Marianas 1944, scenario #3: Up the Middle

Surprisingly I had a much closer game than other gamers who have played this scenario. The U.S. Marines still won but it wasn’t decided until the last turn. The Japanese came out of the dark night and tried to flank both sides of the Marine’s lines but thankfully they had illumination fire to beat back the worst of the Japanese attacks. Two large Japanese stack of units managed to penetrate the Marines and managed to assault the 37mm gun, one Infantry platoon and one leader with a stack of three infantry platoons and one leader and eventually eliminated the 37mm AT gun and both Infantry steps and other than one Marine leader those were the only Marine losses. But in the last turn another Japanese assault on the stack of two 75mm guns and one marine infantry units failed, or the Japanese might have had their victory of eliminating two or more of the American 37mm and 75mm gun units. Maybe a dice roll away, as Japanese loses didn’t matter and neither did Marines infantry steps.

So an American victory but a closer game than I thought and a fun fast playing scenario of 11 turns in the dark of the night.