Scenario 400: Tarawa Nov 20, 1943

[wulfir]

Got some spare time now during Christmas.
Decided to take on this monster scenario.


Operation Galvanic.
89 turns.
Massive amount of units.

Time to unleash the Marines...

[wulfir]

Turn 27...

Eastern ("north" on game map) part of Island mass of fire and smoke.

First wave on shore - Red 1, Red 2, Red 3.
Resistance heavy. Friendly losses heavy.
Second wave approaching. Issue in doubt.

[wulfir]

Turn 50..

Second wave ashore.
Island cut in half by main assault.
Pockets of resistance near both ends of airstrip.
Enemy forces still holds eastern tip of Island ("north" on game map). Naval artillery working over western part of Island ("south" on game map).
Third wave approaching.
Some enemy going Banzai...

[RT-Baseman]

Thanks for the hard "work". Hope it was a challenge. And yes, the feeling "issue was in doubt" in the landing phase is normal.

[Kartoffel]

I have great respect for anyone that can play a 50+ turn mission with max units (or close to max). That to me is super-humen.

[wulfir]

Originally Posted by Kartoffel

I have great respect for anyone that can play a 50+ turn mission with max units (or close to max). That to me is super-humen.

Playing is easy - building the scenario is the hard part.

[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.