Climbing the Hill

I arrived at the venue this morning around 11 AM after a pretty good night's sleep. After snapping a picture of the ballroom for your pleasure, I moved out to find a game in the sparcely populated room. Most of ASLOK doesn't really get going until Tuesday or so, from what people are telling me, but there are plenty of people here to play.

I was directed to Darrel Lundy, from Wellington, New Zealand. Darrel was in the middle of recovering from an appalling incident where his British and Allied Minor storage box had sprung open in his luggage. If you've ever seen the British Order of Battle, you understand his pain at recovering all of the counters and restoring them to thier proper homes. He handed me his scenario books and told me to pick something that didn't require the Brits.

After a little searching, I decided I was itching for more Pacific Theater action, and settled on Hill 27, a scenario from the Operation: Watchtower historical study of Guadalcanal from MMP. The scenario pits 10 American squads with two medium machine guns and two small mortars in defense of a hill from a flush 14 Japanese squads, also with a couple of mortars and machine guns. The Americans get some foxholes, as well as four labor counters to represent entrenchment efforts already under way when the Japanese show up at the base of the hill. It looked like a lot of fun, so we diced for sides and I ended up with the Americans.

The Americans are great soldiers, but I have a history of failure with them. They pack an enormous amount of firepower, but they have very weak morale, which means they tend to break and run under fire. Fortunately, the rally to action like no one else, usually returning to the fight after a short cigarette break. The problem for me is in covering the running guys while they get theiract together.

The Japanese advantages have been covered in the Totsugeki scenario I discussed yesterday. They hardly ever break. They just get a little weaker when shot, but they keep coming. Thier skill at hand to hand combat is something to be feared, and they have the ability to form Banzai charges which we will discuss later (ominous foreshadowing).

I didn't realize what I was getting into until I saw the board. The hill in question is naked. It's like it has been napalmed down to the strata, with practically no cover anywhere at all. My foxholes were crucial to defense, because there was no where else to hide. The up side is that the Japanese have to assault up hill across open ground into two medium machine guns with -1 leader direction on both. That usually spells death, except for Banzai charges (hint).

I took a picture of my deployment for your pleasure. My mortars hawe a minimum range of 3, so I deployed them back out of site and was planning on using spotted fire from the guys on the hill top. The machine guns are up where they can rake the slopes as the Japanese advance.

After the first turn, the Japanese were at the tree line, and we began to exchange fire. I scored a critical hit with a mortar, wounding a Japanese leader and reducing a squad. My other mortar dialed in but did no damage. My machine guns stripped concealment, giving me a clear view of the Japanese horde about to storm the hill. The first Japanese fire phase was harsh on me. I ended up with three broken squads, runing back to the reverse slope to have a morale building conference with a leader standing by for just such an event. You can see the results here.

Japanese turn two opened with screams of "Banzai!!" from the jungle as half the Japanese force boiled up the hill side with a leader swinging his katana from the front. A banzai charge allows the Japanese to move as a mass, with higher morale and extra movement points. They don't pin, no matter what, which means only death will stop them. The Americans opened up with everything they had, small arms, machine guns, and prayer. My leaders stayed cool, directing fire and whittling away Japanese as they advanced up the bare hill. The Japanese leader went down early, and the squads began to melt with each step. I exhausted every shot I had, sustaining fire on the machine guns (risking breaking them), and even ended up in Final Protective Fire as the surviving Japanese jumped into my foxholes with my men. Of the 6 squads (I think) that launched the assault, only two made it to the target up on the hill.

Unfortunately, while I exhausted my fire opportunities, the other portion of Japanese triapsed up the hill unmolested, taking up positions next door to my remaining troops. It wasn't looking good. After all the shooting was over, we conducted close combat, with the Japanese getting thier customary -1 on the die roll. In most cases, we ended up with mutual annihilation, leaving nothing but bodies and weapons laying in the foxholes. The non-banzai Japanese advanced up the hill and pushed the Americans back, while the broken Americans fled down the slope into the Jungle to regroup. In two turns, the Japanese took the hill but at enormous cost. There weren't very many of them left, and if the Americans could regroup, they had a chance to storm up the slope on their own.

The next three turns were spent with Americans at the treeline applying superior firepower up on the Japanese position. I was whittling them down, but I would still have to make that mad dash up the hill by the end of the game to take enough hill hexes (four) to secure victory. After dancing around for awhile, I was on my last turn, requiring a frantic charge into Japanese machine guns, albeit manned by far fewer Japanese than started the scenario.

If you know anything about ASL, you can guess what happened. Low morale Americans can't be asked to run into fire. We're good at shooting people from a distance, and we prefer to build vehicles to go do jobs like this. Unfortunately, when none are at hand, we usually decide we'd rather hang out in the jungle until the Naval batteries cleanse the hill. Everyone who stepped through that treeline immediately reconsidered and ran away under fire, leaving me with my second loss of ASLOK.

In typical Japanese fashion, they got the job done, but they certainly aren't in any shape to do much more. The wasteful nature of the Imperial Japanese Army continues to astonish me.

Darrel was a wonderful opponent, and we were both laughing pretty extensively by the end of the scenario as my Americans tried to emulate the SS on offense. I'm heading back in to pick up another game now. Maybe some more Pacific Theater. I might take the Japanese, or maybe some Marines. Now American Marines CAN get the job done!

Later...

UPDATE: Picture links fixed. Thanks Chris!