Marine and Army Strength markers on the 3+ and 4+ spaces of their Strength Tracks respectively.
- Place Line of Departure markers as indicated by the revealed Order card.
- Put all the cubes in a Draw Cup (any opaque container).
- Place the three Air Support tokens face-down near the board, as you do not yet have them.
Sequence of Play
The game is played in turns. Each turn consists of the following phases:
- Draw a Card
- New Activity
- Enemy Movement
- Player Actions
Draw Cards
You draw the top card from the Activity Deck. This card will help you carry out the rest of the phases. If you drew the End of Order card, carry out the card text from top to bottom; then, if the game is not over, draw a new card.
New Activity
The top section of the card, labeled New Activity, indicates three Line of Departure positions. For each Line of Departure position indicated, draw a cube from the Draw Cup and place it on the space with the matching Line of Departure marker.
If there are no more cubes in the Draw Cup, then no further cubes are placed.
Note: There is no stacking limit for cubes.
Enemy Movement
The second section of the card, labeled Enemy Movement, indicates two colors. Any cubes on the board of the colors indicated move forward based on the arrows on the game board. If the same color is indicated twice, that color moves twice, however it will only attack once.
If there are multiple arrows leading away from a space that a cube is in and it has to move, check the color of the arrows against the positions of the Marine and Army units. If the color of the arrow matches the color of the space that either are in, then the cube will follow that path; otherwise it will default to the white arrows. If a cube has multiple viable movement options, they will move towards the Marine unit.
If the path of a cube's movement leads into or out of a space that contains an Air Support token (placed for Interdiction), that cube will not move. It will not default to another movement pattern. See Air Support, page 8.
If one or more cubes move into a position held by the Marine or Army unit, that unit must make an attack roll for each cube. Each roll is made seperately and you may choose the order in which they are resolved.
- The unit's current strength determines the value that the unit needs to roll to succeed.
- If the resulting roll is greater than or equal to the required roll, the attacking cube is pushed back to the space it came from with no further effect.
- If the resulting roll is less than the required roll, reduce the strength of the unit being attacked by one and return the cube to the space it came from.
- If both the Marine and Army unit are in the same space, roll versus and apply any damage to the stronger unit (i.e., the one with the lowest success value).
Once all Enemy Movement is resolved, if there are any Air Support tokens on the board (i.e., that have been used for Interdiction), remove one token from each space that contains an Air Support token.
Player Actions
The third section of the card, Player Actions, indicates the number of actions you may take this turn. There are three types of actions you may take; Attack, Move, and Recover.
- Attack: For one action, you may make an attack roll against an enemy cube in an adjacent space. Spaces are adjacent if there is an arrow or dashed line between them.
- The unit's current health determines the value that unit needs to roll to succeed.
- If the resulting roll is greater than or equal to the required roll, remove the cube being attacked and place it in the Draw Cup.
- If the resulting roll is less than the required roll, nothing happens.
- Move: For two actions, you may move one of your units to another space that is connected by a dashed line and also free of enemy units.
- Exception: You cannot move into the spaces marked D-1, D-2, D-3, or D-4 until after you are given the Breakout order.
- In the example shown on the page, the Marine unit can move to A-1 but not C because C contains a cube.
- Recover: For three actions, you may rally your forces and heal one of your units one step.
Air Support
Air Support tokens are acquired when you do not spend all of your actions in a single turn. For each unspent action, you acquire one Air Support token. You can have a max of three Air Support tokens at any given time, which can be used in several ways that do not necessarily coincide with any specific phase of the turn sequence.
Interdiction
During the Actions phase, you may choose to place one or more of your obtained Air Support tokens on any space on the board as a free action; doing so is an Interdiction. No units or cubes may move into or out of that space. Any cubes which should move into or out of that space will be stuck for one round.
Important: Because Air Support tokens are received at the end of the Actions phase and Air Support tokens used for Interdiction must be placed during the Actions phase you may not receive and immediately place an Air Support token at the end of the Actions phase. You must wait until the next Actions phase.
Reroll
After an attack roll is made, whether it was initiated by a player action or by Enemy Movement, an Air Support token may be spent to reroll the results.
DRM
Before an attack roll is made, whether it was initiated by a player action or by Enemy Movement, an Air Support token may be spent to add 1 to the result.
History
The Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as the Battle of Changjin Lake, was a battle in the Korean War, Chosin being the Japanese spelling of the Korean "Changjin" used on the maps used by the United Nations (UN).
In this battle, 30,000 UN troops, later nicknamed "The Frozen Chosin" or "The Chosin Few", under the command of American General Ned Almond, faced approximately 150,000 Chinese troops of the People's Volunteer Army, 9th Army Group under the command of Song Shi-Lun.
Shortly after the People's Republic of China entered the conflict, large numbers of Chinese soldiers swept across the Yalu River, encircling the UN forces in the northeastern part of North Korea at the Chosin Reservoir. A brutal battle in freezing weather followed. Although they inflicted enormous casualties on the Chinese forces, the UN troops were forced to evacuate North Korea after they withdrew from the reservoir to the port of Hungnam.
The events of the Chosin Battle, which had a decisive impact on the future course of the war, were fought in the fifteen day period between November 27 and December 11, 1950.