Playtest of Pacific at War 3 25 14

[larryfulkerson]

The technique that I described above sometimes sinks ships and those I can't help but those that are just damaged, those I can
drive to the boneyard at Pearl. This is what's in the bone yard so far. Some of these ships are going to be parked for quite a
while.

[larryfulkerson]

I thought I'd drive over to Wake Island and bombard the Jap division there to soften it up a little bit and I did a one-dot attack on
the base there and I'll be dad gum if I didn't lose most of my DD's. That's disheartening.

[larryfulkerson]

Hey Dear Reader: I've decided that it's a lost cause and that Thomas won fair and square. Really a good
performance by Thomas Harvey. He's the scenario designer too by the way. Knows the scenario inside
and out. We're going to do a restart with the version of the scenario that uses spotter planes on the ships.
That might change things I'm guessing. Maybe not. I donno. Anyway, we're going to go again and this
time I'm going to be the Japs and I'm going to see if I can't do what Thomas did. Probably not.

Thomas Harvey told me that when you're using the TOAW editor and you're editing the forces you can
assign a secondary icon by clicking just to the LEFT of the icon and the icon display will pop up and you
can assign a CV icon as the secondary icon and that will allow the ships to carry spotter planes.

Unfortunately, they can also carry combat planes, fighters and bombers, so we need to establish a house
rule that only the carriers can carry fighters and bombers. And the other ships can carry only spotter
planes.

EDIT: Thomas sent me a copy of the scenario that has spotter planes on the ships and I've already started
doing my moves for our new game. Meanwhile Thomas tells me that there's another house rule ( that I didn't
know about ) which is that the carriers have to retire to the home islands after the Pearl strike. This will
allow the Allied player time to get organized about his carriers and his ships, if any are left, etc. Sounds
good to me.

[larryfulkerson]

This is the starting positions of some of the units in south China now. I've only started moving units and I've just now cleared out
Hong Kong. This will allow the flow of supply back and forth through the hex. I needed this hex to balance my Chai. Also I want the
airfield. I'm going to push my troops as far north as they can go to get them away from the beaches and into the hinterland so as to
keep them away from the rail and my roads, my lines of communication. I'm planning on needing that railroad to get my North China
troops into Malaya and Burma later on. I'm pretty sure Thomas knows that I'm going to have to go for the Ledo and Burma roads
like he did. That's a fabulous move and it's almost a must do. That plus timely deployment of paratroopers might just lengthen the
war by a significant amount. That's what I'm counting on.

EDIT: In my verbage above I refered to a "them" and by them I mean of course of the Chinese dudes.

[larryfulkerson]

The 1st Division was the first division that was in a port and wasn't doing anything important so I sailed it into the PI and since the MP's
left were 60 of 100 I deemed it early enough in the turn to use the division in an assault right NOW and did a three-dot attack and
what do you know, I gained the hex. I hadn't planned on what to do next. I think maybe I should divide the division and attack out of
the hex in about three directions.

[larryfulkerson]

Here's north China so far. I have had to rail in some more people to be able to make sure I have enough to hold back the Communists.
As I recall in our last game they were numerous. I have moved people to places where they can watch over the bridges and the
rail. I've destroyed one partisan but I'm sure there's more about. It's going to be a major task to round all of them up.

[larryfulkerson]

I flew some paratroops over to the Bridge over the river Kwai and dropped the bridge into the water. This will buy me some
time to get my people organized better in the positions they are going to need. I'm thinking of dropping the other paratroop
unit I have on the Ledo bridge to stop up the Ledo road supply path. That wreaked havoc on the Allies last game.

[larryfulkerson]

I'm just now finding out that some of my squadrons are just skeletons and need some turns to get filled out with planes. I'm guessing
it would take just a couple of turns. I suppose it would depend on how many are on hand and as it happens there's plenty I'll post
proof of that in a moment.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, here's proof of how many Nates there are on hand. Plenty. So um.....I'm thinking that's approximately how many are needed
by the skeleton squadrons and that pretty soon I won't have very many planes on hand any more. I'll watch the on hand number and
let you know next turn or so. Meanwhile, I'm going through the OOB moving my units. The CD guns I'm setting on three-dots and
putting them in "T" status just in case an enemy bumps into it somehow. I discovered that I didn't save enough rail capacity to move
the Saigon troops to Bangkok. D'oh. It's too late to fix it now. I don't want to start over again.

[larryfulkerson]

I found a Sally unit that was within range of the bridges feeding the Ledo or Burma roads and I looked into the possibility of
dropping the bridge from the air and it's looking almost impossible to do that way. It must be hidden by the jungle or something.
So I'm going to have to go with plan B........using the paratroops to drop the bridge. I hate doing that because they most
probably will be lost using them that way. But it might just help the war effort enough to justify doing it.

[larryfulkerson]

I just now found a unit on Kwajalene that has some RR engineers in it. I need to write something down to remember this so that I can
move them in some future turn to the ravaged rail that need them. Like northern China or the Bangkok area, something like that.

[larryfulkerson]

For some reason I was able to just sail into Kavieng and gain the place without a fight. And I moved some planes to the base
there almost immediately so as to guard the air around the place. More to come.

[larryfulkerson]

I found another port that allowed me to just sail into it without a fight. Pretty cool. I have no idea why it's acting this way on
some of the ports. This is a pretty good base to have too. I moved some fighters there to provide top cover and I plan to
give the base some sea interdiction provided by some other unit. Maybe some Betty's.

[larryfulkerson]

It looks like Lae is going to allow the same thing. Well then, that's like an invitation.

[larryfulkerson]

It looks like I've grabbed New Georgia in the Solomon chain. So far so good. I plan on having to fight for Guam.

[larryfulkerson]

Okay, I flew some paratroopers to a bridge over the river place to stop up the Ledo road and had to fight my way into the hex
by dropping on their hex and having a three-dot attack happen when I drop in on that hex and the Chinese moved out of the
hex, thank you very much. So now the paratroopers have dropped the bridge and are in relatively good shape supply-wise.
I'm hoping I can get some unit up there to replace them before too long. I'm aware they are out of supply so they need a path
to some supply more than anything I guess. For right now.

EDIT: Yeah, I saw that just now myself......it's actually the Burma road I've dropped onto I guess. If I had another paratrooper
unit I would drop them on the Ledo road somewhere.

[larryfulkerson]

I used a BB to pound the Allies on Guam and the following attack by my land troops gained the hex. Guam is mine. That was too
easy. I hope they are all this easy.

[larryfulkerson]

I have an observation to make. Those Allied ships in Manila's harbor didn't show up when I drove those two CL TF's around the
entrance to the harbor, near Ft Drum. Those Allied ships showed up when I moved the Zuiho to the position it's in now. And the
planes aboard are the regular carrier borne fighting group with Claudes and Kates. I plan to use them on that larger stack of
Allied ships.

[larryfulkerson]

Another observation to report. I sailed my TF down near Singapore and stopped in the gap where there's a Dutch CL I think and I
ended up adjacent to it and there was no automatic combat. So I moved the group to another adjacent hex and again there was no
combat. So I thought I'd just tackle the attack manually.

[larryfulkerson]

I found an Allied ship near Singapore to attack. I'm hoping I don't loose too many ships myself by driving in so close to the Allied
air power. I'm counting on my fighters to protect the ships. We'll see.