Hello Again,
This is a follow-up AAR for Darrell's and my second game on Sunday. I would highly recommend this scenario, Last Of Their Strength. Unfortunately as I write this I realize that we played a variant of LoTS. We had the boards folded in half but got boards 35 and 38 180 degrees from where they should be. (They were correct top to bottom, 37, 38 rev., 35 rev.) This error makes the Japanese defense much tougher. I had a bad gut feeling yesterday as I looked at my LoTS postscript map I had created last week. The gist is the Japanese have the majority of the huts towards the American and a much more limited front for the reinforcements. The American's initial attack was slowed by kunai but that was not a significant disadvantage.
I was the Americans again with Darrell as the Japanese. I will relate the game anyway 'cause we had a darn good time with it. (A.2)
From the start, Darrell's Japanese were clearly feeling the effects of FDR's export embargo. The Japanese SW consistently malfunctioned after just the slightest use and then promptly became junk.
I sent the 9-1 leader with three squads around the left flank with the 10-2 and four squads in the center and the 8-0 and three squads on the right. No big surprises. On the first weather roll, the rain became heavy which allowed a much less slow advance. (The Americans cannot even think in terms of fast movement with their exhaustion and the mud.) As I compressed the Japs back, my MMG squad got hot and started a flame in one hut before melting the MMG. Luckily, the US SW are well built and I carried a spare barrel or two. This MMG squad in the central cluster of jungle did his ROF trick while his 10-2 boss was TI with his bottle of courage during turn #2.
Meanwhile the MTR left a flame in another hut as the first hut caught fire eliminating the defender (no rout path). The Japanese pulled back from that hut to regroup and I slipped a HS into it. The nasty SONs (that's Sons of Nippon, which is not to be confused with ... nevermind) banzaied my HS as the flame turned into a blaze. (This prompted my Burning Banzai post.)
Anyway, the SONs had no guts for glory and routed out. They hid in shame for the rest of the day. After they were safely gone, my HS slinked away (and I still controlled that hex.) Of course, they would have stayed if need be to insure US hut control. :-) Now its one burning hut apiece. Why would anyone hamper the flame in this scenario if they control the hex? I was quite happy to have control and let it burn. Now if I might lose it, then I might want to hamper it, I guess.
What surprised me was feeling the Japanese reinforcements coming and choosing to go into CC despite the exhaustion. And I won 2 of the 3 CCs. (Japanese grenades were substandard too, I guess.) As the garrison was eliminated, the reinforcements arrived the next turn, but at least one turn later than if the boards were correctly positioned. By then I had repositioned my force, using a burning hut, a HS on the non-road and a bamboo hex to protect my right flank from infiltration. I was lucky to have my squads make their MCs during the last 1.5 turns and I rolled well as the Japanese charged the first line of 3 unburning huts. By deploying some squads into HSs, I blocked their path to the larger number of huts on my side of the non-road. Since those huts should have been on the Japanese side of the non-road, I feel the setup error helped the Americans more than the SONs.
Regards,
Chuck Payne