This was a nasty, brutal, nocturnal struggle played over 2 face-to-face sessions with a very aggressive, face-to-face, rookie opponent leading the American side. We did not use the FOW rule, but did play with the illumination/smoke and the consolidation rule.

The numerous Japanese troops attacked the substantially outnumbered US defenders at night. As others have reported, the Japanese began close assaults as soon they came close enough to bear on the American defensive positions. The Japanese were continually feeding in new units when the assaulting stacks become disrupted or demoralized. Both sides had poor leader draws, but the Japanese had a slight advantage in having more leaders with combat modifiers, hence allowing multi-hex fire fights and better-supported assaults. The American Commander received limited reinforcements on Turn 5 but instead of trying to defend the crucial road these units launched themselves into a series of mostly unsuccessful, counter attacks via close assault, or they reinforced their comrades in previously-existing assault hexes.

The American Commander sagely did not try to defend both the east-west road and the ridgetop hexes, but instead focused on merely holding – or retaking – as many of the 60-meter hill hexes as possible. This effort was hampered by a number of seriously poor morale die rolls in the face of the majority of Japanese units remaining in relatively good order for the bulk of this play-through.

In the end, neither side was able to fully achieve all of their victory conditions, resulting in a drawn battle. This scenario’s victory conditions are flawed: The Japanese conditions should specify that all 60-meter contour hexes must be Japanese-controlled by the end of the scenario.