Battle of Okinawa, Item Pocket Region

[zkraut]

Okinawa is one of the Ryukyu islands south of Japan. Okinawa was one of the first battles to be fought on the Japanese homeland. Some battles, like Iwo Jima had no japanese civillians. Okinawa but Okinawa had a large indigenous civilian population, 150,000 of those civillians being killed in the fighting. Civillians being influenced by Japanese propaganda, that the americans were barbarians who committed horrible atrocities, some killed themselves. The battle of okinawa had more casualties than the battle of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal combined.

The battle was fought for as long as 82 days, starting on April 1st, 1945. The battle was fought in the southern and northern part of Okinawa, most of the casualties in the south. In the north the Americans took Kadena air base, which is of 2005, the biggest air base in Asia. In the south the Japanese were fortified, hiding in caves with hidden machine guns and explosives.

The item pocket region, in southern Okinawa held Machinato airfield, a vital airfield for american bombers to reach other Japanese islands for Operation Downfall to succeed. Heavy fighting occured on Machinato airfield. Onnatake hill was a very fortified hill that needed to be taken.




In this scenario you are commanding either the japanese defenders of their homeland, or you are the american landing forces. The 27th infantry division took Onnatake hill and fought in Item pocket. The item pocket region was a heavily fortified region that blocked the way for other invasion troops.

The allied forces:
2x DD M4A1 Sherman (use proxies if necessary), 1x Red Devil Captain, 8x M1 Garand Rifle, 5x Higgins boat(Use Cardboard squares), 2x Amtrack 3x Marine Rifleman, 2x Marines M2 Flamethrower, 1x Mustang, 1x Resourceful hero. 185 POINTS

Only Marines can go into the amtracks. One marine M2 flamer can travel with the Higgins though. Amtracks get heavy transport in this scenario.



The Axis:
4x type 92 Machine gun team, 2x Type 89 Mortar, x7 Arisaka rifleman, 2x Imperial sergeant, 1x Honor bound hero, 1x Imperial sniper, x3 47mm type 1 anti tank gun.
124 POINTS


Map Pieces:
The Airfield and Hill are the 2 objectives.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...rdstuff016.jpg
Use a Pen or pencil for bluffs in the areas shown. The axis player may put 2 pillboxes on the bluff, along with 2 Type 92 machine gun teams. 1 for each bunker.


Special Rules:The allied player deploys one the southernmost hexes in the ocean. The shermans are considered DD and move in the water. The allied player has 10 turns to take both objectives, if neither objective is taken by the allied player by the end of turn 10, the axis player wins the battle.

The axis can deploy on either of the two objectives, and in the bluffs.

If anyone can playtest this map and tell me what to do to improve it please do. I don't have all the pieces to playtest this.

[RommeL BombeR 77]

im going to play it soon looks fun

[zkraut]

WOW!

Someone replied .

I made this scenario because this is the area my great grandfather fought in in okinawa.

[GraphCorp]

zkraut,

September's FRONTLINE NEWS will feature a SOLOMON ISLANDS 1942 (100m) Mini-map, so you'll be able to play with "real" palm trees, etc....

[zkraut]

Alright, I'll check that out sometime, but for now, this scenario will have the same map configuration.

[MrBluze]

Sorry already answered this post

[MrBluze]

This scenario looks interesting but it may need some tweaking.

First of all you list the allies tank as being a M1A1 Sherman. Did you mean the M4A1 Sherman?

You don’t have who deploys first; I am assuming the Japanese do. Where are on the map do they deploy? You might consider that the Japanese are placed in the first 5 rows of Hexes from the Northern edge of the map.

Regarding the deployment of the US troops. You mention that there are three Higgins Boats and you have 13 infantry being landed on shore. Since the Higgins can carry only two infantry does the infantry land in two waves? You might want to consider the rules of deployment in the WOTC scenario Regina Rifles at Nan-Green SCENARIO DD-3 for the US infantry “Higgins boats that are no longer transporting Soldiers may be removed from the board and used for the second wave of boats”. Now you can land twelve troops in two waves and deploy your Hero after you have some troops on shore.

The deployment of two Shermans could be deployed as the same as tanks are deployed in WOTCs deployment of tanks in the scenario for Combat Zone Pt. 3 – Beachhead “The attacker’s non-amphibious Vehicles can’t move during the movement phase of the turn they are deployed”. This makes sense because it took longer to unload vehicles than troops.

I would suggest that the Higgins Boats be deployed on the in the half hexes on the southern edges of the maps. The 3rd, 4th, and the 5th hexes from the left side of the left map. The 4th, 5th, and 6th half hexes from the right side of the right map. The Troops should disembark on the two northern water hexes of both maps.
The Shermans could be deployed in the two most southern hexes where the two maps meet. The Sherman movement could be reduced by 1, because Okinawa was hit by monsoon rains and was a muddy place.

If a Higgins boat should be damaged or destroyed the rules from the WOTC scenario Regina Rifles at Nan-Green SCENARIO DD-3 could be applied.
Under Special Rules and Options:
3. If a Higgins Boat is damaged or destroyed any Soldier units except ones of the type ‘Soldier – Artillery’ may debark from transport into an adjacent hex. Ignore water hex restrictions for the purposes of this rule.
4. Soldiers in water hexes may not target any units with SAs or attacks or use commander abilities but may move. As soon as a Soldier unit exits a water hex into a non-water hex, place a face up disruption counter on it.

Too bad the Corsair has not been released by WOTC. This was the plane that saw action at Okinawa. Choosing the Mustang over the Lighting was a good choice because both the Corsair and Mustang did have rockets. The Lighting would have more of an effect on the infantry because of the Strafe SA, maybe to the point of busting the scenario.

Too bad the Japanese do not have any anti air. But having 4 Machine Gun Crews will help defend against the Mustang.

Another player play all but one of the Japanese scenarios that WOTC has supplied. He is a student of Asian history and plays nothing but Japanese. Hopefully we will try this one as soon as it has been tweaked.

[zkraut]

Tweak'd...

[MrBluze]

I will try to see if someone wants to play this Tuesday or Thursday.

[zkraut]

How did the playtesting go?