Gung Ho-The Finale

 

The Forces

USMC (FM 11)

2nd Marine Raider Battalion (missing 13 men)

Platoon #2

2 SL's

2 Raider Squads with Superior JL's and 9 men (-3 men)

Supports (11)

Raider squad

extra BARs for 1 squad

Native Assistance

M1919 LMG Team

Japanese (FM 10)

62nd Garrison Force (missing 19 men)

1 SL

1 Inferior SL

2 LMG Buntai's with JL's

Knee Mortar Buntai with JL and 3x50mm Mortars (-6 men)

Supports (6)

MMG team

Marksman

Adjutant 

Patrol Phase

We started off using P-Y's patrol ap, smaller dots represent the JOP's. This was the "Attack on an Objective" scenario for the main rulebook. The Raiders have to blow the Fuel Tanks. This was a completely different game then the last in that the Raiders were able to capture the southwest part of the terrain so their approach to the objective would be from the south.

The Action

The game took place over 2 days, as we got started a little late the first session. We finished up this past Tuesday. All the core players showed up for both sessions. I thought I had taken more photos but it appears I had not. There was a bit of tentative movement in the first session but the game certainly sped up in the second session.

The table

JOP's

The Japanese deployed their marksmen in the watchtower as well as their Knee Mortar squad almost immediately. The Knee Mortars were placed behind one of the oil tanks with the Marksmen giving them indirect LOS to the approaching raiders.

The marines got off to a quick start deploying their 2 core squads and then their support squad as well as their LMG team just south of the wharf.

The green raider squad with the Platoon leader took some loses and shock from the Knee Mortars.

Pink and blue marines squads advance to the jungle edge

Eero leads the pink squad to safety behind a hut in the initial raider assault on the objective.

They are covered by the blue squad.

The green marine squad supported by the LMG also advanced north staying behind another hut to block LOS for the marksman.

Jarrko has deployed the IJA blue squad with himself in the concrete building,

the IJA green squad is finally deployed just out of LOS being screened by the jungle. He orders the knee mortars commanded by Petri to advance from behind the oil tanks to support the IJA green squad.

Mikko pulls the trigger and orders Eero to advance with the pink raider squad with his own green squad to assault the IJA green squad ( all though not in the rules we see no reason not to allow multiple squad assaults).

Jarrko although has a CoC die and adroitly plays it bringing the IJA blue squad out of the house  making what seemed to be a sure marine win in doubt. 

If I have it right the raiders had 46d6 and the the IJA 43d6. In CoC though sometimes numbers  can win, the raiders had all their men killed in the first assault while their 2 Leaders were wounded. The IJA had 4 men survive with 2 Leaders wounded. As there was no clear victor, a second assault took place. In this assault the IJA drove back the raiders, killing one of the JL's and knocking down the SL and the pink squad JL. The Marine FM was 1 while the IJA was over 3. The IJA still had over 25% of their men alive after we applied the ATSE rules. The Victory in the game and campaign was given to the IJA.

I really enjoyed putting on this campaign, it is the first time I got a chance to get my jungle set up and troops on the table. My Finnish friends are all great CoC players and it was anyone's campaign to the very end. Also thanks to William Thorpe for putting this, a very well written campaign, together.

Saipan-The O-1 Line (9)

We played the last game in our Saipan Campaign last week, I had already game mastered a Gung Ho game earlier in the day so I was a little tired but at the same time I was in a gaming mood so I put some planning into this game which I will discuss below.

I finally felt I did OK with this Patrol Phase, I generally feel comfortable with the movement of my Patrol Markers but screw up the placement of the JOP's. I felt in this game I finally got my JOPs in the right spot.

USMC (FM 11)

6th Marine Regiment

Type F USMC Platoon #2 (less 2 men)

2SL

3 Infantry Squads with Sup JL and 12 men

Supports (11+1)

2 Flamethrower Teams (6)

FO (5)

SMG's for 1 squad (1)

Japanese (FM 11)

136th Infantry Regiment

Type B Infantry Platoon #2 

2 SL

3 Infantry Sections with Jl and 12 men

Grenadier Section with JL and 12 men and 3 50mm Mortars

Bunker

Supports (7)

20mm AA Cannon (4)

3 Entrenchments (3)

So on to the game:

We were down to the last game in this campaign, the situation being that the Victory Conditions are that the USMC player must control table 6 on turn 8 to claim a Major Victory or Turn 9 for a Minor Victory. Anything else is a Japanese Victory. We are at Table 9; so at the most, it was going to be a minor victory for the marines. 

When I looked at the table, I was relieved that I was not the attacker. Essentially the marines have to climb a hill which is graded as broken ground with abrupt contours in height at 4 points causing them to lose 1 pip per d6. The actual hill gives soft cover only when not moving. Additionally vehicles can not ascend the hill. I appreciated that IG's and AFV could have LOS but they would be at a distance and I could easily move out of LOS as needed. I felt that P-Y would be unlikely to take this type of support on this table. I was a little intimidated however as the game went on that he had taken two Flamethrower Teams!

My plan as you can see from my supports was to place the 20mm cannon in the Bunker which the scenario gave me for free and only place my infantry squads in bunkers. Because the Japanese had time to prepare for this assault, the scenario allowed them a 9" deployment rather than 6". I would use my 4th squad as a support when one squad became close to breaking with the plan to pull them back and redeploy the fresh squad. One entrenchment would go in the centre jungle, with one on my left flank between a rock and the aforementioned central jungle. I would place the Bunker on my right flank angled towards the centre with the last entrenchment on my extreme right. This gave me complete LOS of the American position. The jungle in the centre of the terrain was their most likely cover for their advance so I would have at least 3 firing positions in hard cover at close range with which to rain fire!

Marines to the left and IJA to the right.

The Marine approach, hard to see but the terrain has been elevated, the  contour changes are the dark grass

Close of the IJA edge from their left flank

Mostly hard cover

Close up of the Marines right flank 

Close up of IJA left flank.

This is what I felt would be the main contact point

I will let the  photos from the camera of P-Y tell the story.............

LMG Squad 1 on my left flank at the ready.

The marine's advance is rapid as squad 1 goes into the central jungle.

Hopefully a daunting prospect!

Squad 2 with a Flamethrower team in front adding to offer support

Marine squad 3 starts in hard cover in one of the stone houses but Japanese smoke mortars block their LOS so they exit and advance up their right flank.

Prepared to meet the oncoming marines, with the Knee Mortars in the jungle and the LMG squad 2 in the entrenchment.

The marines take some fire, but with their Superior JL's can remove shock fairly quickly.

......and they retaliate on IJA # 2 who are taking casualties. 

I hav enot done a good job on positioning my Knee Mortars and my right flank is also starting to weaken. The marines in the central jungle have caused IJA #1 to break and I have to bring in LMG squad #3 into the entrenchment on my extreme right flank.....

....I swing the Knee Mortars through the jungle to support my right flank.

Now the 2nd marine Flamethrower team has arrived and they swing to their right flank to support marine squad #3, This is starting to get tricky.

I am ready though I my right flank with 3 units now in firing position....

Marine squad #1 starts to weaken and they can not get the Flamethrowers in position to support and squad #3 is still far back. A marine SL takes a hit, the marine FM is falling. They tried to make a lateral move to their left they get caught in heavy crossfire, they break and rout off the table as the main fire is conming from their flank.....

Marine squad #3 on the US right flank takes more hits and a JL is wounded, marine FM drops to less than 3. A Japanese Major Victory in the campaign!

Summing Up

This was really a great campaign, with the Wild Card we got in 10 games. I believe 8 were Virtual and 2 In-Person. First, I have to thank P-Y for putting a lot of work in on the terrain and hosting all the games. The terrain was terrific as many of you have pointed out on FB. 

P-Y is a challenging opponent and if I have it right he won the majority of the games in this campaign, but the clock ran out for him. I think this was going to be a very hard table to take and I was lucky enough to have an intact platoon. In this game the dice gods did favour me, so the IJA won the campaign.

In respect, to the campaign itself I can highly recommend it. It was a lot of fun and was well balanced, so thanks to Stephen Philip who put it together. The terrain at times was a little difficult to sort out, as there were a lot of different types. I had not realised it to the last game, that the terrain maps included are images from the TableTop version of the game. What was jungle and what was not, was a little hard to sort out at times and I might recommend that for posterity I would use different scenario images, but of course scenario maps are guidelines and not rules, so I should not quibble! 

Well I am not sure what is next, I suspect we might be taking a break from CoC campaigning for a bit and certainly the jungle for a good while. I know from the Gung Ho campaign I am hosting, that moving figures though jungle terrain is a lot of work. I am, however, working on a project which will have even more challenging terrain in which to play CoC than even the jungle.

Gung Ho-Taking King's Wharf (6)

The next game in our Gung-Ho campaign took place over 2 separate sessions, I suspect the playing time was over 5 hours! This time we had Jarkko for both sessions as the IJA SL with Petri as the 2nd SL. Mikko and Eero played for the Raiders as has been the case for all our games. Two of our initial players have been unable to join us be causing of scheduling problems.

THE FORCES

USMC (FM 11)

2nd Marine Raider Battalion

Platoon #2

2 SL's

3 Raider Squads with Superior JL's and 9 men

Supports (11)

Raider squad

extra BARs for 1 squad

Native Assistance

?

Lt Peatruss Strikes Again Wild Card (PreGB)

Japanese (FM 11)

62nd Garrison Force (missing 13 men)

1 SL

1 Inferior SL

3 LMG Buntai's with JL's

Knee Mortar Buntai with JL and 3x50mm Mortars

Supports (6)

Flame Thrower Team

MMG team

Snipers in the Trees Wild Card (2 Marksmen)

THE SET-UP

Patrol Phase

We started off using P-Y's patrol ap, smaller dots represent the JOP's. This was the "Attack on an Objective" scenario for the main rulebook. The Raiders have to blow the Fuel Tanks. I felt both sides did well with good options for deployment. 

Somehow or another an extra JOP snuck in on the image below, there was not one in front of the oil tanks.

How it looked on the table. Northern edge is in the near ground.

THE ACTION

This was really a back and forth game, the Raiders started their usual aggressive attack, they have a new platoon, while the Japanese are down a squad as well as part of another.

The marine blue and green squads advance

Yellow marine squad is brought on to support the green squad while the blue squad advance north towards the objective. Mikko brings on his pink support squad.

The pink squad cross the road and starts to advance along the northern edge, the marines have now brought all their supports and are quickly approaching the wharf. The yellow and green squads stay in the centre and the blue squad starts to cross open terrain directly towards the wharf and the oil tanks.....

.......and they are not meeting much resistance aside from a couple of hidden IJA marksmen.  Although well hidden they appear to be very inaccurate riflemen and cause only some shock. The first marksmen is overrun by the blue raider squad but the second marksmen is well hidden. They do a nice job though of giving LOS to the IJA knee mortars who have strategically placed themselves behind the oil tanks. Jarkko has also placed and LMG squad in the terminal building but they really only have LOS to the east.

As the blue squad approach the objective, Jarkko springs an ambush, and it is a IJA flamethrower team....the blue squad go up in smoke with just 2 men and the JL somehow surviving.

The IJA now place their LMG squad on the table in the banana plantation and advance to take out the the remnants of the blue raider squad.....

....they have to watch out though for the green and yellow raider squads who are at the edge of the jungle giving support fire...... 

....and the green squad has extra BAR's

The pink raider squad continues their advance, but are taking fire from the knee mortars, soon they will be in LOS of the IJA LMG squad in hard cover in the concrete terminal..

The IJA deploy their remaining green squad to support the advancing yellow squad and the knee mortars drop a smoke to block LOS to them.

The blue squad try to make it to the jungle to get out of LOS.

The IJA deploy a MMG team to cover the northern edge.

The raiders make a run towards the back of one of the wooden huts, but they miscalculate their  path and come within 4" of the IJA LMG squad. It looks like the raiders are done for but oddly enough with their BAR's and SMG's it is an equal fight (21d6vs21d6). And they prevail in the combat but their FM rolls go against them. A SL is lost. Their FM drops to 4 they have lost 15 men from their fresh platoon. Mikko uses his CoC dice to advance a JOP and the remaining men withdraw. The Japanese hold off the first assault on the wharf!

Butcher's Bill

This was a very tough game for both sides with the Raiders pushing hard against the depleted Japanese. There was a lot of casualties. 

USMC (platoon 2)

Final FM 4

Platoon #2: 7 dead and 4 missing for next game (they diced for a new SL)

Platoon #1: 9 dead

CO +4 (+1 support)

MO -3

Platoon Leaders Outlook Sociable (+1 FM)

IJA

Final FM 

 

IJA Buntai: 16 men dead and 3 missing for the next game

CO killed, no further tracking.

MO 0

Platoon Leaders Outlook Merry