This scenario pits a Japanese attack at night into and through the Marine lines to attack the Marine artillery behind. I stretched my Marine infantry and weapons covering a line from north to south with only 1 or 2 hexes between, forcing Japanese to be spotted as they passed by. The 75s, the mortars and the 37mm AT guns were sited closer to the beach where the Infantry would have more time to try to chase down and Japanese troops that penetrated the line. For the Japanese, I lined them up stacks of 2 with a leader except for the Major, who added the Engineer platoon to his stack. I set up so the Japanese had 2 elements using chain of command to allow 4 stacks to move forward in line, one group to either side of a central east-west line of jungle. I quickly forgot the Japanese victory condition, take out the 75s and the 37mm AT, and started planning to initiate assaults instead of walk through between strong points, hopefully ignoring damage and leaving behind any demoralized or disrupted elements. The Marines got the initiative on turn 2 and put the illumination rounds to good use, lighting up both groups of Japanese with a range of 2 or 3 to all the Marine elements, who started taking a toll on the Japanese line. After getting into two assaults on the south end, it hit me, there are no Japanese victory conditions for killing Marines, except for cannon cockers. The Major and one of the Captains lead their Japanese troops between Marine outposts, but this was where dice rolling got really interesting. For 2 turns, Marines couldn't miss,and Japanese couldn't hit. Japanese losses started climbing, their initiative started dropping, and surviving Japanese infantry with no leaders started heading for the rear. Only the Major and Captain could continue, and only with a handful of reduced units, until on turn 10, the Major was set to assault the first 75mm unit while the Captain was preparing letters to the loved ones of all those who had accompanied him that far. With a string of die rolls hitting the middle numbers that meant no damage, and with Marines salvaging all their morale checks while Japanese had a tough time doing any damage at all, and initative rolls that gave the Marines 4 phases before the Japanese could even act, I called it a game. There was a small chance that the Japanese could take out the one gun, but absolutely no chance to get all 3. And at this point, the Japanese had lost 21 steps of infantry and HMGs and the Marines hadn't lost anything. Definite US win. Fun game, my first of this new book. Looking forward to more.

Marianas 1944, scenario #3: Up the Middle

Surprisingly I had a much closer game than other gamers who have played this scenario. The U.S. Marines still won but it wasn’t decided until the last turn. The Japanese came out of the dark night and tried to flank both sides of the Marine’s lines but thankfully they had illumination fire to beat back the worst of the Japanese attacks. Two large Japanese stack of units managed to penetrate the Marines and managed to assault the 37mm gun, one Infantry platoon and one leader with a stack of three infantry platoons and one leader and eventually eliminated the 37mm AT gun and both Infantry steps and other than one Marine leader those were the only Marine losses. But in the last turn another Japanese assault on the stack of two 75mm guns and one marine infantry units failed, or the Japanese might have had their victory of eliminating two or more of the American 37mm and 75mm gun units. Maybe a dice roll away, as Japanese loses didn’t matter and neither did Marines infantry steps.

So an American victory but a closer game than I thought and a fun fast playing scenario of 11 turns in the dark of the night.

The American Commander decided that the beach was too large an area to defend with the forces available therefore decided only to try to defend the guns ashore. The best place to do this was in the middle of the board. Then it was a matter of telling the Japs to "come and get me". The Japanese took 2-3 turns to get into attack position and attacked along the front (2 positions) with four of their "stacks". The attacks didn't go too well which left the Americans in a superior position to use their support Arty (and thanks to minimal damage from Friendly Fire, for a change) the Japanese were soon reduced to low results attack levels. The Americans prevailed. (Of note: Were the Japanese really THAT lousy at attacking USMC positions, or was the American defenses THAT good?)