Leyte 1944, Scenario Twelve: Flying Wedge

This is great scenario and I’ll give Mike Bennighof the credit on this one, as it is one of his converted scenarios. Three of the most important thing on this scenario are the placement of minefields with covering Japanese Infantry fire in the narrow corridor road on map 82 and some on the rice paddies forcing the American to have to clear the mines or risk going through them with your armor, as the terrain is too tough to go around. The Americans must protect their most valuable asset, their lone engineer unit. The Japanese also have a nice amount of artillery to separate the American Infantry from the armor, which happens anyway as the American try to move around the clogged road jam.

The Japanese now have time to assault lone stacks of American armor getting the scenario #3 special rule bonus for their anti-tank teams. In fact, for a change, I actually lost more American steps than Japanese step, because the lost armor steps count double, so out of the 15 American steps I lost, 10 were armor. The Japanese only lost 14 steps. As the battle finally progress west, there is no time to send leaders back east to pick up demoralize, disrupted and recovered Infantry units, as the Americans run out of time trying to achieve their three victory objectives and blast through Japanese obstacles.

In the end, the Americans achieved none of their three objectives: control of all the east-west road, control of the airfield hex and have a two to one step loss ratio. The Japanese win a Major Victory! With that said, this is one the funniest scenarios I have ever played. The terrain on maps 83 and 82 are a fun puzzle to try and solve. I highly recommend this scenario.