Marianas 1944: scenario one: White Beach 1 & 2

Being Memorial Day weekend I had to get a PG scenario on the table and one from Marianas 1944 at that. Tinian 1944 was the battlefield of today.

As it was historically the two beaches of the initial landings bottlenecked with narrow beach enter points surrounded by small cliffs and narrow ocean approach paths with coral obstacles to get around. Organizing landings and pulling out LVTs is a skillful challenge under enemy fire but with help of naval fire, artillery fire from Saipan and naval air-support, the landing were flowing. The US aircraft took out the Japanese 75/88 right away with a lucky 12 dice roll of a Corsair strike, which was the biggest thread to naval units and landing-craft.

At first I thought it might be too easy for the American forces but the landing beachhead bottlenecks and the 15 turn limit started to take a toll on the Marines. The Japanese eliminated two adjacent US Marines steps with a 2 dice roll to add to the one loaded LVT lost to the Japanese 75mm gun including a Major leader counter and two Marine steps. Then I start to worry if the Americans could achieve the victory condition at all?

The small embankments historically prevented the LVTs from moving inland from the first beach hexes in this scenario so management of them is critical. But once I broke out of the beachheads, time was growing short! The Americans finally cleared the airfield hex and all but one Japanese Casemate from the beach hexes and 5 hexes in. It all boiled down to the last turn assault on that Japanese casemate and the Marines successfully assault it with 3 Marine Infantry units just to make sure, giving them a very close victory but not really, as in their rush to achieve these objectives, they lost 7 steps: 5 INF, 1 ENG and 1 LVT and two leaders. This gave the Japanese a victory as well, causing this scenario to be a Draw!

I believe it was a pretty good scenario, as I wasn’t sure who would win it throughout the whole thing, my thought process went back and forth. Plugging minefield counters in that beachhead bottleneck really slowed the Marines progress down. Japanese setup and Marine entry could vary a bit giving it a nice replay value and this is one of the smaller amphibious landing scenarios making it a faster playing scenario.

In real life the Marines lost 15 killed and 225 wounded plus three LVTs lost so I guess I might have done a little worst but close.

After getting my feet wet, so to speak, with the Counter Landing scenario, this one was easy enough to sort out. The scenario takes every Marine leader counter in the game, so there are plenty of leaders running around, and I happened to get the good side on just about all of them. The Japanese didn't fair so well, with a lot of -0-0 leaders and a couple of 7 morale LTs. I set up the Japanese with the two casemates on the cliffs overlooking the beach, the big guns in the jungle just back from the central cliff hexes where they could get some shots at approaching LVTs, and nearly all the infantry in jungle next to the 4 hexes that were available for beach landings, so that they could immediately start assaulting Marines as they hit the beach. One Japanese infantry platoon and the sergeant set up back from the beach, acting as a mobile reserve and to try to block or at least keep up with anything that made a dash for the airfield. The 25mm Japanese AA unit was set up in the jungle just south of the airfield. The first wave of Marines got on the beach having lost just one LVT on the approach, and half of them had a movement point remaining to allow them to disembark from the LVTs on the beach before being assaulted. And immediately on the Japanese turn, 3 of 4 beach hexes were assaulted. The second wave had the Marine Colonel on one of the LVTs. Playing solo, I randomized which of the 3 LVTs (2 LVTs and the LVT-a4) was the target when the Japanese 75/88 fired at the hex. And luck of the draw, the Colonel and the infantry platoon with him took the plunge. Thankfully the Decapitation rule is not in effect before the units hit the beach, so in the rush to get on the beach, nobody else noticed. The LVT-a4 that had been stacked with the Colonel did become disrupted but the other LVT shrugged it off. While the Marines took the first losses, having so much OBA and some air cover made a lot of difference. Japanese became disrupted and demoralized quickly, and rolled poorly in assaults. While several times, assaults had to take a break while both sides rolled for morale in order to continue, overall the Marines were able to keep up the firepower and overwhelm the Japanese advantages in assault. This began to tell pretty quickly as the Marines rolled up the Japanese left flank, and a single Marine platoon and a good LT made their dash for the airfield. In a couple of turns, the airfield was taken and the Japanese never made good on any attempts to either take it back or use the AA firepower a few hexes away to destroy the Marines. The Japanese on the beach melted away, and even the Japanese Sergeant and his platoon came apart when targeted with a total of 60 factors of OBA. At the end of 8 turns, the Japanese were down to one demoralized reduced platoon and some demoralized or disrupted guns in the jungle behind the beach, where they had little effect on the Marines squeezing towards them. With little more they could do, I called it a game. Total Japanese losses 14 steps to 9 Marine, which counted 3 LVTs. Great game.

In reviewing the victory conditions again, this should have been listed as a draw. The US lost too many units. Anything 6 steps or more gives the Japanese a partial victory, so the 9 Marine steps lost brings the results to a draw.

The until the Japanese didn't have a problem stopping up the Marine onslaught for most of the game.... Finally a beach cracked and the Marines started going inland. These isn't much finesse to the game, it's merely a slugging match until one gets "lucky" with the dice. (Problems: Firing through the cliff tops. I couldn't find an answer in the rules, so I didn't.) An interesting "problem".