Marianas 1944: scenario #13, The Beaches of Agat

I love amphibious landing scenarios and WWII Pacific games have the best ones. I haven’t played this one for years so here I go again!

I setup just about all my Japanese units as close to the beaches as possible including the three units on the beach. Only the mortars and a few reserve Infantry units stayed back into the depths of the map. I figured, even if I spread out my Japanese units but in three clusters I had a chance to really sink as many loaded American LVT 4s and LVT A1s as possible with my Japanese 20mm, 37mm, 75mm, 75/88 and 120/10 guns as possible. As I have learned, I can’t let that kind of large Marine force land unopposed.

In the beginning my Japanese strategy paid off, as they eliminated four loaded LVT 4s, two LVT A1s, with these I also lost 8 steps of INF and one leader for a total of 20 points, as the LVT A1 steps are worth double.

When I shoot at a stack of two Infantry loaded LVT 4s with a leader in one, to make it fair, if I get a hit, I roll the dice again, on a result of 1-3 the top unit gets hit, on a result of 4-6 the bottom unit gets hit, that way I can’t target loaded LVT4s with Leaders and it makes solitary play much better.

After losing 20 points in steps, I was concerned as the Marine player but I managed to overcome those losses and land in two good points along the beaches of Agat. The Marines did loses another 15 steps but the Japanese lost a total of 50 points in steps losses and entrenchments giving the Americans a 50 to 35 advantage and winning by 15 point and thus a Major Victory.

If I had to redesign this scenario to make it more balanced, I would only give the Americans that awesome naval fire power of 3 x 30 for the first eight turns. I would make this scenario only 20 turns to put more pressure on the Americans. And I believe these two simple fixes would balance this scenario out a lot more.