Saipan:Caves

[campsawyer]

Got it. You are advocating no defender fire when in a cave. A follow up question would be, should they screened, not take combat results, by units outside the cave?

Kind of. I'll give an example to make it clearer:

I have 2 JPN INF in a hex that has a cave. One INF is inside the cave, the other is outside (let's say he retreated into the hex or something).

You assault the hex with some Marines.

I am of the opinion that the first assault should be your Marines against only my 1 INF platoon that is outside the cave.

Then, if they are destroyed/driven off you would have to conduct another assault to root out my remaining platoon hiding in the cave.

Likewise, if you were in my hex and I wanted to initiate an assault, in order for BOTH platoons to take part I'd have to forego the defensive bonus of the cave and "come out".

But again, I'm writing this having not seen the new rules, so maybe it's a moot point?

Could you post a camera-phone shot of the caves special rules or something?

You your thinking is the same as my "screened" unit theory. After re-reading old posts on entrenchments it is clear, one attack separate columns for ones inside and ones outside. Unfortunately, this was never in the 3rd edition rules, but seems the consensus to play for entrenchments/caves. I am good with this as this is platoon level combat, where there could be multiple cave openings as well as tunnels and spider holes, where the defenders can pop out of for First Fire attacks.

My main concerns are with wording of the defending column shift sentence should add to the end, " to the attackers firepower." Also the "(suffers more casualties than they inflict)" should be "(suffers worse combat result from the assault)", IMHO.

I still have a question on DF/BF 3 stack modifiers for units being both inside and outside the cave.

Here is some of the rule:

"For game purposes, they are similar to Entrenchments: a unit is either in a cave or outside of it. The Japanese player will receive a number of Cave markers that are placed on the map prior to game start, and are immovable. Only a Japanese unit may occupy the inside of a cave. The Japanese player must indicate if the unit is inside a cave by placing the unit underneath the cave marker. All Japanese units in a hex may be inside the cave, outside, or a combination of the two, but stacking limits remain as normal for such hexes. No unit may use direct fire or bombardment fire into or out of a cave. Therefore, units in a cave may only be attacked by assault. Units defending in a cave receive a -2 column modifier. If a player loses the assault (suffers more casualties than they inflict) all losing units and leaders must exit the cave hex completely just like normally exiting an assault hex, receiving the "free shot" as they exit. No unit may dig in while occupying a cave."