Marianas 1944, scenario #5: L Company and Mt. Maga

This was one of the funner scenarios I have played in a while and it is a game scenario to learn just about every type of combat. The Japanese setup up their first group of combatants on the western map #83 where the American must enter and they setup their second group of heavy weapons and guns, entrenched on map #82. The American enter map #83 in two group, first the L Company reinforced enter on turn one followed on turn five with their second group of armor and combat engineers. Both sides get some off-board artillery and the Americans get air-support on 00 turns. The Americans win if they control all the entrenchments on map #82 and the Japanese win if the Americans lose 4 or more steps in the process of getting to and eliminating the Japanese in those entrenchments, if both sides achieve their victory conditions it is a Draw.

Fighting through the initial Japanese Infantry, in towns, roads and jungles was a slow process on map #83 until my armor, flaming throwing armor and combat engineers arrive to lend a hand. After losing one Marine Infantry unit but clearing most of the Japanese Infantry the fight carried over to map #82 where the Japanese heavy weapons awaited. My only Marine HMG got demoralized in earlier fighting and took forever to recover, which didn’t help my advance but I had 30 turns, so I was in no hurry in the first 20 turns.

I had this nice stack of three Marine armor units: M4, M5 & Satan FLM, which helped me conquer the town hex on map #83 and so I thought it would also be good to lead the way into those Japanese gun entrenchments but the Satan Flame tank is great for assaults but very weak in armor protection with only a one factor. The Japanese targeted it with both the 47mm AT guns and the 70mm guns and after two turns destroyed both steps, which counted double, plus with the early infantry step lost, this gave the Japanese a victory by eliminating 5 steps, as they only needed 4 steps to achieve this victory. However, there was never any doubt the Americans were going to clear all three Japanese entrenchment counters, for their victory conditions as well. So the battle ended in a Draw.

I should have led the entrenchment assaults with the FLM and PIO infantry units, which actually were already assaulting the Japanese HMG entrenchment and held the armor out of AT-Fire range, as I think I had enough time. The Japanese had pulled back some of their infantry from the other map to reinforce some of the guns. It would be fun to try and play this scenario again, but win instead of draw as the Marine player. It was really a fun scenario to play, with a low unit count but a nice mix of unit types, to try may different combat types, Bombardments, Dire-Fire, Assaults, Opportunity Fire, Anti-Tank Fire and Engineer and Flame throwing unit assaults. Good stuff her!