Oh how I hate the Aleutians

[Mobhack]

Admittedly, the Aleutians were a very minor side show and also any USA operations in the pacific were also side shows to the main Marine campaign happening in Guadalcanal.

And both sets of terrain are really nasty, especially for somewhat green troops. They also penalise anyone who wanted an armoured or vehicle based core, in other words a typical US Army organisation aimed at Europe eventually.

So after a quick try of the nasty Aleutian terrain, I've decided to advance the start clock for the USA WW2 Long Campaign to 11/42.

Thus you get to choose European terrain or Pacific. And the 11/42 European battles are a minor scuffle with the Vichy French. First battle therefore is an opposed beach landing against them. Or advance the start one month and meet the Germans with your new boys - your choice.

Admittedly any armoured core user could have advanced to 11/42 anyway but that seems beyond the grasp of many newbies, and also I found a bug in the code regarding the end of 1942 opponents and battle locations in Europe (now fixed of course).

The early 42 US Army batlocs against the Japanese (Aleutian, South Pacific etc) are now only of use in one-off battle generator games - for those of a masochistic bent !.

The Japanese LC player may well meet the US Army there - but anyone opting for Japan in the LC has already opted for an infantry-heavy slog.

Andy

[Firestorm]

So I decided to look into this a bit. I'm playing the the first battle of the US long campaign, Aleutian Islands, and it ain't been too bad so far. I may be getting lucky though; they're sending hordes of those little things they call tanks at me, which must mean fewer points for infantry, and I haven't seen any enemy airplanes despite buying up some pretty significant anti-air assets (eight .50 Cal AAMGs, two 40mm AAs, one .30 Cal AAMGs).

Apart from those. My core is a force of two "Co Team 42" companies, one "Co Team 42 (2)" company, one "Bn Wpns Co 30", four snipers, an engineer platoon, a patrol of two scout teems. I generally picked the cheapest/worst units available (M6 Fargo tank destroyers) and I chopped out their off-map artillery batteries in favour of on-map M1897 field guns.

For support, I took a spotter plane and four P-40 Warhawks, two T-16 light tanks, five halftracks, a "Cav team 42" (motor recce), a Dsmtd Cav Pl+ (horse cavalry) and a Cav Transport team (so a short company of semi-motorized cavalry). That many horses in Alaska is probably unrealistic (mules somewhat less so), but they make excellent transport in that kind of terrain and are nice to have when the MG teams start falling behind. Also good for typical cavalry stuff: following those little creeks and ravines and sneaking a force of dismounts into the back with the artillery park.

The Aleutian Island Campaign really was pretty hellish: 5,537 casualties out of 144,000 participants. Over three hundred died at Kiska and they didn't even fight anyone. Attu had the worst casualty ratio of any US battle except Iwo Jima if you include the weather-related ones. So in that regard, it seems the biggest problem might be that the game's being too realistic.