I've been playing a lot of Pacific scenarios in Guadalcanal and Saipan lately, and the way they have played out is typically with the US Marines hammering the Japanese. This was an interesting change of pace, in that in the first Changsha action the Japanese resemble a juggernaut that flatten the Chinese.

It's a river crossing scenario, where both sides are composed entirely of infantry with hardly any bombardment capability at all. The Japanese have two battalions of infantry, with a company of engineers, to force a river crossing and achieve as many VCs as possible including inflicting 2X casualties or more, controlling the main road, and exiting 15+ steps off the far side of two maps. The Chinese have an infantry battalion to prevent this.

In my play of the scenario, the Chinese deployed right along the river in company strongpoints. The critical defensive position was in the riverside town, defending the one bridge crossing point. The majority of the battalion was deployed east of town along the river, in the likeliest terrain for Japanese to try an engineer-assisted crossing. The west side of the map was heavily rice paddies, so a crossing attempt there wasn't likely and was only lightly covered.

The Japanese largely obliged by committing 1st battalion, in column, to march up the main road and try to force the bridge crossing, while the engineer company would deploy with 2nd battalion in the east to try to cross the river the hard way.

The Japanese approach march was brisk, with 1st battalion benefiting from the blind approach behind the town, but 2nd battalion started taking casualties as they descended on the river. In particular the engineering platoons were hard hit, so much so that the whole crossing in the east seemed to be thrown into chaos.

Conversely in the town, a pair of Japanese HMG platoons that deployed to provide covering fire successfully routed most of the Chinese defenders and their Colonel, leaving the bridge unguarded! The Japanese poured across and raced deep into the Chinese position. The Chinese reacted swiftly, deploying their small reserve and beginning a retrograde maneuver to a secondary defensive line along a east-west ridge. For a few turns both sides' forces were mixed in a chaos of maneuver and assault, as the Chinese tried to stop the Japanese 1st battalion from driving ahead of their retreat.

Three hours into the battle the Chinese, having sustained heavy casualties, had collapsed their position to the town south of the ridge, while a significant Japanese force of two companies marched past them toward the southern map edge and the remainder of the Japanese battalions formed up for an assault on the town. At this point I called the battle a major victory for Japan.

This was a fun scenario, and I feel it could have been a greater challenge for the Japanese had it not been for that early bad break that left the town too exposed. That in turn caused the whole defense to unravel. The Japanese infantry had a huge advantage in assault, but the Chinese managed to use direct fire and their one mortar to good effect. A fun game, and remarkably full of movement for an all-infantry game.