Tom and I faced off in Today We Attack, a meaty scenario from Code of Bushido that features 29 Chinese elite squads (ELR 2), and 10 AFV’s attacking across a wide front against about 20 second line Japanese squads, 8 crews, lots of MG’s, and 5 guns. This sounds easy for the Chinese except that the PTO terrain is tough on them and the Japs got a dozen trenches and 8 foxholes. The VC’s are tough with the Chinese needing get 65 points from either exiting troops or eliminating the Japanese. The exit location is across a runway which could get ugly.

The game starts off with the bombardment of three FFE’s (with placement error). The bombardment did nothing so I was off to a poor start. The setup allowed the Chinese to keep part of their force offboard and enter at will. With this in mind I kept the AFV’s offboard (best armor was a boxed 1) so they wouldn’t be whittled by the Jap guns. My plan was to clear a path for the armor to make a late game rush and exit. Since they were worth a lot of points, my plan was to use them as exit points and not risk getting shot up by all the guns. With that in mind, I attacked across the more open of the boards (still had a lot of palm tree cover though). I made steady progress over the first 3-4 turns, with Tom rolling several key 12’s on MC with the Japs. My dare death squads also were very useful and were able to tie up his front line forces while I advanced. I would say the luck favored me those first few turns which really put Tom in a bind during the latter stages of the game. I was able to find and deal with Tom’s HIP’sters individually which allowed the attack to continue without slowing much. By turn 6 when my armor entered, I had located all the guns, and had captured / spiked two of them. He had broken a third, so my armor only faced the two remaining. Using cover I was able to get the tanks close to exiting without the last two from having shots while my infantry continued to advance. By this time I had racked up about 35 casualty points and had lost about 5 squads, with another half dozen ELRing.

Turn 9 allowed me to get 4 AFV’s off without a loss, and set me up for the last turn run of the remaining 6. I also was able to pressure his remaining guns, and had a decent infantry force also able to exit. Tom threw in the towel at that point.

It is always a blast playing Tom, and this was no different. Tom had me worried up until the last couple of turns, as he played a very cagy defense. What allowed me to win was that Tom didn’t win a single ambush and my Dare death squads were nasty. What also hurt Tom was the fact that he had to defend the entire front because I had held some forces back to enter later in the game. This allowed my initial attack to gain a hole in his left flank without a counterattack. Great game, Tom!

Jay Harms

Ditto to the fun factor for me also, Jay. It wasn't that close though, you managed a very competent attack. Key mistakes for me were assault moving a Jap squad into a hex containing one of my 37L HIP atg's and having it become revealed on a 2+2 defensive fire shot on said squad. I really didn't need to have assault moved the squad in the first place.

Another was not revealing my HIP 10-1/228/HMG squad and attacking a chinese 447 that had stopped in their hex. I wanted to save the HIPsters for a later attack. By the time I did reveal them the battle had essentially passed them by. Great game, Jay. I'll get that hat someday! ;-)

Tom.