In this scenario the Marines are trying to hold their line after advancing most of the way across Tulagi. The Japanese are trying to break that line, or inflict significant losses to the Marines. The Marines must hold the line losing no more than two steps, while the Japanese win by inflicting at least five steps.

The Marines set up well led triple step stacks across the line, intending to punish any Japanese attempts to attack their line. There is one platoon of raiders on the far eastern end of the island, and several units to the west having cleared that end. All remaining troops are trying to form a second line to back up the main Marine line. The Japanese set up their SNLF troops in the caves adjacent to the Marine line, with the HMGs in the middle and a pair of infantry to either side. The remaining two platoons are positioned to attack the raiders at the eastern end. The service troops are positioned to harass the north end of the Marine line.

I am very aggressive with the Japanese. They wipe out the eastern raiders, and those units move back west to reinforce the Japanese line. The service troops die quickly as the Marines riddle them with direct fire, demoralize them, then assault them, and repeated morale checks slowly take steps off the hapless service troops. Direct fire also pops a step off the SNLF HMGs, making that force much less deadly than expected. One pair of infantry assault the Marine positions, but over time that goes poorly, and they eventually die. The remaining infantry and the HMGs hide in the caves and fire against the Marines. The exchange of fire forces one HMG to demoralize and run, and takes out one step of infantry, but two lucky Japanese rolls inflict two more steps against the Marines.

The two SNLF platoons from the east make their way back and hold up in a cave until the time seems right. Finally, the Marines around the one remaining step of HMGs are all spent, and there appears to be a weakness in the line. They run into the caves with the HMGs, and the Marines are facing disaster. They spend all their activations trying to reposition units against an assault by the Japanese. They partially patch the line, but the Japanese manage to assault a large stack of Marines. Amazingly the assault goes very bad, and the Japanese lose a step for no impact. To make things worse, the undamaged platoon demoralizes. The Marines manage to eliminate the assaulters over the next couple turns with no losses.

The only danger left to the Marines is the remaining position with three SNLF infantry steps. The Marines go crazy firing on the position on turn 17 and appear to have victory in grasp as they knock off a step with snake eyes. Just as they contemplate celebration the Japanese platoon opens fire and also rolls snake eyes, killing step five of the Marines.

The Japanese have one platoon of infantry in one cave, half a platoon of HMGs in another, and a platoon of disrupted HMGs to the east. Lots of Marines everywhere. But no reason to play this out. I rate this scenario a 2. While the Marines had some movement requirements to keep a solid line against the Japanese, the constant disruption made it tough. It really felt like the scenario was more about who got the right number of lucky rolls first rather than some deep strategy. I probably could have set the Marines up only two units per hex with a reinforcing unit behind to reduce the likelihood of lucky rolls, but that would have simply increased the odds of Marine victory without making the scenario any more exciting. This is just not the type of scenario I enjoy, and would have been frustrated in a two player situation. The limited Marine casualty rates in many of these scenarios make victory dependent on a lucky roll, and that’s not my idea of fun. Others may get more out of it.