boylermaker
Senior Member
[Cross-posted from Boardgamegeek]
My brother and I got together over the holidays and knocked out some of the Bougainville series from the Dispatches from the Bunker.
We played:
The Trail to Hell(zapoppin Ridge), November 1943
The Trail to Hell Again, November 1943
Block on the Trail to Hell, November 1943
These were almost our first PTO scenarios, so neither of us had much idea of what to do. All three feature Marines vs Japanese fighting over the light jungles of board 37.
The Trail to Hell(zapoppin Ridge) and The Trail to Hell Again are nearly identical scenarios, with the same VC and everything, just that The Trail to Hell Again is a bit scaled down in terms of OB and turn length.
Both feature a meeting engagement in which the winner is the side with more CVP + EVP on the far half (from their perspective) of the map. The marines have an advantage here, because they are likely to win the race to the middle of the board, and even if they don’t, their approach is covered jungle the whole way, while the Japanese have to cross open ground. The marines also have the advantage of infinite firepower, and that the Japanese can’t benefit from their usual HIP.
I’m not really sure what the Japanese are supposed to do here. My strategy was to use my many little mortars to cover the marines in smoke and WP, then deliver my DCs via DC-hero to any non-smoked marines, then banzai charge everybody else across the open ground into the victory area. This didn’t work in The Trail to Hell(zapoppin Ridge), possibly relating to the three boxcars rolled by banzaiing units, and possibly relating to a MF screwup that meant I entered some enemy hexes in the APh rather than the MPh, which turned out to be the kiss of death for bad-ambush-roll reasons. The same strategy also didn’t work in The Trail to Hell Again because the reduced OB takes away your DCs and little mortars, so it wasn’t clear to me what the Japanese player is supposed to do here (and ROAR suggests that it’s not so clear to anybody else, either, with the marines holding a 10:4 advantage).
Anybody who has pro tips to offer on how the Japanese should go about attacking marines, please chime in.
Block on the Trail to Hell seemed like a more ‘normal’ scenario, in that the marines have overwhelming superiority of force, and the question is whether the marines are so overwhelming that they can prevent the Japanese from using their ticky-tack BS to cheese out the VC at the last moment. I had done some reading about how to handle these situations, and used the old classics of “set up tunnels enemy-ward of your pillbox to get in their rear”, “force them to advance into CC in bamboo”, “put HIP units in places where they can advance into victory areas on the last turn and/or onto CX’ed units”. In the end, it worked for the Japanese, but I can’t say that I found it very fun.
My first significant taste of the Japanese suggests that while they are interesting, they are also very dicey—i.e., the Japanese strategy against marines appears to be “force the marines to advance into CC with you”. If you can pull off the ambush, you then kill them on a 6-7-8 or so, but are near-automatically destroyed if you miss. If you don’t pull off the ambush, you are in for a bad time too, although if you can keep concealment and survive until your turn, things might swing your way when HtH begins.
I really felt that all three games came down to maybe 3-4 close combats where I needed a 6-8: in the scenario where I got them, I won; in the scenarios where I didn’t, I lost. Maybe this is just my inexperience talking, but ETO scenarios seem like they aren’t dominated by a small handful of rolls they way these ones were. At least not in the infantry world: maybe it would make sense to say that infantry combat in the PTO feels like armored combat in the ETO.
My brother and I got together over the holidays and knocked out some of the Bougainville series from the Dispatches from the Bunker.
We played:
The Trail to Hell(zapoppin Ridge), November 1943
The Trail to Hell Again, November 1943
Block on the Trail to Hell, November 1943
These were almost our first PTO scenarios, so neither of us had much idea of what to do. All three feature Marines vs Japanese fighting over the light jungles of board 37.
The Trail to Hell(zapoppin Ridge) and The Trail to Hell Again are nearly identical scenarios, with the same VC and everything, just that The Trail to Hell Again is a bit scaled down in terms of OB and turn length.
Both feature a meeting engagement in which the winner is the side with more CVP + EVP on the far half (from their perspective) of the map. The marines have an advantage here, because they are likely to win the race to the middle of the board, and even if they don’t, their approach is covered jungle the whole way, while the Japanese have to cross open ground. The marines also have the advantage of infinite firepower, and that the Japanese can’t benefit from their usual HIP.
I’m not really sure what the Japanese are supposed to do here. My strategy was to use my many little mortars to cover the marines in smoke and WP, then deliver my DCs via DC-hero to any non-smoked marines, then banzai charge everybody else across the open ground into the victory area. This didn’t work in The Trail to Hell(zapoppin Ridge), possibly relating to the three boxcars rolled by banzaiing units, and possibly relating to a MF screwup that meant I entered some enemy hexes in the APh rather than the MPh, which turned out to be the kiss of death for bad-ambush-roll reasons. The same strategy also didn’t work in The Trail to Hell Again because the reduced OB takes away your DCs and little mortars, so it wasn’t clear to me what the Japanese player is supposed to do here (and ROAR suggests that it’s not so clear to anybody else, either, with the marines holding a 10:4 advantage).
Anybody who has pro tips to offer on how the Japanese should go about attacking marines, please chime in.
Block on the Trail to Hell seemed like a more ‘normal’ scenario, in that the marines have overwhelming superiority of force, and the question is whether the marines are so overwhelming that they can prevent the Japanese from using their ticky-tack BS to cheese out the VC at the last moment. I had done some reading about how to handle these situations, and used the old classics of “set up tunnels enemy-ward of your pillbox to get in their rear”, “force them to advance into CC in bamboo”, “put HIP units in places where they can advance into victory areas on the last turn and/or onto CX’ed units”. In the end, it worked for the Japanese, but I can’t say that I found it very fun.
My first significant taste of the Japanese suggests that while they are interesting, they are also very dicey—i.e., the Japanese strategy against marines appears to be “force the marines to advance into CC with you”. If you can pull off the ambush, you then kill them on a 6-7-8 or so, but are near-automatically destroyed if you miss. If you don’t pull off the ambush, you are in for a bad time too, although if you can keep concealment and survive until your turn, things might swing your way when HtH begins.
I really felt that all three games came down to maybe 3-4 close combats where I needed a 6-8: in the scenario where I got them, I won; in the scenarios where I didn’t, I lost. Maybe this is just my inexperience talking, but ETO scenarios seem like they aren’t dominated by a small handful of rolls they way these ones were. At least not in the infantry world: maybe it would make sense to say that infantry combat in the PTO feels like armored combat in the ETO.
