Somewhere in this issue is a description of a WW2 campaign I’m currently hosting over the internet between Bob Hurst and Don Bailey. Bob is the US commander, while Don heads the Japanese forces. Neither Bob nor Don know the exact content of their forces... they only know they exist, and I furnish a single parameter concerning the strength of each force, ranging from 10 on down. When I fight the battles in solo mode, it’s up to me to determine the size of the forces and augment them with an additional couple of stands according to Bob’s or Don’s directions... they may commit their airborne reserves, or move reinforcements out of their HQ, or assign an airstrike to help out. Here, too, it’s my decision as to how much to augment the opposing forces on the table-top. This article describes the US invasion of Saku Island, by the American 2nd Army. Use of the term "army" may be a wee bit over-exaggerated, since, being a fairly lazy guy, I usually set out around 10 units per side for a battle. Most of the time, I define a unit as a brigade, so that a force of 10 brigades might be said to constitute two divisions, a small corps. Saku was defended by the Japanese 3rd Army, again an imposing force. The rules I was testing for this battle were a sister set to the one described in the other campaign article in this issue, the amphibious landing on Inyo Island. In that battle, I used my 15mm figures, with 4 stands defined as a brigade. In this manner, I could display unit casualties by simply removing a stand or two. For the invasion of Saku, however, I decided to define a single stand as a brigade. Without being able to display casualties, other than by removing an entire brigade, I reverted to the use of data sheets, and recorded, for each brigade-stand, four parameters: Strength : S A number representing the combat strength of the unit. I diced for each brigade, and the result ranged from 30 down to 25 or 20. As the brigade took casualties, the S value decreased. When S reached zero, the brigade was effectively destroyed. Dispersed : d One of the results of combat could be to have a number of the men in the brigade run off, i.e., disperse, and there was a recovery phase in the sequence during which dispersed men could be persuaded to rejoin their unit. Each time a "d" result occurred, I would temporarily subtract the result from the unit’s strength S. And when the men joined up again, I’d add the result back in to the S strength. Damage : D Another combat result was slightly more serious than that of a small "d", and here, the big "D" meant "wounded" men or damaged armor. Here, too, when a "D" occurred, I’d temporarily reduce the S strength of a brigade. Again, in the sequence, during the recovery phase, there was an opportunity to remove some of the "D" results and add them back in to the S strength. But there was a danger here, for on occasion, a "D" turned into a permanent loss, and could never be recovered, producing a "K", or a permanent S loss. Kill : K These were the kills, the permanent losses to a unit. When a "K" occurred, the unit’s S strength stayed down forever. For his landing on Saku island, American commander Hurst called on some of his airborne reserves, and the total number of US brigade-stands in the battle was 13, against the Japanese 10. This 13-10 ratio, however, didn’t last for very long. First Turn On the very first turn, as the Americans came ashore, the 2nd Armored Brigade tried to force its way into the town of Suchi, located right on the beach. I had randomly "salted" the Japanese brigades throughout the field, and I checked my random table, which told me that Suchi was defended by the 11th Imperial Japanese Infantry Brigade. The defending Japanese force fired, producing a big "D" result, reducing the 2nd Armor’s S strength from 25 down to 23. Immediately, having taken casualties, the 2nd Armor took a morale test, looking to toss an 80 or less on percentage dice. Alas! The 2nd Armor tossed a 92... and it was forced to retreat a distance of 10 inches. Moving back 10 inches placed it in the water, and I had no choice but to declare that the entire single-stand brigade sank beneath the waters of the Pacific. Now the ratio was 12-10. As an umpire, I realized that I should have taken an unbiased, unprejudiced view of the situation. But being of the American persuasion, I couldn’t help but be unhappy at this first American catastrophe. I took my frustrations out on the Japanese by providing General Hurst’s troops with a couple of early-battle naval bombardments. But despite the loss of the 2nd Armored Brigade, things were looking up for the Americans. They quickly advanced inland, bypassing 2 hidden Japanese units hidden in the central woods. In effect, this took the 2 units out of the battle for some time, for they had to move out to catch up with the advancing Americans. When they finally entered combat, I found out that both were infantry brigades. On the second bound, in came the US airborne reserve, 2 stands, 2 brigades. They sat well buckled up in their gliders (the Bailey Model 103, just off the engineering line), and they managed to land safely after I tossed a couple of little paper gliders provided to me by Don Bailey some time before. But my aim, or rather, that of the glider pilots, was not as good as it could have been. Instead of landing behind enemy lines, they landed behind the American lines, and, for the most part, brought up the rear. I used a single deck of cards, 6 of them, for the sequence. The 3 cards for the Americans were: All American units move All American tank brigades move American troops recover from big "D’ and little "d" results There were three identical cards for the Japanese. This inherently produced a lurchy sequence, but it wasn’t as bad as if the deck had contained a card for each individual unit, which would have been even more lurchy. As I’ve said before, while lurchy is okay for solo play, it stinks for a multi-player game. After every card draw, after the active side performed its movement functions, a fire phase began, started by the non-active player. Each side, each full turn, i.e., after all 6 cards had been played, diced for its "Fire Tokens" (FT). There were three types of tokens, and each one permitted a certain number of units to fire. Red token : permitted 3 brigades to fire White token : permitted 2 brigades to fire Blue token : permitted 1 brigade to fire A side diced for its tokens, which were a random mix of the reds, whites and blues, and received a maximum of 4 tokens for the turn. The non-active side would play a token and have the requisite number of units fire. Then the active side got a chance to play a token. Then, back to the non-active side, and so on. In this manner, the play of tokens would alternate between the sides. Note that since there were 6 cards in the deck, and firing was permitted after the draw of each one, and a side had only 4 tokens to begin with, a side could run out of tokens before all the cards in the deck had been drawn. There was an alternate way to fire. Once a side’s red, white and blue fire tokens had been used up, it looked to its ammunition depots. I had prepared a number of "ammo supply" stands, composed of little jerry cans and wheels and girders and assorted "supply things". Each turn, the sides diced for these (they received either 1 or 2 or none), and assigned them to specific brigades. A brigade furnished with these ammo stands could get an additional firing opportunity, in fact, if lucky, it could share its ammo with a buddy brigade, providing them both with additional fire. I owe this procedure to Don Bailey, who had crafted a similar set of ammo stands for use with his own set of WW2 rules, STURM. To furnish a wee bit of pizzazz in the sequence, a unit, after taking casualties, was required to pass a morale test. If it failed, and if it had been assigned an ammo stand, it retreated, leaving the ammo stand behind... "free pickins" for any unit on either side, that could move up and claim it. The Americans lost 2 tank brigades on Saku Island. They started with four armored brigades, which after I completed dicing for their points, initially totaled around 100 S strength points. At battle’s end, their armor total was down to 31 S points. The armor on both sides took the brunt of the battle. The Japanese In contrast, the Japanese, starting with 3 tank brigades, a total of 75 points, finished up at 25 armor S points. For both firing and combat, I had created a chart similar to that displayed in the Inyo Island scenario, discussed in this issue. The chart lists, each time a unit is hit, a number of losses in terms of big "D", and little "d", and direct loss of S strength points, or "K". I must note that, to create this chart, I did not (as some authors have claimed for their own wargaming charts) research 445 WW2 battles, nor did I spend hours at any of the military archives, nor did I delve deep into the unit histories of the units engaged in World War 2. Instead, I sat down, took a piece of paper, and in 5 minutes, I knocked out the chart, listing a sufficient number of D’s and d’s and K’s to keep the game going. And the result kept me content... at least on Saku Island. Back to PW Review May 2001 Table of Contents Back to PW Review List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 Wally Simon This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com