Long Campaign - Japanese

[valo2000]

"Nosing forward out of the tree line, the remaining three tanks were greeted by two loud cracks as two more fell to a concealed 37mm ATG sold to the Chinese by mercenary hakugin devils"

Thoose AT's in the back somehow take the fun of "exploiting breakthroughs with your mobile forces" somehow there is always an AT gun somewhere. Cavalry might actualy be a better unit to use after breakthrough???

[PanzerBob]

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AT Guns (and anything else small and AT capable), ahh the Bain of Tankmen the world over. If you even slightly suspect their presence, then suppress the freakin' crap out of the area with anything you have. I've been known to keep a running barrage of Lt Arty moving forward with my Panzers if the objective is important enough. (Crude active armour, if you will.)

[MajorDisaster]

Agreed. AT guns lurking in the rear.. ouch. Bunched up groups of Flak guns seem to be the Russians favourite and will mince recon/m'cycle units trying to rampage around. Does the AI do that with other nationalities too ?? The trouble they sometimes deploy in weird places so they can be tricky to detect/predict until it's several kebab'd armoured cars too late.

[MajorDisaster]

Brilliant AAR's - Anabaki-san, what a dude! :-) Hmmm, those Chinese hordes sound scary, (and I thought the Russian infantry waves were tough), but I think you have a good point about the map size, even at 80x80 (all relative to your force value of course). I havent tried a Far East campaign, tho Im now tempted, I will have to give it a go and see if I get creamed (highly likely). Great Reading :-)

[PatG]

valo2000 said:
"Nosing forward out of the tree line, the remaining three tanks were greeted by two loud cracks as two more fell to a concealed 37mm ATG sold to the Chinese by mercenary hakugin devils"

Thoose AT's in the back somehow take the fun of "exploiting breakthroughs with your mobile forces" somehow there is always an AT gun somewhere. Cavalry might actualy be a better unit to use after breakthrough???

Cav might be a plan. I am thinking about adding a cav or mounted infantry group to the type 92s.

[PatG]

PanzerBob said:
<snip>
I've been known to keep a running barrage of Lt Arty moving forward with my Panzers if the objective is important enough. (Crude active armour, if you will.)

A good idea but then what do you use on the advancing Chinese hordes?

[MajorDisaster]

Just an idea, and you probably tried something like it already so excuse me if this is old hat, but what happens if you drop smoke on them so they can't all return op fire at you? - ideally so you only "see" the first wave. Throw in a bit of arty as well to keep the rear waves pinned down. That way your guys should get surpressed less and be more effective shooting back. Maybe I'm under estimating the sheer quantity youre talking about.

[PatG]

MajorDisaster said:
... but what happens if you drop smoke on them so they can't all return op fire at you? - ideally so you only "see" the first wave. Throw in a bit of arty as well to keep the rear waves pinned down. ...

A valid observation. My tendancy has been to use my limited arty to pummel the hordes directly - this has worked well in the offense but my use of smoke in the defense could be improved. Food for thought - thanks.

[PatG]

Since this is as much a chronicle of how I play the game as what happened in each battle, I thought I would share a few thoughts I had this morning while switching my Support squad GLs to type 89 mortar units.

Many years ago (like 30), I read an Airfix book on ancients tabletop wargaming. In it, the author said that you need to learn how to use the units you have, not run around buying whatever beat you in the last game. Sadly that is what I have been doing in this campaign. I get hit with artillery - - I buy counter battery rather than learn to avoid the artillery, my mortars get over-run - so I buy a infantry platoon to protect them rather than learn how to move them and so forth.

What began as a rifle company with a few supporting arms has mutated into a monster. I now have more points and more units outside of the core rifle company I began with. This in part has been the cause of my failures in the defense because while I have good support, the poor gunjin holding the line are spread very thin indeed. What should have been a light infantry force as become very heavy indeed.

So, my plan is to strip back to a rifle company with 2 mortars, 2 IGs, 2 HMGs supported by a tank platoon. Since I'm reluctant to lose Anabaki, the recce tanks will stay too along with the 37mm popguns.

I will say that if I had to buy and paint each one of these support troops, I would have figured this out a long time ago . But - Hats off to the icon makers anyway .

[PatG]

Battle 8 was yet another fiasco with the sole highlight being Anabuki-sans promotion and run through the enemy rear chewing up artillery. I inflicted 3-1 casualties but again my main force evaporated under the Chinese onslaught. I was particularly ticked off when one of my 89B's with an elite crew was nearly taken out by a Chi-com 89B! Mao's boys nmust have stole it right off the boat the paint was so fresh. The traitorous tank was taken out but my brave tankers were later immobilized and fell beneath the waves of infantry.

After this latest defeat, Chu-sa Gyuba was pulled back to battle school to help develop tactics to counter the Chinese wave attacks. He was given a platoon supported by an HMG and a mortar section. Using careful map recce, Gyuba set out a number of lines of resistance backed by terrain suitable to local withdrawals. The scout section was tasked with avoiding contact at all costs to act as a stay behind force. The plan was to allow the Chinese force to hit the static Japanese line, inflict casualties at short range then withdraw through cover to the next line. The mortar team was to provide pinning fire as required In execution this process worked remarkably well but required a lot of concentration to get it right. In several cases, the gunjin withdrew quickly enough to draw the Chinese into their own artillery. The Japanese line was pushed back as expected but the Chinese suffered from the many short fire fights. With the gunjin refusing to hold ground, the Chinese could not bring their massed rifles to bear. A couple of Chinese tanks were taken out by massed close assaults. The mortar section was deployed along the map center line and unfortunately was over run.

With the gunjin approaching the rear map edge, the recce section went into action tagging a couple of VHs behind the Chinese line. This proved more difficult than expected since the recce sectionwas out of contact and had to be rallied to get and keep it moving. The recce section too fell afoul of the Chinese superior numbers and was destroyed but still caused the Nationalist troops to pull back to address the threat in the rear. This sacrifice allowed the Japanese platoon to advance, destryoing the Chinese forces piecemeal and recapturing all the VHs for a decisive victory.

An effective set of tactics at least at the platoon levle this was a nerve wracking fight all the way through. I expect that Gyuba will spend some more time working out platoon tactics before returning to command his company in China.