EDSON’S RIDGE CG
12 NIGHT
Legion playing Japanese
Fellow ASL CG fanatics… it is with the greatest pleasure that I start to write this AAR of the Edson’s Ridge CG, to be played by myself against my long-time friend and ASL adversary JP. Ever since receiving it as a Xmas gift from my brother I have been hungering to play it… and now the time has come!
Initial Thoughts
The map is 80% jungle, so very PTO in its feel, with the only open spaces being on and around the vital ridge from which this CG gets its name. The Japanese must try to take and hold the ridges, this is to allow for a base for future attacks on the US landing zones and Henderson’s Field airbase, they also gain VP for exiting units off-map in the direction of Henderson’s Field.
The US are dug-in along and around the ridges, they must obviously stop the Japanese and thus thwart the future IJA attack.
All-in-all it looks like a very messy bunfight both in the midst of the mostly light jungle, and on the windswept level 4 hill tops.
OOB
Received at CG start;
4x 447, LMG, Lt MTR, 9-0
4x 447, LMG, 9-0
4x 447, LMG, 8-0
4x 447, LMG
4x 447, LMG
4x 447, LMG
9-1
70mm OBA: Pre-reg, Off-board Observer
2x MMG, HMG, 3x 228
I bought:
4x 448, 3x DC, FT, 10-0
70mm OBA
All my units were non-depleted
I was pretty damned lucky to get the FT and the 10-0, but obviously we are a bit short of knee-MTRs and leaders. The lack of expendable leaders might prove to be a problem when I start Banzai charging up the hills.
I bought the extra OBA, not to use this turn, but for the next game. I wanted to save some points for more important buys. With the jungle canopy covering any assaulting units and Night rules meaning that Illumination is going to blind units to them then OBA is going to be vital in this CG due to the Air Burst bonus it receives in jungle.
Objectives
One of the most important aspects of this CG is the management of one’s VP. The Japanese must get 75+ VP and 5+ Level 4 hill hexes to win at game end. But VP are awarded and lost by activating certain purchases. An example might be that the US can buy AFVs, but in doing so they give the IJA 10 free VP! The Japanese can lose points by activating a certain Entry Area or buying AT guns. The main way the Japanese can gain these VP is by taking level 4 hills (the earlier in the game, the more points they are worth) or exiting units North of hexrow KK by CG end.
Probably the most important consideration with the ER-Z1.41 VP conditions is that for every CPP not spent by the US Marines at the end of the CG they can take away a VP (only the Japanese can accumulate VP) – thus by not spending ANY CPP the US marines can automatically win the CG as that would mean a minimum of -84VP for the IJA – yet I think this would rely on the IJA being abnormally defensive! With this in mind I shall be trying to provoke fights as much as possible… but only in the Jungle where I feel I have the advantage… I have to force him to spend CPP!
With my OOB I have 7 Objective Hexes, and I have chosen them to give myself a good jump off point for the next game: E9, J9, P20, S11, T6, X9, X13. E9 is already activated; I did this so that I could save 1CPP and not have to buy any foxholes, they can come later and I can expand on his 1S foxholes when I capture them. Another interesting aspect of this game is that both sides only get a total of 60FPP to spend, thus dramatically limiting purchases… we shall both be making a lot of entrenchment rolls I feel!
I shall have 4 main attack ‘groups’
Each group has a Banzai Stack = 2 cloaking counters; #1: ldr, 447 and #2 2×447.
The number of other units included in the ‘group’ is indicated by the percentage figure…
A: (30%) This is a flanking move to make sure I can eradicate any units he has in the OOB-set foxholes, once resistance has been eliminated the forces here will split with the ldr and his home-boys heading down towards Hill125, the remaining units will start foxhole expansion.
B: (30%) In case he has HIPs on or around Hill100 I am sending this force close to the Hill, but with enough distance to ensure that any Harassing Fire doesn’t hit me. A few MMC will split off to capture the O8 foxhole and expand it while the others attack towards Hill125. The core of this group is 2 cloaking counters with 2x 447 and 2x LMG; I envision them having more of an effect on the game than even the HW Platoon units. The role of this pair of stacks is to meet any serious counter-attack he makes… or if there is only the Hill 125 hedgehog to deal with then they will be the ‘enforcers’ of the single cloaked units probes.
C: (25%) I am sending the major firepower up here with my HW Platoon aiming to ensure that any Hill counter-attack is met with stiff resistance. There will be a few individual MMC to cover all the 4th level hill CPs.
D: (15%) A minor force here, mainly to capture an OH I have set for P20 and to swing around in case he has ‘real’ units in the R18 area.
After our 1st aborted attempt to play this CG, where JP set up in force on Hill 100 – causing a massive Banzai Charge driven firefight that cost us a lot of men (though I could afford the losses) I am expecting JP to Hedgehog the Hill 125 area and only lightly defend the rear of Hill 100. I would not put it past him to have some HIP HS in the jungle-line ready to rush out near the end of the game to re-claim some of Hill 100’s hexes.
In the last game he had placed an MMC in the O8 foxhole and this one unit managed to totally bottle-neck me so I shall lead with a dummy here, though I doubt he will do this again – any US units in the jungle have only a single chance to hit the IJA, and even with all their FP it is very long odds that they will do better than a stripping. As I previously noted in both PB and ABtF JP is a thinker and a planner, whilst I am a more spontaneous player – JP often plans his defence based on the ‘usual’ pattern of my attacks. Night games I traditionally lead with a swarm of dummy cloaking counters followed by stacks of units ready to hit a defending position hard – this will not work in ER. I have given myself only 1-2 dummies per ‘group’ and the maximum stack size will be 2 MMC (in part due to the limitations of Dense Jungle on stacking G2.2
One of the biggest factors in this will be the NOTE at the end of the US reinforcement Chart; this states that if the IJA do not cause 19+ CVP losses on the US then the US may only purchase I1-I3, HW1-HW3, O1-O2 and M1 RGs. If I can stop myself causing too many casualties (whilst still managing to take the Hill 100 ridge hexes) then I shall be in a powerful position in the daytime scenario and he will not be able to buy FB… which means my FB will then be unopposed nor even be able to choose to attack!
The Game
TURN 1-2
A swarm of IJA units (in SS cloaking counters, the Japanese cloaking counters are too easily confused with the ? counters) lines up facing the hated Marines. We move across the board in pretty much line abreast. Because I have a lot of difficulties remembering which units I have assigned to which duties (due to the uniformity of the Cloaking Counters) I move them in groups, that way I have the ability to remember exactly what I intended to do, and he has something to think about!
By the end of the turn the US has yet to fire a starshell, but has managed to draw a red chit for his 100mm (ready to drop OBA on his own position obviously). I am up on the lvl3 portions of Hill 100, but am skirting the sides of it, I shall mount the Hill in turn 3, but from a number of different locations.
The biggest shock of these turns is the increase of NVR to 6!
TURN 3-4
Now it starts to get interesting… my units are swarming through the positions that must be manned (the line of foxholes in column O), JP holds his fire to even let some through but eventually is has to be game on. HS’s are revealed in O5 & O8 but their fire is useless and 2x HS are swamped in CC giving me their foxholes. These foxholes are rapidly expanded to the 2S size required to make them OHs – I reinforce them though against any possible HIPs nearby.
Movement has 3 separate terrain-influenced directions. There is the western-most mass of cloaked units (A & B) rushing at full speed towards Hill 120. To the East I have a lesser group (D), again all cloaked, moving towards the single OH here and also to form up for a possible attack on the Northern-most tail of Hill 100 – these guys are also here to make him think a little about defending just against the Central or Western attacks. The Central attack (C) is confined to the top of Hill 100, though I also have units moving strongly along the Lvl3 hill spur (to T12). These are the most vulnerable units; they include all my heavy weapons, but numerically they are only about 25% of my force.
His attacks are a non-event, he manages to drop Harassing Fire (6FP) OBA centred on U14, this is great for me as it misses me completely whilst also removing a dummy Reserve counter. Though it does channel my attack away from this area… though funnily enough I had no plans to move through this area anyway…
My OBA comes down as SMOKE in about the same area. I find it hard to believe he would leave this area un-guarded, and I am sure he has some HIP FP on the top of Hill 125.
TURN 5-6
Again the foxhole gods assist me and I have managed to greatly expand the originally planned Control Zones.
The game is still pretty much a non-event. I have seen enough of his OBA fall into the jungle to know that there are none of his HIP there. In other areas (jungle near Hill 100 and around the captured foxholes) I do search rolls to be sure. He is totally defensively sited around Hill 125 and had obviously decided from the start of the game that he was going to concede Hill 100 to me without a fight.
My OBA was wasted (the SMOKE affected no-one as there were no units that had LOS to the Hill 100 top except for the OBA spotter) with ineffectual SMOKE and then 2 red chits!
Movement continues toward the tree line close to Hill 125. I have a OHs in X9 and X13 and they are both going to be great for me, and terrible for him if I can get them – and it might FINALLY force him out of bed and into the battle! However, with so many units on ‘guard’ duty for the rear OHs I am left with just a ‘Banzai Stack’ and the pair of LMG stacks from B group as well as a few individual 447s… I have just 1 dummy left who is close enough to be of any use.
The NVR has dropped to 1!
TURN 7-8
Well at last the game hots up. This is in part to the pair of us neglecting to notice that the initial scenario End-of-Game drm is -1, not the +1 that is usual with most CGs! Instead of starting to roll in Turn 7 we should have started in Turn 5! I think we both suffered from this as I would have captured X13 pretty much un-opposed, instead I ended up taking quite some losses… and he would not have counter-attacked, an action which cost him some MMC too.
I had been hoping to attack towards the weak position around BB10, this should have been fairly quickly overrun with the ‘Banzai Stack’ and it’s 9-0 ldr, I had already moved an insignificant probing unit close to it though when I noticed that it was an Abrupt Elevation Change hex (AEC)… no way I was going to take THAT on! Last game he had placed a massive trench network around AEC hexes and was very pleased with it, it was a very conscious choice that totally disrupted my plans… all of a sudden this area looked a little TOO easy and a little TOO difficult to take on and so I backed off! Instead I decide to focus these units on backing up the 5x 447, 4x LMG (in 3 cloaking counters) that I had detailed to take (and hold, finger’s crossed) X13.
After a 447 grabs X13 he has no real option but to attack, especially since I am sure that he thinks I am only facing him down with dummies and isolated MMC. An unlucky mistake with LOS means that I am able to strip ? off some of the in-coming units, and generally everyone that attacks gets broken, 2 leaders are also wounded – massive losses in the context of this relatively tame game, and in consideration of the US Marines need to kill 2 Japanese for each loss.
Yet, with JP there are always moments of pure ingenuity and brilliance… as usual he pulls out something that makes me scramble for the GameSquad rule forum. In this case a massive kill stack Advanced adjacent to X13 and the lone MMC there. I did not fire as I needed to keep the ? for the upcoming CC. His next move was to send a sacrificial HS adjacent to me and then to use him to search my hex! If I wanted to stop the search I had to shoot the HS; no matter what I was going to lose ?! Brilliant…What made it interesting was that this HS, even though adjacent, had no LOS (Jungle at night G2.3), yet the Search rule (A12.152) does not state that LOS is a pre-requisite – the smug smile was very rapidly wiped off my face; just as effectively as the 447 was wiped off the face of the earth in CC.
It all came down to a final attack against the USMC defenders in this hex, with 2x 24FP stacks (2x 447, 2x LMG adjacent with just +1TEM from Jungle at night) it was always going to be hard for him to hold on and I think that he miscalculated my reckless streak here. Half of his assaulting force had been gunned down and either CRed, Wounded or broken in the initial attack – though a 558 MMG had gone Fanatic in the process – while I had at least another 4MMC that I could feed into the already cramped combat zone along with a leader. In the end I managed to take the hex, though 3MMC had been striped down to HS (2 of them ELRed) in the process.
Aftermath
From my initial force of 24x 447 I ended up having 3.5KIA, with one ending up as a 2nd Line 347. I captured all of Hill 100 and have a huge advantage in Controlled Area. I have accumulated 34VP total, which is a fantastic start (I think)
Purple – No-Man’s Land
Yellow – Japanese Set-up Area
Blue – US Marines Set-up Area
Conclusion
I think JP let me have Hill 100 too easily. I wonder (not having played the UNMC in this CG) whether it might not be worth placing some units on and around the Hill 100 crest to ensure that the IJA are slowed down, and to offer the possibility of grabbing some of the OHs when the game is close to the end. It will also ensure the USMC lose the 19CVP that will allow them to get all the cool toys for the 13 Day Game!
The counter to this is that the US forces, or indeed any Night Defender with ‘No Move’, is too vulnerable in the Jungle… far better to set them up either HIP in the Jungle or on the Hill slopes. Once the IJA can initiate H2H CC then it is a pretty much foregone conclusion.
JP makes good use of the multitude of Abrupt Elevation Changes (B10.5, see S11 or BB9 for example) on this map. Even Cloaked the IJA found those to be difficult to pass… and if there are units that have to be assaulted on these crest lines then they ensure that CX is going to be affecting the Attacking units. When his units were revealed it turned out that BB10 was indeed a massive complex of Wire, Foxholes and lashings of US Marines… I think that in this situation though he out-smarted himself and missed the relatively minor (by comparison) ruse with the LMG stacks.
This is another point… I think that the IJA would do better moving units together as ‘multi-hex stacks’; say 3x 447 and a dummy as 3x cloaking counters gives flexibility, excellent Point Blank FP and the ability to adapt to circumstances. My 3 ‘LMG stacks’ each gave a 24FP adjacent shot (12FP if the enemy is ?) with just -1TEM. I moved 2 of those stacks together for the majority of the game; with cloaking they can move 4 hexes per player turn… and that is pretty impressive for a Night PTO game! On the other hand I also had the ‘Banzai Stacks’, with their 3x 447 and a leader they game me a tactical option perfectly suited to the Japanese.
Lastly there is the most important rule for PTO Night games; the vitally important G2.3 which states that Illumination does not penetrate the Interior of jungle hexes… this means that a unit in an Illuminated OG hex cannot see an enemy even in an adjacent jungle hex (E1.9)!