After enduring the "dogs" of Tulagi and Gavutu-Tanambogo this scenario was a welcome relief as there were no caves or "hidden" Japanese units in this one. Also, the Matanikau map seems to be a lot more user-friendly without the confusing masses of questionable and multi-layered elevation lines. When setting this one up, after the Japanese deployment, I looked at the marine forces available and thought "really? is this all? okay."

All the Japananse had to do was hold the one village hex and in the course of 42 turns, eliminate just three U.S. units for a victory and that is precisely what they did. Without hidden units or caves and with over half of their forces reduced in strength the Japanese strategy was very simple; to surround the village with a lot of cannon fodder to which the service and weapon units were efficiently assigned; and then endure 10 turns of American OBA not worrying about step losses on the outer rings of defense. Once the American OBA became unavailable after 09:45/turn 10, the American attackers had no real leverage or advantage. By 10:30/turn 13, the Americans had lost 3 steps of MAR units; early on the Americans had driven away or eliminated most of the outer ring of expendable Japanese forces but once they ran into the better moraled and more capable SNLF forces their situation quickly went from bad to worse. More than lucky "snake eyes" rolled by firing Japanese units the biggest downfall for the marines was communication simulated by the increased odds of fog of war occuring. The marines attempted to take the long path towards the village, hoping to encircle and bottle up the defenders but that involved river crossings and being isolated in jungle hexes without subordinate activations. The only other way would of been to attack head-on across the sandbars suicidally braving very high results from opportuniy fire from village defenders which would of given the combined SNLF and HMG platoons rolls on the 30 column of the DF table. That probably would of been the best approach if the Americans were only attempting to gain a draw rather than a victory from the beginning. Soon the marines would lose their highest-ranking leader, their 9-1-1 Major, and suffer the results of both catastrophic loss and decaptiation. Midway through the scenario it seemed highly unlikey that even a draw could be expected from the Americans but they pressed on. Random events didn't play too much of a role in this one except that a Japanese sniper did manage to take out another valuable American leader, a 10-0-1 Captain. In the end, the only real achievement the marines managed was to get all of their units across the Matanikau only to remain pinned down once there.

In retrospect, the only things I think could of been done in the marine's favor would of been to send out weaker leaders alone to spot for OBA the first 10 turns that it was available before sending any actual units in harm's way as there was an overabundance of leaders suited for that task. Also, instead of picking off the SER cannon fodder going straight at the throats of the SNLF. All in all though this wasn't a bad scenario though it does seem to favor the Japanese. It's deceiving with 42 turns length as many of those passed very quickly from fog of war; the Japanese didn't need many activations as the marines needed a lot. Now that the remaining scenarios will be taking place on Guadalcanal proper I am looking forward to venturing further. There's a lot to learn and experiance here and hopefully I can manage and do better with the marine forces; with the Japanese so far it's been very static and too much original thinking involved, just cold-blooded logic.