Love these relatively small night actions. I set up a Marine perimeter with an infantry and HMG at the right, left and middle of the Marine line, sort of a bow shape with the most forward positions in the jungle towards the middle of the board. I wanted to be able to spot one unit as early as possible to call in illumination. The Japanese set up in two groups so they could move everyone in two activations using chain of command. Japanese Army on their right, Navy on the left. And set up forward enough to take advantage of the night to get as many troops into position on turn 1 to launch a chain of assaults on turn 2. As it turned out, the Japanese captain, the second stack to move on the first activation, moved right into the position he was looking for, and like the Marines planned, illumination lit up the night. The next thing that happened, another Marine stack lit up the Japanese captain and his stack and rolled snake-eyes. Then snakes again to see about leader loss. Instant decapitation, and most of the unmoved Japanese leaders failed their immediate morale checks. The Navy guys on the other side were not inside illumination range and were still a few hexes away from contact so went unnoticed a little bit longer. As Japanese troops regained their composure and drew straws to see who was the ranking LT, they picked up again and continued to move. The Marines kept the initiative pretty much from turn 2 on until the bitter end, so were always in a position to get a shot off before the Japanese could assault. This lead to nearly every stack being disrupted or demoralized enough to stop short and force a morale check before they could continue. The whole Japanese Army force got tied into this sort of thing, which distracted the Marines in the other end and allowed the Japanese SNLF troops to get close. But then, again, the Marines were able to effectively fire at 1 hex range and disturb the Japanese attacks. With only a few actual assaults, which demoralized some Marines but eliminated many of the attackers, the battle stalled for several turns as both sides attacked and then regrouped to attack again. US Artillery kept up an illumination and some damage, even with a 2 step result at one point taking out the one good Japanese platoon and leaving the LT in good order but wondering where everyone went. The Japanese needed to eliminate 4 steps of Marines for a win, but at the end of 10 turns, had only eliminated 2 steps of an HMG platoon, to the loss of 21 steps and 2 leaders. With only 4 leaders and one regular infantry platoon left, and that having ran nearly back to the cliffs before being rallied, I called the game. A US victory.

Marianas 1944, scenario #9: The Final Banzai Attack?

It looks pretty simple, the Marines setup on some good defensive terrain, dug-in accept one jungle hex and circle the wagons, with the weaker 37mm and 81mm heavy weapon units in the middle and well protected. The Japanese on the other hand must only eliminate 4 or more American steps to win and could care less about their own loses. The scenario starts in the night time hours, which last about 6 turns.

The Japanese player had one plan, make stacks of three combat units whenever possible and close in and assaults the enemy. Death doesn’t matter! The first 10 turn went into a bloody struggle and the Japanese got lucky on a couple turns in a row and were able to activate first, giving them a chance to assault American units. Late in the game, the Japanese only had eliminated three Marines steps and it looked like no hope of gaining the forth accept the American decided not to risk losing the next assault combat with one of their weaker assault stacks and reinforced it and trigger assault intentionally thinking they had superior numbers but the Japanese rolled a 12 on the dice of all things with a total five DF points counting the leader plus another modifier of one for the Nationality of Japanese giving them their forth eliminated American step and a Japanese victory.

Clearly the Americans won the battle by steps loss comparison but the Japanese won the scenarios, as they don’t care about their own causalities. If the Americans would have gotten so aggressive those last couple of turns, they could have sit back and won but then again, the threat couldn’t be left there.