This interesting little gem was hard fought right down to the last of the 20 turns. Marines and Guam native troops hold the town and village hexes as well as they can with their limited numbers against Japanese SNLF landings on two board lengths of beach and will be attacked some time after turn 8 by Japanese regular troops coming from the other side of the island. I split the invasion forces so they could hit both Marines and Guamanians at the same time, and SNLF vs Marine assaults took place very quickly while it took one more turn for SNLF to maneuver into contact with the Guam troops. I had decided to try keeping the stacks pure, all infantry with leaders and not mixing the HMGs with them to keep the Japanese assault bonus as much as possible, and kept the HMGs as hard hitting support stacks. Hit the target hex with the HMGs first, then assault with the infantry. Outside of some really poor die rolling, this worked. Everywhere, assaults took longer than I thought they would to eliminate or dislodge Allied troops. Even through step losses, the surviving Guam troops seemed dedicated to holding on as long as they could. While this didn't cost the Japanese much in the way of casualties, it made it all the more likely that there wouldn't be a Japanese win. As hex after hex of Allied defenders started falling to the Japanese, the Guam force finally lost it's last village hex and caused a demoralized Japanese officer to flee the board. Marines also held out much longer than I thought they would. Once the central town hex fell, the Japanese split and headed for the northern most town hex on the southern board and took it fairly quickly, but the force heading south had a tough time of it. The Marine HMGs and LTC held up in the village hex to the southeast and caused a lot of demoralizing among the Japanese regulars coming over the hill, but bombardment and airpower helped to demoralize the Marine defenders and then an SNLF force attacking from the east with direct fire finished them off. It was down to the last coastal town to the south, where turn after turn, Japanese in assault failed to do more than briefly disrupt the Marine LT, never hurting the infantry platoon, while the Marines with their lower numbers managed to disrupt and demoralize the Japanese for several turns. By this point, the Japanese couldn't use their bombardment or air assets because of the size of their assault force in that last Marine hex. Japanese troops came from the north and east to surround the town, even the Japanese gunboat came up and closed the circle around the town. But when turn 20 ended, the Marines still held, the Japanese assault force was nearly exhausted, and the points were exactly tied. It would have been so easy for a few die rolls to go the other way in either that last town or in the previous one, allowing the Marines to hold on to two hexes for an outright win. My Marines and Guam troops never had much chance to capture the landing boats, so the highest points were achieved just through the loss of 5 steps of Japanese troops and keeping the last town from falling. Great little game. As near perfect as I have seen, so I had to give it a 5.

Marianas 1944, scenario eleven: Out of No Where, Guam 1941

Who doesn’t want to play a Japanese amphibious scenario! Ok it’s an uneven matchup but the victory conditions off sets this, a nice bit. The Japanese also get some land reinforcements that have landed on other parts of the island and a huge naval artillery support along with the rare air-support for the Japanese in PG scenarios. The Americans have the U.S. Marines but equipped with 1941 weapons and the whole Guam Insular Force Guard equipped with even worst but are a needed man-power. Both sides have an on board Gun-Boat.

The first turn started off poorly for the U.S. Gun-Boat which was first struck by a Japanese Betty (G4M) rolling a snake eyes or 2 on the dice and now sits at the bottom of the ocean. The Japanese landed the Daihatsu landing-craft mostly out of direct conflict with American units and move down the coast taking town hexes until it meet the main American resistance in the larger city hexes. At first it look like a cake walk with that large off-board naval artillery support until the Japanese started losing some steps in those city assault combats. Fortunately for the SNLF their Army counter parts started to arrive in force and swung things back their directions.

The American/GIFG forces had lost 14 steps not counting leaders but managed to keep one Japanese overlooked village, while the Japanese lost three steps but controlled all the rest of the city/village hexes for a 26 point to a 20 point Minor Victory. Really if the Japanese hadn’t overlooked a faraway village hex they should have had a major victory. A fun scenario to play, difficult for the American forces but not impossible to win! Another step or two, and it goes the other way.