After a brutal 195 turn scenario, I turned to a small, short scenario. In this scenario a small Marine force must seize a “village” from a weak Japanese force while holding off Japanese reinforcements. Victory is determined by who owns the village, and whether the Marines suffered any casualties.

The Marines need to approach with caution, as the Japanese can start with hidden forces. They find the hidden units, get semi-aggressive using close in direct fire (can’t risk an assault column step loss), and fairly quickly degrade the Japanese force. They take the village and wipe out most of the defenders about the same time the reinforcements enter the board. Keeping just enough force to hold the village from the surviving defenders, they set up an ambush location against the Japanese moving down the trail.

The reinforcements get into quite a tangle with the Marines. They close fast in order to prepare an assault, but in doing so suffer mightily from Marine opfire. Taking a step loss seriously hurts the assault chance of the reinforcements, but they manage to launch an assault anyway. The Marines get the better roll, and the Japanese force begins a slow degradation while the Banzai rule prevents them from breaking contact.

The weak survivors of the initial defense cannot challenge for the village, as Marine opfire keeps them down. In the end the Marines hold the village without taking a step loss.

I found the scenario to be pretty balanced, tough for both sides, and required significant maneuver and use of terrain for such a small scenario. It was actually a decent scenario to play. However, when it came down to it, I felt it was a low 3 or high 2. The experience almost made me go with a 3, but in the end once I sat back and reanalyzed I went with the (high) 2. Why? Three reasons. One, I’m not a big fan of small scenarios, and this was small. Almost to the point of difficult to inflict casualties. Early east front would have made the likelihood of casualties minimal; this scenario got to the casualty point because of high Marine firepower and potentially due to Japanese assault rules. Second, the reinforcement arrival is random, and could result in the Japanese having no chance if the arrival is too late; just too random for my preference. Lastly is due to the victory condition of Japanese win by inflicting a single step loss on the Marines. This leads to a scenario where literally it is a percentage chance on a single roll to decide the outcome regardless of strategies or previous activity. I judge based on shared playability, and in this scenario players could simply resolve by allowing the Japanese player a chance to make a single die roll at best odds to decide victory without even having to play the scenario. I could play one roll of craps if I wanted to play craps, or play one round of high/low with cards. While not historical, a larger version of this scenario where the VC is more than one step loss could be really good.