Pacific War: a Fleet Commander Nimitz AAR

Started by BanzaiCat, November 06, 2015, 11:16:28 AM

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BanzaiCat

Turn 1 (of 6)
Jan-Feb 1942

(continued)

Battle Turn 1: Midway Island


Here is the sequence of play for each Battle Turn:



Draw Japanese Battle Plans

We're starting our first Battle Turn, so here we go with the first two draws.



Well, that could have been better. But, there's really no 'good' BP draws for Japan, when it comes to my side of things.

Damage Control stops the first hit inflicted on a Japanese Force during the Battle Turn. Doesn't matter where.

Battalion is a lot worse. They're not very strong units, but the fact that there's one on the island entrenched already...well, that doesn't make a lot of sense from a reality standpoint. From a game mechanic standpoint it does, as it's giving the Japanese yet another advantage I have to overcome. I'm glad I grabbed Artillery and Charge!



Move US Aircraft

This is yet another difficult choice. I have to move my aircraft before the Japanese do; my moves will possibly affect how the Japanese move their own carrier air units. For example, if I decide to not attack the Japanese fleet at all (yeah right), the Japanese fighters won't have any reason to hang out in their Ocean Area, and will probably swarm down to attack something else. So when I send my strike against the four Japanese carriers, I need to try to cover it with fighters.

I also have to try to cover my own carriers, my Coastal Area ships (don't want to lose that Marine division before it even offloads!), and the island itself. Fortunately I have two LBAs to help alleviate this issue.



I'm sending all of my SBD units against the Japanese carriers. Also one F4F unit and one of the Marine Air Group fighter units as well to help screen the dive bombers.



I'm sending all three of my TBD (torpedo bomber) squadrons against the transports, and including the other MAG unit to act as cover (or possibly a bomber, depending on how the Japanese units play out).

Move Japanese Aircraft

To assign them, I roll for each Japanese air 'group.' For this battle, the Japanese have four fighter groups (one from each carrier), and four bomber groups (each group from each carrier, two units each). So I'll need to roll eight times to assign Japanese aircraft.

First, I should mention that the rules are slightly vague on this subject. Japanese fighters can only move to Areas where there are Japanese or US aircraft present, so they will NOT move to an Area where there is nothing. This begs the question, then: do I place Japanese fighters first, or their bombers? If I place their fighters, and I roll a '3' or higher, they're going to go straight for my carrier group and ignore the strike coming at their carriers, but only IF I have CAP (and I do). (Only on a roll of 1 or 2 will the fighters stay in the Japanese Ocean Area.) If I move the Japanese Bombers first, they could go to the Island, or my Coastal Area, or my Ocean Area - and then, rolling for their Fighters, the Fighters might end up staying with their Bombers in one of those Areas.

After reviewing BGG and the various threads dealing with this, I'm thinking the Japanese Bombers have to move first. I have to make a call as there are ways to interpret this one way or the other...it seems to make more sense to move their Bombers first.

For the first Bomber group (from the Zuikaku), I roll a '3,' so it goes to the Island. However, there are no valid targets for the Bombers there, so it is moved up one Area to the US Coastal Area...where there are targets.



For the Akagi's bombers, I roll a '7,' moving them to the US Ocean Area. Looks like my CAP is going to get a workout...



The Shokaku's bombers go to the US Coastal Area also (I rolled a '3' again, but they move to the next higher Area as there are no targets on the island).

Finally, the Soryu's bombers move to the US Ocean Area as well, increasing their chances of getting one of my carriers.

Next, I'll move the Japanese fighters.

The Zuikaku's fighter gets a '2' so it stays in the Japanese Ocean Area.

The Akagi's fighter gets a '6' so it goes to the US Coastal Area, where it is escorting the strike there.

The Shokaku's fighter gets a '3,' so it goes to the Island, and then is moved to the US Coastal Area to help escort that strike.

Finally, the Soryu's fighter gets a '2,' so it helps defend against my strike.

All in all it is a pretty well-balanced result.

Here goes nothing.

Dogfight

In this part of the Battle Turn, I resolve combat for all aircraft units that have a Dogfight rating. This is in the upper right corner of the counter, and sometimes have a superscript number in addition.



For example, this unit (Genzan Kokutai, taken as a screenshot from the manual and not a unit fighting in this battle) has a 6 Dogfight rating, and a 3 superscript rating. This means rolling a '6' or lower equals one hit, but rolling a '3' or lower equals TWO hits. All aircraft have two sides to the counters; when one is hit, it is flipped to its 'damaged' side, and another hit eliminates it.

The blue-highlighted number at the bottom of the counter is the units Ship Attack rating (if it has one), and the brown-highlighted number is its Ground Attack rating (again, if it has one).

Here's the first Dogfight combat:



I'll roll for my aircraft first. I get a 3 and a 1 (!!!), which means both of my aircraft get TWO HITS! That's four hits total. Their fighters will be eliminated, normally. However, their Battle Plan 'Damage Control' stops the first hit on ANY Force; this means one of their A6Ms is Damaged while the other will be Destroyed. But before that happens, they get to fire too...

The first A6M gets a '5,' resulting in one hit, but the second A6M gets a '4,' resulting in two hits.

Hits are allocated to the lowest-cost aircraft. In the Japanese aircraft's case, it's moot since they're both destroyed. For my forces, though, I have one 1-cost aircraft while the rest are 2.

This means the F4F unit is destroyed (one hit on it, then it flips, still has a 1-cost, so the next hit is allocated to it, destroying it). The MAG fighter unit also suffers a hit. I'm going to use my Barrel Roll Battle Plan to keep the MAG unit intact. Since it is an LBA unit, it is more valuable; carrier air units are generic and do not have an on-map presence themselves.



I have no Fighters in the US Coastal Area, so there is no Dogfight there.

However, I have my two F4Fs defending the US Ocean Area, so they'll face off against the two D3A dive bomber units and two B5N torpedo bomber units. Neither the D3A nor the B5N have a Dogfight rating, so they can't participate.



My rolls aren't so great this time...I get a '6' and a '5.' One F4F blows it, but the other manages to bounce one of the incoming bandits. Since all the Japanese bombers are 2-cost, I can choose which one I want to damage, and of course that's going to be one of the B5Ns since they have a Ship Attack rating of 6.



That's it for Dogfighting. Next will be AAA combat.

Silent Disapproval Robot

Good stuff BC.

With the randomized nature of Japanese moves, do you ever see them forced to do something completely bizarre like move everything off to Indochina or something?

BanzaiCat

Nope. They won't go off to Indochina or do anything really terribly bizarre.

Here's why: each Campaign (1942, 1943, etc.) has its own set of Objectives. Japanese moves are dictated by the die roll, sure, but a lot of those Movement Orders are tied into whatever Objectives exist.

The Japanese will never sail west of Borneo, nor will they ever attack Australia or the West Coast. At first, I thought these last two things were rather limiting and not enjoyable - after all, if there is no threat of mainland US invasion, or occupation of Australia, what's the point, right? In reality, an invasion of the west coast would have been nearly impossible for them to accomplish; an invasion of Australia may have been more likely than one of the US, but it still would have been a major stretch for them.

In any case, this particular game revolves around said Objectives.

Another very important thing to remember is that this game only simulates one year of the conflict. It's not a campaign game of the entire Pacific War. So anything 'odd' that the random die rolls might make them do, isn't going to crash their war effort. The Japanese random die roll movements are actually a great mechanic, because you're left guessing as to what their next 'move' will be. Scouting helps alleviate that somewhat, but as you can see, not entirely. I got lucky with my move to Midway by catching four of their CVs in battle. I'm REALLY lucky that more BBs, CRUs, and/or DDs didn't go along with them, because that would have made for a bad time for me. With this set-up, I have a good chance of at least damaging some of their flattops. I'm not going to predict victory, but I feel pretty good about it.


BanzaiCat

BTW, thanks all for the kudos - glad you're all enjoying it.  O0

BanzaiCat

Turn 1 (of 6)
Jan-Feb 1942


Battle Turn 1: Midway Island
(continued)


AAA

Next, we resolve the AAA defensive fire from each Area. For the purposes of this part of the Battle Turn, you group CVs into one line and Escorts into another (Escorts are everything except CVs and subs). Escorts fire first, then CVs. Separating out Escorts and CVs is important. The number of incoming aircraft determine how many shots can be had on them. For example, from the manual:

The Japanese have 1 Aircraft Carrier and 2 Escorts in their Ocean Area. 3 US Aircraft Attack the Japanese Ocean Area. Roll a AAA Attack for the BB and DD. Then roll a AAA Attack for the CV.

Example: 1 US Aircraft Attacks the same fleet. Roll a AAA for the BB and the CV. Because there is only 1 Aircraft, only 1 Escort and 1 Aircraft Carrier get a AAA Attack.


That should explain it better than I can.

So first, I'm going to resolve the attacks against the Japanese going after my carriers.



From here, with four inbound enemy aircraft, I can only fire on them three times from each row. If only one Japanese bomber was attacking, then only one Escort and then one CV could fire.

The escorts fire poorly; both the CRU Honolulu/Nashville and DD Desron 6 fail to hit the incoming Japanese planes. However, DD Desron 2 gets a single hit. This hit has to be applied to the damaged aircraft, as the rules state that you have to destroy a damaged Japanese unit before you can damage a fresh one. So the B5N will be shot down, and since this is AAA, it doesn't get to fire back.

The carriers don't fare much better, but one does make a hit - actually, two hits. I rolled a '1' for the CV Enterprise, and it has a 42 AAA value, so that's two hits on the enemy. Another Japanese squadron is destroyed, and I get to choose again since they're all the same cost (2). I'm of course going to apply that to the B5N, by far the more serious of the incoming threats. Both B5N squadrons are destroyed, thankfully. They still have two very capable D3As coming in, though...



Next, I move to the US Coastal Area, where four D3A units are diving in on my ships...



I of course roll a '10,' '8,' and a '5,' so none of my escorts hit with AAA fire.

The Japanese Coastal Area has my incoming torpedo bombers, but none of their transports have AAA capability (neither do mine, incidentally), and without escorts, there's nothing to do here but move along to the Japanese Ocean Area and see how well they do against my incoming strike.



I roll a 7 for the BB, and a 8, 8, 6, and 9 for their carriers - not one hit, thankfully! Whew!

Next up are the bomb runs...

BanzaiCat

Turn 1 (of 6)
Jan-Feb 1942


Battle Turn 1: Midway Island
(continued)


Bomb Runs

Now we move to the part where bombers go after their targets.

I'll start with my attack on the Japanese carriers.



Seven attackers means seven die rolls. I get a 9, 6, 5, 5, 4, 3, and a 1 (not in that order, just highest roll to lowest) - three hits. Not too bad. I'm going to discard my Diving Attack Battle Plan, which gives me one extra hit when I've made one successful hit. So that's four hits. Someone gonna get suuu-uuunk...

I randomly roll, since all carriers are the same (and with a cost of [1] they get hits first...the brackets simply mean they don't actually cost 1 point to buy, but are worth 1 point when considering casualties). This comes up as the Soryu and Zuikaku...both take heavy damage, and are on fire from stem to stern. I remove them from the board as they slip beneath the waves.



Next up are my SBDs going after the Japanese transports that are slowly but surely approaching Midway.



I get a 10, 6, 4, and a 2, meaning one hit. Thing is, though, Transports are not sunk, so hits are not scored on them. Instead, each hit means one hit on an enemy unit. I need to determine which Japanese unit I hit...unfortunately it has to be one of the Battalions, as they are cost 0, whereas the Japanese 16th Infantry is a cost of 3. Battalions do have a 'reduced' size, though, so I choose one and flip it over. They're coming in fast...I'm not sure if I'll have the firepower to remove them from Midway.



Next we have the Japanese attacking my ships in the US Coastal Area. I'm going to sweat this one because of the 1st Marines...I hope they don't get hit. (I hope none of them do, but if I can't get the Marines ashore, Midway will surely fall.)



The D3A 'Val' dive bombers scream in, dropping their payloads.

The bombs fall quickly; there are many targets for them to hit...

But neither D3A unit makes a hit (rolls of 8 and 5).

Then the dreaded B5Ns swoop in at wavetop height, releasing their fish. The ship commanders, already evading wildly to avoid the D3A's bomb runs, are caught flat-footed. One B5N misses (rolled a 9), but the other one scores a hit (rolled a 6...barely hit).

All of my ships (including the Marines) are cost 2, so I have to randomly determine who gets it for the team.

The CRU San Francisco/Astoria gets the torpedoes, damaging them. I have to flip the counter now.



And now, we move to the US Ocean Area where we join the Japanese assault on my fleet, already in progress...



However, they must be the worst of the bunch, because I roll a 7 and a 10...both misses.

Next up in the Battle Turn are Torpedo attacks...the one Japanese sub in the battle is going to get its chance.

BanzaiCat

Turn 1 (of 6)
Jan-Feb 1942


Battle Turn 1: Midway Island
(continued)


Torpedoes

The one Japanese submarine unit silently approaches my fleet...



I roll a '9,' so they fail, thank goodness.

Now, it's our turn to fire on the Japanese submarine...

Depth Charges

Since there's only one enemy submarine in my Ocean Area, I can only attack with one of my Ships. Both of my DESRONs have the best Depth Charge rating - 3 - so I'll choose DESRON 6 to make the shot.

I roll a '6,' so wow, that was pretty anticlimactic. No hit.

Naval Guns

The Japanese have no ships with a Surface Attack rating in their Coastal Area, while I have two full-strength and one damaged Ship that can fire. In this part of the Battle Turn, ships in Coastal Areas can fire on either enemy ships in their opponent's Coastal Area, or at enemy forces on the Island.

I get a 9 and a 3 for my full-strength units and (thankfully!) a 2 for my damaged ship - two hits out of three ain't bad. I have to, as always, allocate them to the lowest-cost enemy units first. I'd like to apply them both to the unit on the island, but the 'Allocating Hits' rule says clearly that damaged Japanese forces must be destroyed before applying fresh hits elsewhere, and since the one Battalion that I damaged in the Bomb Run segment is a valid target, I have to destroy it first. I do that, blowing his transport to pieces, then apply the other hit to the Battalion on the island. (How did they get there, again?)



The next part of the Battle Turn is Infantry, but as there are no opposing units on the island, I cannot do anything here.

To Be Continued...

BanzaiCat

Turn 1 (of 6)
Jan-Feb 1942


Battle Turn 1: Midway Island
(continued)


This is the part of the Battle Turn that would normally be occupied by Infantry going at it, but as I said, there's only the one Japanese Battalion on the island, and it's half-strength at that. So we skip that part.

Moving on...

Infantry Advance

In this part of the Battle Turn, Infantry on transports is placed on their respective Beaches. Infantry on Beaches are moved to their Foxholes. Marines, however, get to go straight from transports to Foxholes.



Return Aircraft

The Japanese have a bit of a problem.



Heh-heh.

Since two of their carriers are gone, and each of their CVs can only carry three aircraft...well, there's nine units, so what's the math say?

It says to destroy three Japanese air units.

I have to destroy Damaged ones first, so the A6M squadron splashes down, unable to park on the two remaining carriers.

And since the A6M squadrons are 1-cost, they lose the other two they have since all the Bombers are 2-cost and therefore, this time around, are impervious to these selections. The Japanese no longer have CAP or escorts!



This isn't a problem down in my neck of the woods, since none of my flattops were hit. I'm down one F4F squadron, which kind of sucks, but considering there are no more Zeros to contend with, my remaining two F4Fs can be released to try to shoot down their bombers. And there's also the two MAG squadrons I have...so I'm doing pretty well.



Inflict Airfield Losses

Since neither side lost LBAs, this does not happen.

Advance Battle Turn Counter

I'm going to do that now...except...no, I'm not. I'm going to discard my Engaged Battle Plan, and increase the number of Battle Turns by 1. So the Battle Turn marker stays right where it is.

This might be overkill, but I'm in the mood to really wipe the floor with these guys.



And that's it.

Battle Turn 1 is over, with three more to go. The Japanese really got hammered, losing two of their precious CVs, while one of my CRUs was damaged. They lost a lot of their air power and took some losses in Infantry as well. Fortunately we are still doing well with the 1st Marines, and I still have my ground attack Battle Plans to unleash.

We'll see how things go in the next Battle Turn, which I'll do later this weekend. My computer is doing its usual freeze routine so I want to be sure I don't lose anything important by pushing my luck. Until next time.

BanzaiCat

#23
Battle Turn 2: Midway Island
(continued)


As Battle Turn 1 comes to a close, the American fleet managed to get a good whack in on the invading Japanese, not only sinking two of their carriers but also wiping out a third of their remaining aircraft as a result, to boot. The Japanese, however, have a bit of an advantage on Midway, where they've just landed reinforcements for their infiltrating Battalion. While the Japanese carriers remain my primary focus in this Battle, the island itself is going to get attention from me this turn as well.

Draw Japanese Battle Plans

It's a new Battle Turn, so the Japanese get to draw two more Battle Plans. It doesn't matter if I reduce them down to just one Battalion on the entire battle board; they still draw the same number of Battle Plans each Battle Turn.



Not good at all.

First Light means one of the Japanese carriers immediately conducts an Air Attack portion of the Battle Turn on my Ocean Area. Then the Battle Turn continues as normal.

Carrier Attack means all of their remaining bombers (which is all they have right now) are considered to roll a '10' when placing them. The Japanese admiral in charge of their Fleet apparently wants to go all-out against my fleet!

First, I need to resolve the First Light Battle Plan. I randomly determine that the Akagi's planes are the ones fueled and armed and sent off in the pre-dawn darkness. We don't even have time to put CAP up, as the raiders appear over the Fleet just as we're starting to wake up.



I do, however, get to conduct AAA attacks first. Fortunately, all three of my CVs and all three of my Escorts get to fire at the incoming raid.

The carriers roll 10, 10, and 4 (who is training my AAA guys???). The Hornet gets a hit. I'm applying it to the B5N, the biggest threat of the bunch.

The escorts roll 6, 8, and 6. They must not have had their morning coffee yet.



And then, in come their planes. The B5N squadron is damaged, but they're still focusing on our carriers, as our the dive bombers, whom all now swoop down, able to take their time without having to worry about CAP harrying them...

The B5N rolls a 5, which is a miss (it would have been a hit had it been whole!). The D3As have slightly better luck - I roll a 10 and a 4, so one of my carriers gets hit!

The thing that really sucks about this hit is, the First Light Battle Plan rule stipulates that any of my carriers that are hit, cause their aircraft to be eliminated. The rules, of course, don't let you land carrier aircraft on a sunk carrier (duh)...but they also don't allow you to land carrier aircraft on damaged carriers, either. Since the aircraft are caught on the carriers, I'm about to lose a bunch of squadrons.

I'm going to randomly determine which carrier gets damaged. Of course, if I had to choose, I'd want the Enterprise to take the hit, because they only have three (instead of four) squadrons; if the Hornet or Lexington get hit, then that's four squadrons I'll have to lose, significantly reducing my punch.

I randomly determine their fates, and unfortunately luck is NOT with me. The diving D3As center on the Lexington, putting several bombs into her flight deck and setting her afire. Damage control crews scurry among the flames and torn bodies to try to save 'Lady Lex' from certain disaster; damaged and destroyed planes that were just being armed and fueled for today's strike are pushed overboard, out of the way, causing her to be completely out of action now.



The fate of this battle now rests on the Enterprise and her reduced air compliment, and on the new Hornet.

Now, we return back to our regularly-scheduled Battle Turn, more bummed than we have a right to be.

Move US Aircraft

While the threat to my carriers is very real, the loss of Midway is another concern, so I allocate one of my SBD squadrons to help take out the Japanese troops on Midway.



Also, fairly pissed that the Lexington was taken out of action so early, the remaining SBDs and our two surviving TBDs go after the Japanese fleet with righteous fury.



I vacillated between sending the MAGs to attack the Japanese or have them help protect my carriers; I decided ultimately to have them help protect the carriers since I only have one F4F squadron now. It's not nearly as sexy a result I wanted, but I can't have my carriers getting popped so early in the game.



Move Japanese Bombers

I'm an idiot. Had I paid attention to the order of the Battle Turn I would have noticed that Japanese bombers go first, then their fighters. At least I got it right this last Battle Turn, but I could have spared you the discussion. Sorry about that.

In any case, the Japanese bombers follow the Carrier Attack Battle Plan and all come join the party here in the US Ocean Area.



No Japanese fighters move, since there aren't any! Thank goodness.

Combat - Battle Turn 2

Dogfight

The only dogfightin' going on is in the US Ocean Area.

I really need a BIG showing here to cut these jerks down to size. The thing is, though, the Japanese aircraft that conducted the First Light Battle Plan attack do NOT get to attack again. My bad, I didn't make that clear earlier. Since the rule for First Light says

After the First Light Action, proceed with the normal Turn for the other Japanese and US Aircraft.

I assume that means the other Japanese and US aircraft get their Turns, but not the ones attacking. I further assume this means the dawn strike from the Japanese moves off and doesn't hang around for round 2, since they've already expended their munitions.

Let me fix that image, then:



Looks much more even, now. The First Light raiders remain in the Ocean Area, but it would be stupid to inflict losses on them since they've already attacked. Now, let's try to bring the pain on these new attackers...

For MAG 21, which is the weakest dogfighter...I roll a 1! YES! That's two hits!

For MAG 22, I roll a 3...! HOLY CRAP! That's another TWO hits! Yesss!!!

For the F4F, I roll a 6...just barely missed. That's a shame...but four hits from three fighters? That's pretty damned good!



Their B5N squadron goes down in flames, and one of their D3A squadrons gets damaged. We've essentially whittled their attack down by half.

AAA

Now I have to deal out (hopefully) some AAA damage to these two incoming Japanese squadrons, and (hopefully) avoid it in return over the Japanese fleet.

Let's start with the Japanese raid. Since there's only two incoming attackers, only two of my CVs and two of my escorts will get to fire. I'll let the Lexington sit this one out and have the other two CVs fire. As for the escorts, it doesn't matter which two fires since their AAA value are all the same.



The Hornet rolls a 2 - two hits! The Enterprise rolls a 6 - no hits. That destroys the damaged D3A and damages the lone remaining D3A. Not bad at all!



Now, let's head over to the Japanese fleet, where my attacking planes are looking for a little payback...but have to try to run the gauntlet of Japanese AAA fire.

The BB Hiei/Kirishima and CV Shokaku both miss miserably (rolled a 8 and 6), but the CV Akagi scores super accurate hits, rolling a 1...meaning it gets two hits in. These have to go against one of my TBDs since they have a cost 1 as opposed to the SBDs at cost 2. So one of them goes down in flames...



Damn.

Aircraft attacking the island do not suffer AAA, so that's it for this turn.

Bomb Runs

First, I'm going to resolve my attack on the Japanese fleet.

My lone TBD rolls a 3, scoring a hit on one of their carriers and avenging their brethren that were shot down. Unfortunately the SBDs are terrible, rolling a 10, 7, and another 7. All of their bombs miss the target. I randomly determine that the Akagi takes the torpedo hit, damaging it.



Next I move to the US Ocean Area, to see if the gimped D3A does any damage. Fortunately I roll a 7, meaning a big miss for them.



And now, the island.



My lone SBD lines up, and rolls a 2, scoring a hit! I have to apply it to the Battalion that's in the Japanese Foxholes area, as it is cost 0, the lowest cost unit. It goes away and suddenly the Marines have nobody to play with.



Torpedoes

The Japanese sub rolls a 6, again missing my Fleet.



Depth Charges

Just when I don't expect anything, and have that very thought reinforced with a roll of 9 for my CV Depth Charge attack (they can only hit on a 1, so that's kind of astronomical anyway), I roll a 2 for DESRON 2, which scores a hit on that Japanese sub!



Naval Guns

The only thing to do with this portion of the Combat part of the Battle Turn is to roll for my ships in the US Coastal Area, targeting the Japanese infantry on their beaches.



Unfortunately, I roll a 7, 6, and 5 - all misses. Kind of terrible considering how small Midway is...

Infantry

We skipped over this part of the Battle Turn last time because there were no Infantry to attack.

The way I interpret this rule is, infantry in Foxhole areas can attack either enemy infantry that's already ashore, or the enemy airfield. As the Japanese do not have an airfield here at Midway, and 'ashore' means either the beach or foxhole area, the US Marines can attack the Japanese.



I roll a 3, scoring a hit!

I'm also going to discard my Artillery Battle Plan, which causes one hit against enemy Infantry - that's two hits. And to add insult to injury (actually, MORE injury to injury), I'm discarding my Charge Battle Plan to conduct one more Infantry attack.

The Japanese are on the ropes - a full-on ballsy attack by the Marines before the Japanese 16th Infantry and its support formations can get entrenched hammers them for huge losses, and the killing blow comes when I roll a 1 for the Charge Battle Plan, scoring three hits against the Japanese. Their hopes of gaining a foothold on Midway are ruined!



There is no Infantry Advance phase this time, as there is no Infantry left that can advance. Heh-heh.

I do return aircraft, though. The Japanese aircraft return to find the Akagi aflame and unable to land on her; the Shokaku can take on up to three squadrons, but the fourth is going to have to ditch. I randomly roll and determine that the damaged B5N torpedo bomber squadron is the lucky winner, going into the drink, while the damaged D3A and two whole D3As land on the Shokaku.



Meanwhile my own air squadrons have been fairly decimated. The MAG squadrons are still whole, but my carrier air has been cut down to size during these last two Battle Turns.



I've advanced the Battle Turn counter to the '2' space, so we have two more Battle Turns to resolve.

BanzaiCat

Just a heads up...it'll probably be a while, most likely this weekend, before I will have time to play some more.

Thomasew


Hi BC,


Thanks so much for doing this.  :)

I bought the Vassal Module (don't have the boardgame) a while ago, but, as yet, .. have not had the time to get thru the Rules etc..  :(

.. so, your AAR is gonna be a great reference when I get some time to play the game.  :)

Much appreciated, .. and look forward to the continuation .. and conclusion .. :)

Cheers
Tom
He Who Will Not Risk Cannot Win

BanzaiCat

#26
Thomasew, you're quite welcome. I do like this game a lot.  O0

To everyone, I should mention a couple of things about this game.

One, I somewhat implied early on that the game is only made up of four Campaigns, each corresponding to a year of the war. While this is true, it's not the whole truth - you can extend your Campaign at the end of a Campaign year, as long as you don't screw up too badly and get transferred to a weather station in Thule or become latrine officer in Pensacola. I'm not sure if I'm going to extend the game out beyond the end of the year - and that's a big IF when it comes to if I'm still in the game at that point. I might leave it up to you all to see if you want it to continue at that point - so let's worry about that bridge when we bomb it.

Another thing that can end the game really fast, is the Japanese attacking Hawaii. If that happens, you have ONE (count 'em, ONE) turn to turn back the Japanese onslaught. If you fail, the game ends immediately. While this doesn't necessarily reflect the U.S. losing the war, it does reflect that as a commander, you failed, and therefore have been pulled to one of those choice aforementioned assignments.

One of the 'workarounds' for this is to send a single ship, infantry, or LBA to an Area that has an Objective further west of Hawaii, which will incur Japanese attention. For the game system, that works, but for reality, not so much. In this 1942 Campaign, I don't have a lot to work with anyway so sending my forces off to certain doom isn't really something I want to do unless I'm desperate. And we haven't gotten to that point yet.

Yet, anyway.

I've also been thinking of truncating this Battle for the purposes of quickness, but I think one thing you guys might actually be enjoying about this IS the detail I'm putting into it. So if anyone is getting bored with the way I'm doing it, please say something.

Alright, enough blather. Let's continue the Battle of Midway.

Battle Turn 3: Midway Island
(continued)


Draw Japanese Battle Plans



These draws weren't nearly as bad as during the last Battle Turn. That First Light BP can be crippling...and so too can the dreaded No Contact. I'll talk about that latter one more when/if I draw it for the Japanese.

Duration will adjust the number of Battle Turns either up or down, depending on the number of Forces the Japanese have at the end of this current Battle Turn. If the Japanese have fewer Forces than me (counting carrier-based aircraft and Infanty on transports...oh wait, they have no infantry...ha-ha...), then the number of Battle Turns will be decreased by 1. Since there's only one left at the end of this Battle Turn, this will probably be it for the Battle of Midway. I need to try to mess them up good by destroying their three Ships and one Sub in one Battle Turn. Not an easy prospect.

The Artillery BP is a waste as it doesn't apply, thanks to the 1st Marine Division during the last Battle Turn.

Move US Aircraft

First, I'm putting a couple of fighters over my carriers. Wouldn't be prudent to get another hit on my carriers at this stage of the battle, now would it?



The rest of them are going after the remnants of the Japanese fleet.



Move Japanese Bombers

I rolled a 7 and two 10s, so once again, they're going all out for my carrier force.



And as there are no Japanese fighters to move (heh-heh), we'll skip that part.

Dogfight

(To speed things up, I'm going to refrain from using the icons for the Combat portions of the Battle Turns. You guys get the idea anyway.)

The only Area with aircraft from both sides happens to be right over my carriers. Let's see how my CAP does.



An 8 and a 4. One hit. Not good, we needed more, and now I wish I had kept the other MAG unit over my carriers. You take risks in this game.

I have to apply it to the damaged D3A squadron, so it is destroyed, leaving two more D3A squadrons.

AAA

So two full-strength Japanese dive bomber squadrons are headed for my precious carriers. No biggie.

Only two of my CVs and two escorts can fire, though, since there's only two enemies headed in.

Since the Lexington is damaged, that makes it easy as I have two full strength carriers left, so guess who fires? The Hornet rolls a 7, and the Enterprise rolls a 2. The "Big E" scores two hits while the Hornet scores none. I allocate both to one D3A as it doesn't matter which one gets hit since they cost the same (2), and once one is damaged it has to be destroyed. So they're down one D3A, but the other one is coming in fast...



Bomb Runs
I'll continue with the Japanese attack before I see how my forces do with the Japanese fleet.

Unfortunately I roll a 3, which is a hit. The D3A dives down onto my carriers (dammit, I KNEW I should have kept that MAG here...then again it may very well have missed in the Dogfight step too, so who knows), drops its bombs, and...

...I get to choose which CV to apply the hit to, which sucks. I apply it to the Hornet. The Japanese bombers loose their loads and hole up the flight deck but good, leaving her useless for flight operations.



That's two of my carriers out of action for...well I don't know for how long, I can complete repairs at the beginning of a Turn, and apparently this can happen anywhere, so as these carriers are returning to port the next turn, I can probably complete repairs on them. We'll have to see, but right now this is looking expensive, Supply Point-wise.

Alright...I'm ready to sink some Japanese flattops...



I have two squadrons with a 3 or less to hit and four squadrons with a 4 or less to hit. I'll start with the lower 3s and go from there...

My lone TBD squadron needs a 3 or less and rolls...6. American fish are terrible, and even if we did score a hit, it was a dud.

My MAG 22 (Marine Air Group 22) dives in and rolls...4. A bare miss. It manages to get the Japanese ships wet but that's about it.

Now, for the SBD squadrons, which all need a 4 or less to hit.

First SBD rolls...3

Second SBD rolls...3

Third SBD rolls...6

Fourth and final SBD rolls...10

Two more hits on the Japanese fleet. Could have been better...could have been worse. But it REALLY could have been better.

One hit sinks the Akagi, while the second damages the Shokaku. The BB Hiei/Kirishima remains unscathed.



Torpedoes

The lone Japanese sub (damaged to boot) rolls a 6, so it misses, thankfully.



Depth Charges

Only one of my Ships can attack the Japanese sub, so I roll for one of my DESRON units...and get a 6, so it's a total miss. How they're not finding this junker of a sub is beyond me...it must sound like cymbals and wrenches on snare drums down there.

Naval Guns
It's really a shame my ships in the Coastal Area can't move to the Japanese Ocean Area and engage them. The Japanese BB would be dangerous but I'd have enough guns to give myself a chance.

It's all moot; there's no fire during this step of the Battle Turn.

Infantry
Nothing to do here either, move along...

In fact that's about it for this Battle Turn. I return the Japanese aircraft to its fleet, but without a carrier to land on, it splashes. The Japanese carrier air force has been wiped out for this battle.

My two MAG LBA units return to the Midway airfield. As for my carrier aircraft, it doesn't really matter. I have six aircraft coming home to land on one carrier (the Enterprise), as the other two damaged ones cannot take them. I splash two of my SBD squadrons and keep one F4F, two SBDs, and one TBD.



I advance the Battle Turn counter, and as I said at the start of this Battle Turn, I have more Forces than the Japanese, so the Battle is reduced by one BT. This concludes the Battle.

We've managed to gut the Japanese forces attacking Midway, and have held on to the island, but with Japanese and US forces in the same Area this might make it a magnet for trouble in the future.



I sank two of their carriers and damaged two, in exchange for two damaged ones on my side. That might seem like a good trade-off, but it's not; they have tons more CVs where that came from, whereas I do not. At least, not at the moment.

There's a couple more battles to prosecute on the main map, but I'll probably resolve those offline and report on them in the next post.

Thanks for reading!

BanzaiCat

The holidays hammered me time-wise, but I fully intend to get back to this game; I haven't abandoned it and just wanted anyone still interested in following this that I'll get back to it as soon as I can.

BanzaiCat

Okay, finally back to it after a long hiatus. Sorry for the delays; hope everyone is still interested in following this.

Let's see where we left off: the Battle of Midway was something of a draw. I could argue it was a U.S. victory, but my two damaged carriers are now out of action for a while, while the Japanese still have plenty of CV/CVE/CVL strength to draw from. Long term, it's a good victory for me; short term, not so much.

There were a couple of other battles to look at, I think. I'm going to start with Borneo, but I'm not going to bore you with all the details of this massive Japanese attack against a lone Allied battalion.



The Battle Board looks a little scary, with my one Battalion versus two Japanese Battalions (though one is on Transports at the moment), as well as a CVE and a BB.



The Japanese CVEs carry only one Air Wing, a D3A 'Val' dive-bomber squadron. Extra bad news for the troops ashore.

It wasn't much of a fight. The D3A managed to hit my Battalion, and while their BB group missed with their shelling (rolling a 7 when they needed a 6 or lower), one of their Battalions rolled a 1, ending our presence on Borneo.

New Guinea is in an even worse situation. There's only two RAAF groups there, while the Japanese have seven groups. Not to mention four ships, one major land formation, and several more on transports out on the ocean.



However, I managed to destroy one of their Zero groups and damage a second Zero group. We lost one of our RAAF groups, though. One more is still there, hanging on. I think we only managed to maintain our position here because the Battle was only two Battle Turns long, and there were some bad die rolls all around (the Japanese only had one hit in the first round, but I played the 'Barrel Roll' Battle Plan, which stopped the hit).

Japanese Reinforce
Now that all the battles are finally done, the Japanese get to reinforce (because, y'know, they NEED to do that). Since they have two Resupply markers, I have to add +2 to my die roll on their New Japanese Forces table.



I roll a 3, so with +2, that's a 5, which is in the '3-5' range...so the Resupply bonus didn't do anything (thank goodness). Still, the Japanese get one Ship, one Infantry, and one Land-Based Air (LBA) to add to their already-huge forces.

(You also have to subtract one from the die roll for every damaged Japanese force on the map - I forgot that until just now. This would mean a -3 to the die roll result, so the Japanese actually do not get an LBA. Please ignore that in the below screenshot - I removed it from Japan after realizing this and taking the screenshot.)

Randomly selecting Japanese forces, I get to add the CVE Chuyo and the 20th Infantry to Japan.



Japanese Repair
The CV Shokaku and SS Sub Gp 1 are both returned to the Japanese Reinforcement box, where they are returned to the force stack for their type (e.g. ship, LBA, etc.). When they are next drawn, they return to the map at full strength. Hopefully we won't see the Shokaku again in this particular Campaign Year.



The rules say to add it to the bottom of the stack, but since VASSAL is easy to make mistakes in if you click the wrong thing, I'm just going to make separate stacks, so when the one full-strength stack is depleted, I'll flip the damaged ones over and move them as needed to fulfill the rules' requirements.

US Return to Port
Now comes a difficult part of the turn...I have to return all Allied ships to port. Any Ship groups that are not in the Hawaiian Islands are sent to the Hawaiian Island Port Boxes. Since this is the 1942 Campaign Game, they're all returned to the 1942 to 1945 box. Additionally, all ships already in the 1942 to 1945 box are moved to the Hawaiian Islands, so I'll at least have a nice fat stack of ships to do something with this next turn...hopefully!

I get to add two Sub groups (SS Sub Groups 2 and 4), added to one other Sub group (SS Sub Group 1) already present, giving me some submarine options the next turn.

DD Desron 4 and 12 are also added to my forces. This will help with screening.

Four CRUs are added, too - Phoenix/Boise, Portland/Indianapolis, Pensacola/Salt Lake City, and St. Louis/Helena. These are added to the CRU already present (Chester/Louisville).

The best of the lot, though, are two CVs - the Saratoga and Yorktown. Thank goodness, as I have no carriers now.



US Supply Check
I have to trace supply lines in this step, and fortunately nobody is surrounded. The only one close to being surrounded is my RAAF unit on New Guinea, but they can trace supply through Australia.

End of Turn
Fortunately, we did not lose any Objectives, so we're still on the high end of the Historical result (which is 5-6 Objectives). Who knows what the next turn will hold, but it feels like the Japanese are a volcano and I'm in a bad B-movie trying to stem the tide with concrete dividers that are just being overwhelmed. Here's hoping for a major victory in the next turn...

Let me know if you guys want me to keep going with this. I'd be glad to do so if you're still following it. I do love this game; I just haven't had a lot of time in the last month or so to do it, but hopefully I'll now be able to provide updates regularly.

bbmike

Perfect timing! I was actually reading through the manual this morning. I think I will start a game tonight. Vassal module, of course. I really think I should make a New Year's resolution to play at least one physical, dice on the table wargame this year, though.
"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
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"You know, just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets."
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"Before Man goes to the stars he should learn how to live on Earth."
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