Posting #1

*Power of The East was back up on the playing table tonight as it’s nice to finally be playing more Nomonhan scenarios. This is the last scenario in the supplement and is the end of the Japanese attempt to control this area from the Soviets.

*In this scenario the Japanese are surrounded on just about all sides and just need to holdout 15 turns with one unit that is undemoralized and they win, the opposite is true for the Soviets. The Soviets cannot wait until the visibility goes down to one hex on turn 12 to move in close as there is only 15 turns total but they have more then twice the forces and on board artillery, armor and those special OT130 Flamethrower tanks with that 3 column modifier but still the high morale of the dug-in Japanese and time factor will make this a bloodbath in short order. The Soviet Artillery must spot their own targets so must move close as the visibility goes down. This should be interesting.

Posting #2

*It’s going kind of like I thought it might. The Soviets took a lot of lumps trying to close with the Japanese, now they are using their numbers to assault the higher morale Japanese and paying a large price but time is not on their side so casualties do not matter. The OT130 Flamethrower tanks have a nice punch but usually become demoralized themselves after the first assault and have to roll for flame-fuel every time they assault. The Soviets have a lot of units to feed into the assaults but still, do they have enough units and enough time? Some more game play will tell.

Posting #3

*I thought this would be a slam-dunk for the Soviets but it turned out to bloody affair. Attacking with tons of weak morale Russian against high morale Japanese is difficult, especially once your flamethrower tanks loss steps, run out of fuel or limp off demoralized. The Japanese get a column modifier in assaults for higher morale, being Japanese, having a leader usually and in one case with an engineer unit as well. Also, the Japanese get fire-first in assaults for being dug-in. The Soviet artillery is only useful when their units are not in assaults and they have to spot the enemy units themselves, so once the visibility decreases all those units become useless.

*I kept feeding Soviet units into the assaults hexes right away but maybe I should of held off on the assaults a few more turns and just fired adjacent a few more turns but with only 15 turns I felt under pressures to assault right away in order to eliminate or demoralize all the Japanese units within that time period. With my weak Soviet morale units the major attacks became very disorganized and scattered. The end to my surprise was a Japanese victory. I think if this was a 25 turn scenario the Soviets would win but this is what makes this scenario interesting, you cannot just sit back and pound your targets and then assault, you have to go right at it. Next time, I’ll concentrate on one side with the Soviets at a time and hit the other side with artillery but still, I am uncertain even then who would win.

A strong 3 on this one!