Things were already pretty grim for the Japanese by this point on Turn 3.Every so often you just have an off day and turn in an especially awful performance. You're not really an idiot -- or so you tell yourself.
Played the offciial Axis & Allies Miniatures scenario DI-1, Hell Furnaces of Sumatra, set in Palambang, Sumatra on Feb. 14, 1942. My redoubtable opponent was Game Store Tony.
Can't say I had a good plan, the dice were not in the mood to save me from having a bad plan and Tony's not the sort of player who's going to blunder and have a really bad plan himself to salvage your bad plan.
Unlike many of the AAM sceanrios, there's no need to revise the OB in any way to account for the later sets. AAM never got around to the Dutch, so the British proxies will have to remain and the Japanese troops are all basic units.
The scenario opens with a Dutch force of two machine gun teams and three rifle squads defending a 5-hex refinery with an engineer squad busy trying to set demo charges.
The Japanese start with one machine gun team, a mortar team, two Imperial Sergeant leaders and seven squads of SNLF paratroopers. One leader and two squads can start on the same map as the refinery defenders while the rest of the force starts on an adjacent map.
On the fourth turn a couple of squads of jeep-mounted reinforcements arrive for the Dutch from the North.
Well, my thoughts were to rush the defenders with about half the SNLF force, supported by the mortar and machine gun teams while a few squads tried to bushwack the reinforcements. Did I mention I had a bad plan?
Well, the plan started to unravel right from the first as I proceeded to lose the initiative and and Dutch began mowing down nearby paratroopers, including the ill-deployed mortar squad. before long the Japanese were on the ropes and were unable to even successfully ambush the reinforcements. Japanese fire was largely ineffective and the only Dutch casualties were one squad that unwisely didn't dismount from its Jeep and were killed when their trasnpoort was destroyed by the Japanese machine gun. That MG team was also the sole survivor of the Japanese force when the game ended on Turn 7 (of 8 possible). The industrious engineers were able to set demo charges for the entire refinery, although they porbably could have saved themeslves the trouble because the refinery was in little danger.
All-in-all a miserable little bit of generalship by your truly. Hopefully I'll recover and make the next fight a bit more competitive!
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