The Road of Blood and Tears 2026

The Road of Blood and Tears is a solitaire historical wargame about the South Vietnamese withdrawal from the Central Highlands in March 1975. After the fall of Ban Mê Thuột, II Corps was ordered to abandon Pleiku and Kontum and retreat toward Tuy Hòa along neglected Route 7B, with the PAVN 320th Division closing from behind. Military formations, equipment, and tens of thousands of civilians became tangled together on a broken road.

The Road of Blood and Tears is a solitaire command-and-traffic game rather than a conventional move-and-fight wargame. The player represents the remaining ARVAN command authority trying to keep that withdrawal functioning. The retreating ARVN column moves automatically along Route 7B, with counters forming queues and each road segment having limited Throughput. Heavy traffic creates congestion and jams, while the PAVN 320th Division steadily closes from behind. The player receives only a few Command Points each turn and uses them to shape rather than activate the column: halt units, change queue priority, increase road capacity, put engineers to work, clear obstacles, recover disrupted formations, or sacrifice movement to establish a rear guard. You cannot save everything. The game is about deciding what receives scarce command attention while an already moving withdrawal threatens to collapse into chaos.

—description from the designer