Played BRT4 Rikusentai as the defending Japanese. I opted for a defense clustered near the center of the Japanese perimeter. The game went back and forth with some wild swings of the dice. The US FTs were toasting my men forcing me to concentrate on taking them out vs aiming at other targets. I suppressed them but then my 10-2 leader went berserk taking everybody out of a fortified building - and abandoning a 50 cal and a MMG in the process - and got torn up. The marines lurched forward, but my lone 75mm AA gun in the center of my defense performed yeoman's work holding them at bay. By turn four it was anybody's game. Then I rolled two snakes with two separate squads KIAing a couple of squads and breaking the rest. The game was in hand. I had lost a ton of buildings but the casualty count (US needs more buildings and 30 CVP) was only in the high teens. Turn five ended the game. Some serious reversals put my casualty count close to 30. A lone 7-6-8 marine finally took out my AA Gun and captured it. Somehow, my friend now had 31 CVPs. On my half of the turn I broke that squad and was prepared to retake my gun - then the OBA hit...
My friend has terrible luck with OBA. It was no different this game. Between not even getting radio contact, to drawing a red card, he hadn't gotten off one shot. Knowing I was about to retake the gun he took a gamble that required him to draw four black cards (according to the OBA Player Aid) to get his FFE to go off. It did but luckily it drifted a hex and only hit one of my pillboxes. "No problem," I thought, +5 on the 12 chart should do little damage. CH! I knew a CH vs NCA was a zero modifier so I went through all the motions of the result which killed one of my two squads in there (my 10-1 was in there as well). Having never seen a CH on a pillbox, I looked up to see if there was any effect on it. To my dismay I read that not only was it destroyed, so was everything in it! That added six more CVPs, and with 37, there was no way for me to win. Great ending!
Tense scenario. Great for the Japanese to have optional purchases to set up their defense. However, after that, it was another static Tarawa scenario for them. All the decisions come from the American side. Still, I'd recommend it for either side, especially if this is your first BRT scenario. I'd play BRT1 first, though, just to get a feel for the new terrain first. Two more left to go, a night one (ugh) and A legend is Born - the monster BRT scenario.
Edit: Thinking about it, perhaps we messed up the requiring an extra black chit thing since I'm not sure if a unit through the NCA in a pillbox is known to an observer. If we screwed up, oh well. OBA has always been a pain in the rear for us, anyway. Either way, my friend got it, and it was an epic way to end the scenario.