Saipan is the smallest of the scenarios. This is a combined AAR of both games.
I use a few phrases:
In the first game:
His US forces
My Japanese forces
In the second game
My US forces
His Japanese forces
To achieve a minor victory you need a margin of 200+ points. His US forces won by 55 points and my US forces won by 91 points - both games officially finished as a draw.
Screen 1 shows the VLs scattered across the map at the start.
Note also that Tsutsuran and Hashigoru are both supply sources for the Japanese. It is clear the Japanese will have to withdraw around these 2 in the latter part of the game.
There is another small Japanese supply source in the top right corner (out of picture) but it has no points value.
The US troops land in the bottom left corner to the north and south of the lake. The US has a supply point near the lake at Charan Kanoa.
His US navy had poor luck with the dice and at the start, did not destroy as many strong points and steps and my US navy would.
The direct result was that his US forces took a few turns to capture Charan Kanoa and the adjacent supply source whereas my US forces captured it quite quickly.
This makes it sound like my US forces had a better start but that’s not the case.
To the north of the lake, his Japanese moved adjacent to the landing troops. You cannot dig in on unfriendly ground so my Japanese forces north of the lake did not move adjacent - they stopped one hex short and dug in. I did this to reduce the effect of naval bombardment. What I forgot is that the navy cannot fire on enemy units adjacent to friendly troops. Doh!
As a result, at the and of turn 1, my Japanese front line north of the lake was one hex longer than his Japanese front line north of the lake. This led to the situation in the next screen shot.
The left shows his US forces at about turn 8 and the right is my US forces at turn 8. His US forces have advanced much further than my US forces. However my Japanese forces still hold Charan Kanoa
His Japanese troops north of the lake made one Banzai charge. He lost a lot of steps but successfully destroyed a couple of my valuable weakened units. That cost me some points!
My Japanese troops were now stretched thin. I planned on a steady withdrawal around the 2 objectives/supply depots mentioned above. At one point I decided now is the time to begin and then delayed by one turn. That was a mistake.
That turn he broke through and my troops were scattered. In the south I withdrew towards and held Tsutsuran but in the north had to withdraw towards Garapan. This doubles as a US supply source and without it the US can have supply problems.
As my troops were scattered he was able to destroy more troops than otherwise. That gave him his 55 point victory.
Meanwhile my US forces, were stuck as can be seen above. I attacked turn after turn and I felt I didn’t do much damage. And the problem, which persisted throughout the scenario, that my troops could not get any attack supply. In spite of being within the range of the attack HQ, attack supply was not forthcoming.
I had troops landing as reinforcements over a number of turns and decided to delay the landing and they all landed in force in one turn, in one place, at about turn 9 on the north of the island.
I quickly captured the 2 VLs there and destroyed a small number of units. But supply was bad. I could hardly expand the bridgehead.
Then all of a sudden his lines, north and south of the lake, broke. He seemed to be moving to the west for a last stand but I was able to destroy a few scattered troops.
This movement, allowed supply to reach the beachhead in the north and the advance continued to the west.
Alas the supply problems stopped my US forces crushing his remaining forces.
In both games we both made mistakes and both could have gone either way. For 2 players of equal ability, this is a well balanced scenario.
On to Novorossisk!
-
