Scenario 400: Tarawa Nov 20, 1943

[wulfir]

Turn 70

All resitance has ended.
Jap garrison destroyed.

Turn 89

Game ends
Score USMC - 17192
Score Japan - 1866

Losses
USMC - 878 casualties, 5 Amtracks, two landing craft, several aircraft damaged and 1 recon plane shot down, 1 sherman tank knocked out and three imobilised.

Japanese - 3497 casualties (every man, bunker, gun etc destroyed).




Some thoughts from a designers perspective:

This scenario has a very good historical feel to it.
The naming of units, both American and Japanese, provide an excellent atmoshpere. It is evident a lot of time was spent on reserach and editing - not only is amphibous assault scenarios trickier than most others to get right but here pretty much every USMC ground unit has been edited to allow them to "swim" across the reef. Nice!

The scenario itself plays out in a realistic manner although it leaves great freedom to the player to find his own solution because of the size and length of the scenario.

The battle itself is a bit of a slugfest, in many cases there is no option but to conduct frontal assaults and attacking adjecent hexes - that can cause a lot of hurt - but the US has enough forces to trade punches and still win.

Towards the end it gets a bit difficult to get an overview of things when you have loads of units stacked in the same hex as a blown up bunker etc. Not much that can be done about that though.

Finally, I especially like the way the Niminoa freighter is portrayed in the scenario.