Ambitious Plans - Backblast 16
Last Friday, I played the BB scenario Ambitious Plans. I was the Japanese, while the part of the Marines was played by the Evil-that-is-Tycho. For those of you who don't know, this is a seabourne evac, and was designed by Herr Youse. Indeed, this was the first seabourne scenario that either Tycho or I had played.

The situation starts out with the Marines setting up on the board 39 hill, from whence they must hightail it back across board 34 (the kunai board) to the beach, where they are met be some partially armored landing craft, then carried off the board. The VC require that they exit some 35 CVP plus another 1 to 3 points depending on when they get their air support. The Marines are also blessed with 120mm NOBA.

The Japanese have 10 squads, 2 leaders, a couple crews, and some mortars and MGs. Pretty sparse when compared to the US forces. Also, by SSR, the Japanese can designate 3 1FP residual attacks against ocean hexes to simulate flanking fire that was present in the historical battle. Doesn't seem like much, does it? But, as we will learn, it proved to be pivotal.

My plan was to take two strong flanking forces, each with a leader and with the SW divided evenly between them, and run hard to either side of the board 39 hill in the hopes of beating the Marines to the beach, or at least harrying them on their way to it. A third (small) force was set to run up the hill behind the Marines to keep them honest. I think I had this vague idea of smashing the Marines in a sort of hammer-and-anvil type of encirclement. The folly: Marines are made of such tough stuff, my hammer turned out to be a 3 week old banana, my anvil, a cube of lime jello!

My two flanking groups went ahead, full bore, and got into position to meet the Marines as they were coming off the hill. My third force, with typical Japanese bravura, rushed the Marine position that was guarding the path over the hill. The idea was just to get an HS or so into CC and give the Marines some of that Japanese H2H goodness. Alas, Tycho opened a brand new can of whup-ass on these poor saps, KIAing 1.5 squads, and maddeningly pinning the survivors, making an advance into CC impossible.

This set the tone for the next 4 or 5 turns. The Marines simply beat on any Japanese that got in their way. The moved fairly easily toward the beach. Meanwhile, the LCs came on. For some reason, I had the perception that these things were little more than trucks-on-the-water. Not true! They've got murderous machine-guns. One LC whacked my 9-1 leader on a long range shot.

My flanking forces did manage to get to the beach just ahead of the Marines, but they were seriously depleted at that time. The NOBA had taken a terrible toll, as had that legendary Marine firepower. The LCs had gunned up my forces as well. The air support, however, was not that effective: there are lots of palm trees and jungle on board, that allow the Japanese to stay in "blind" areas, and avoid Sighting.

The one bright spot was that some of the aforementioned 1FP residual attacks had managed to stun one LC, and a couple others ran aground just off the beach.

On about turn 6, the Marines started loading onto the LCs. This is where things turned.

As those of you who have done seabourne scenarios know, seabourne forces on the beach/in the ocean/aboard LCs do not break, they CR. And the inherent crew of an LC in always vulnerable to small arms fire, with no CE TEM. Although my force was shattered, I was able to plink away at the LC crews as they turned to exit, exposing their unarmored target facings.

Tycho had left some of his squads on the ground. These units aggressively pursued my Japanese, and the NOBA and air support continued to hammer at me. But, I ignored the ground forces, concentrating everything on the all-important LCs. The stun results started to mount, and Tycho began having trouble making progress. A CH with one of my knee-mortars immobilized one of the LCs, and several more were spinning randomly due to stuns.

Meanwhile, Tycho's ground forces were chewing up my infantry. By the end of turn 11, I had a grand total of, get this, one Sniper counter. Everything else was gone: no broken HS, no wounded leader, nothing. Tycho had just enough VP in position to get off the board for the win. But I still had my 1fp attacks.

That turned out to be the difference. One of his LC was under a +3 stun counter. I concentrated all 3 of my residual attacks against this LC, stunned it, and thus denied him the last CVPs he needed to go over the top.

Very unique scenario. It invoked shades of my loss to Matt Noah at WO, in that I pulled off a win with absolutely nothing left of my forces. Also, the seabourne evac gave the game a unique feel, unlike anything else I've played in ASL. And, despite the Japanese being miserably out-gunned, I think the balance is pretty good. I'm anxious to try some more beach landings, now. The rules really aren't that bad.

Well, y'all, hadn't done an AAR in a while. Consider this an effort to return the ASLML to "the good old days" when we spent more time talking about the game, less time talking about Mark Hamil movies.

Dade