Leyte 1944, Scenario Forty Two: Vlug’s Bazooka

I needed a quick scenario last night to get my PG fix in and something with a little Japanese armor sounded good, so this was the scenario. The victory condition all lie upon the Japanese player, they have two victory level which involve exiting 4 steps off the north edge of the map and eliminating 4 American steps, if they do both it’s a major victory, if they do one it’s a minor victory. The American must setup within two hexes of the north-south road in hexes numbers xx08 or less, so about the middle of the map and north.

One errata: (The Japanese enter the south edge of the map on turn one). It was left out for some reason.

The Japanese move the bulk of their force along the north-south road but also flank some of their forces around their left side to try and get some exit points, forcing the Americans to pull some of their units out of their dug-in positions to try and chase down and block those Japanese Infantry units. The rest of the Japanese Infantry moved in forces, in groups pretty close to the major north bound road followed by Type 95 armor, three steps worth.

With first contact, the Japanese decide to assault as many American hexes as possible as they need to eliminate American steps and their losses do not matter especially if they have a flanking force on a different mission, to head north. The Assaults strategy worked out pretty well, I even had a Japanese reduced Infantry, value of two with a leader roll a 2 on the dice and get a 1X result on the Americans units. The Armor became a chest game. One full strength or two step Type 95 unit was assaulted by American units using both Bazooka fire and direct assault fire but since both fire simultaneously, the American lost a step but two steps of Japanese armor were also lost. The other half step of Type 95 tanks had made a chest move, around all these other combats and assault happening and moved through a field hex and then a light jungle hex next to an American unit that had already activated. The next turn it activated first and moved through one light jungle hex and exit off the road hexes off the north edge of the map adding 2 points to the already 3 points of the Japanese Infantry steps that had flanked of the edge of the map the turn before with three steps of Infantry and one leader, thus achieving one victory level for the Japanese. The Japanese were about finished in the center of the map but after the remainder of assaults finished up the Japanese had eliminated 4 American steps, giving them their second victory level, a Major Japanese Victory. True it was only for a day and most of the remaining Japanese units were demoralized and two steps of Japanese armor were burning wrecks but they achieved their mission!

I don’t think my American setup was bad as they had to be within two hexes of the road on or north of hex xx08 but they needed to react faster to the flanking Japanese units and leave the safety of the foxholes. The Japanese were able to use the terrain to their advantage in their approach to American units to get into assault positions the following turn, so maybe some American units could have been better setup to support each other. The Japanese on the other hand used the correct strategy by sending the major force to attack and the minor force to flank and exit and true they had some good luck of the dice in assault combat and flanking movement, first activations but the only thing they could of improved on was to have some Infantry stacked with their armor, to maybe avoid the American Bazooka attacks in assaults. Assault is the only way for the Americans to stop the Japanese armor, as they have no AT support weapons and assault fall into the Japanese advantage. So in the 13 turn scenario, some luck of the dice will help either side to win but a surprisingly balance first game play. I’ll have to try this one again, as I thought the Americans had the advantage but still lost.

I thinks all the step lost in this scenario were from assault combat, the Americans lost 4 steps and the Japanese lost 5 steps. Sure some units were demoralized and disrupted due to Direct Fire and off board artillery but most were this state because of assault combat.