Korean War: Pusan Perimeter, scenario #27: The Push for Taejon

I saw and read a few AARs from this scenario before I played it and it looks difficult for the North Koreans to win, so I took the challenge. The Americans setup on the far hill mass on the southeast corner of the map, pretty much supporting one another. The NKPA entered the map from the far western edge of the map using the terrain as cover. Their only objective is to eliminate 12 or more American steps and the Americans win if not with only 14 turns. Both sides have a nice off-board artillery and three turns of air-support. Nice because there are not many scenarios in the series where the North Koreans get to use their airplane counters.

The American simple dug-in and waited for the North Koreans to approach and use their assets when they had the opportunity. The North Koreans maneuvered safely through the forest and hill terrain until their forces were ready for the jump-off attack. Thankful for the NKPA, they had the higher morale at 8/6 against the Americans 7/6 morale in this scenario, which they needed for all the assault combat.

The combat was fast and furious! During the air-attacks both sides delivered to their opponent, the NKPA attacks were more successful with two major hit compare to the Americans one major hit. Also, the NKPA dice rolls in assaults combat was hot and on three different assaults they rolled twelves scoring 2X all three times, counting for 6 steps. By the end of turn 12, the NKPA had eliminated 12 steps for a victory, so I didn’t play turn 13. At this point the Americans had lost 12 steps and 3 leaders, while the NKPA lost 10 steps and 2 leaders. The North Koreans had just enough off-board artillery, of 38 point value when combine to disrupt dug-n American units before assaulting them and the Americans with 60 points total of off-board artillery had some luck but mostly rolled poorly.

I think this scenario favors the Americans about 80% of the time and maybe the victory conditions should be changed to eliminating only 8 American steps but with hot dice rolls the North Koreans were able to win as is, so more plays are in order to see what, or if it should be changed.