Received my B&J yesterday with plans to play Meat Grinder for the Winter War Tourney, Rich D. was coming by for a game of ASL. But with B&J in my hands, Rich’s copy also showed up yesterday too, we decided instead of playing a boring AP scenario, lets try one of the B&J scenarios and boy, almost 90% look like ones that will be needing some tender loving care .

Some really tough choices to put on the table straight away with the like of Thrilla in Manila, Alligator Tanks, and so on, basically we were looking for something that would fit well in an evening Tourney environment. So we finally decided on BFP 51 Kwajalien Crush. This is a full seven turn scenario with the Americans attacking across board 37 into board 35 hit-ville overlay. Only half of both boards are used with the Americans needing to capture 10 buildings on board 35, all Huts are SSR’ed into wooden buildings, so no hut rules needed, thankfully.

Both sides look pretty nifty to play, the IJA have a lot of weak squads but they also have a 75AA gun and 12.7 AA gun plus they get two pillboxes which means they can have tunnels from a pillbox to a building on board 35, a great end game tactic to use for the IJA too, so the Americans will have to be wary of that one. IJA reinforcements enter on turn and thus will prove important for game end too, this group consists of two 447, 9-0, LMG, and one Ka Mi and one Ka-Chi, the Ka Chi is a BFP produced counter and mounts a 47L MA.

The Americans are attacking the IJA with some serious firepower consisting of 17 Squads, mostly 1st line, great leadership including a 9-2 and 4 AFV’s with two of them being M3A1F’s Stuarts, these guys are beasts too, they not only have their Bow mounted FT, they have a 4FPCMG, Cannister, and a regular 37LL that can fire both HE and AP. Looking at the maps, the best avenue of attack is close to the northern edge of the map and up the middle, attacking from the south is not doable just because the that part of the map is too densely packed with jungle and thus your Armor wont be able to support such an attack. Although, sending a few squads south will force the IJA to keep forces in that area to keep any small Ami force from breaking through to Hut-ville.

As for our game, it lasted around 5 hours and so I think this one would be a great evening tourney scenario for like Friday or Saturday night. The game Rich and I played was pretty tight through out the 7 turns. My attack was from both the north and the Middle with a few squads attacking south into the board 37 woods so as to force the IJA from diverting forces to my main Attack. As expected the IJA had an up front defense, and these guys held my attack up for around 4 turns. Lost one Stuart to the 75 AA gun, and a few squads, but the key moment came when one of my squads berzerked and charged into the 75AA guns hex. thus I was able to get my FT toting leader close enough to fire.

By turn 6 I had lost an M4 to street fighting, and a few more Ami squads died from CC, but the IJA was getting very thinned out themselves, those IJA conscripts are so very brittle, if they fail ELR, they become broken HS, or if they roll boxcars on an MC, they just die. fortunately for me, One of Rich’s pillboxes was set-up no where near the village, but he did have one set-up in the village proper and used it at game end to advance into CC with one of my squads. His Armor did whjat any good ASL tanker would do, and DI’ed my last Sherman, his other AFV DI’ed my FT Stuart and the stupid crew had to abandon the vehicle because the moron could not pass his TC.

I did end up taking out one of the Japanese tanks with an MA shot from the immobilized Sherman, got rate and then tried to knock down one of the few remaining IJA squads only to roll boxcars. Then on IJA turn 7, I rolled a one to repair an MA, the dice gods were with me and as I pointed out in the above post, the poor IJA squad ended up getting whacked.

All in All a great scenario, some really good luck for the IJA in the beginning but my initial bad luck turned around and with a little perseverance, I able to win this game. A few things though for a better IJA defense, try to keep the 12.7 in the village proper, that way, any where the Americans go to take a building, they will have to face down 24FP Point blank. Rich used a lot of TH heroes, 4 in all, in an attempt to knock out my armor, this drew a lot of fire, and he was hoping for a few things to happen, I would break the FT on the Stuart, it had a B# of 10, I would roll his sniper or he might get lucky and knock out my tank, fortunately, none of those things happened to his charging of course lol. Keep the pillboxes close to the village with tunnels going to one of the buildings and thus you can possibly ambush an Ami squad or take back a building.

This is one I would like to try again, but not until I have worked my way through most of this pack ha ha.

Scott Holst