Yesterday Michael Broadbent with his Australian forces advance to contact on my Japanese in a scenario based on the island of Bougainville. The year is 1945 and the Japanese have been defeated in the South of the island and the remaining forces have moved North and started up farming. General Blamey not being idle set forth instructions for taking the offensive. 12 Platoon D Company 9 th Battalion has been ordered to advance to contact and destroy the Japanese in their AO. Supporting units were one Aussie Stuart (Company B), FO party, MMG and 81 mm mortar support. In addition, attached were two snipers to assist the platoon in their mission.
The Japanese were expecting the Aussies and planned their defences around the one bunker. Two snipers were forward and to the flank with a section including a rapid fire gun on one flank (can you see it?) with a reserve section behind the main defence line on another feature. Aussies contacted the snipers and quickly eliminated the opposition including the Stuart using his mg on the other sniper. No churning of the tank tracks on the sniper this time round. Harrassing mortar fire was inflicting minor wounds including the Japanese Big Man who was wounded by mortar fire as one Aussie section came upon the Japanese Defences and received quite heavy fire and casualties were mounting. An Aussie sniper on the flank of the bunker was providing some annoyance and promptly received some fire from the bunker in return along with some Japanese swearing. The Japanese in front of the position managed to inflict a few more casualties, but their fire was very poor (actually my dice throwing was poor for firing, but that is no excuse) as the "Tea Break" card came out on the first card of the last turn we had agreed upon.
The game ended there, but clearly the Japanese would have been in a tough position as the armour support with an infantry section was pressing on the flank and the MMG was about to lay down plunging fire from the cleared feature to the flank. We will never know the outcome, but this being our second game we quite like the rules and we felt that they hummed along much better this time round - The majority of the sections made more sense. My thanks to Michael for his time an effort in providing more of his forces this time round as I was busy painting up mine. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks we will have another game with a few extras.
I'll be constructing some questions for the Lardies to hopefully answer
Rules used were IABSM. Figures & Armour/artillery Brigade Games/Company B
Buildings: John Jenkins Design.
Helen
