"I don't see 'Your Oppressor Needs You!' having too much resonance with the local populace. Besides, you've written it in Dutch which most of them can't read, which is probably just as well."
"Perhaps we could point out all of the social and economic benefits they've received as a result of benevolent Dutch rule."
"A little lengthy for a recruitment poster don't you think? Besides you might want to wait until the last famine has faded from popular memory before you try that line."
"Was there a famine?" asked the other officer in surprise.
"Not for us."
Two native orderlies stood at a respectful distance waiting for their superiors to finish arguing while simultaneously working out their chances of successfully deserting.
"Surely the Japanese couldn't be worse than this lot could they?," asked one.
"I have a cousin who lived in Korea for a while," replied the other, "strangely the answer is yes."
So this is ASL Scenario J4, Wet Sahwahs which pits a possibly less than fully committed Dutch colonial force against the conquest hungry Japanese as the latter served an eviction notice on the Dutch colonial empire. It was my turn to pick a scenario and I chose this solely because I had never played anything with rice padis before. ROAR seemed to indicate it was biased in favour of the Japanese so we gave the Dutch the balance (swapping two green squads for first liners). Ivan chose to be the Japanese which left me with the Dutch.
The objective for the Dutch was to gain 55 more victory points than the Japanese. The Dutch gained victory points by killing Japanese (naturally) and also by exiting forces off the board. In addition they gained a point for each building location they controlled at the end of each game turn. There were six such locations all originally in Dutch hands so that was six points a turn until the Japanese kicked them out. The Japanese also gained victory points from casualties inflicted and units exited. So to summarise I had to kill loads of Japanese while avoiding taking too many casualties and exit troops off the board while simultaneously preventing the Japanese from doing the same and it would be really good if I could hang on to the buildings while I was doing this. Dead easy.
To achieve the near impossible I had six first line squads, two green squads and three first line half squads. This force was equipped with three light machine guns, a pair of heavy anti tank rifles and an 81mm mortar. I also had ten concealment counters to spread Ivan's fire out a bit. To sweep aside the Colonial rabble Ivan had eight first line squads, three second line and crews for a heavy and medium machine gun. He also had four light machine guns and a pair of 50mm mortars. Supporting the infantry force were six tanks; two Type 94 tankettes armed with machine guns and four HA GO tanks with a 37mm gun.
For some reason I thought sitting in the middle of irrigated rice padis would be a fine defensive tactic and I committed a few squads to wallowing up to their lower lips in mud. Somewhat more sensibly I put a halfsquad with an atr (also in the mud) where it could cover the approach road. In the little patch of jungle in the centre I placed another halfsquad with atr and a squad and lmg team. A little further south in the next clump of jungle I placed a bunch of dummies (and one real squad) as speed bumps. The remainder of my force I set up to defend the village while my mortar (81mm of pure gold) nestled behind a wall in the village compound.
My plan was to try and get some early points with a couple of tank takedowns as Ivan approached and then a fighting withdrawal to the village followed by a gradual evacuation. Why I thought committing my forces to slopping around in the padis would help with that I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps I had visions of the Japanese charging across the padi fields. They didn't.
First into the field on the Japanese side were his tanks. Six of them, hardly impressive versions of the armoured menace but potent enough for an already nervous Dutch colonial force. Ivan peeled off two to roll south and help his infantry forward while the other four charged blindly for, a spot a dozen hexes away from the defence where they stopped. I had expected to be fighting hand to hand against the clanking monsters pretty much from the word go so I was a little surprised.
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| End of Turn 1 |
It's fair to say the first few turns were not happy ones for Ivan. One of his cruddy little Type 94s broke its MA on the first shot and a six on the subsequent repair roll would see it waltz off the board while its comrades tried to dodge an increasing amount of mortar and atr fire. I had a half squad with an atr wallowing in the mud of a padi field who took a shot at one of the other tanks for no result. In return a 1 flat mg shot broke and ELRed the worthless bastards. That was it for good news for Ivan for a couple of turns. My other atr managed to immobilise a tank and the 81mm mortar shocked two others. These shocks would turn into UKs and then destruction and suddenly the only two working tanks were the ones Ivan had sent around to help his infantry forward. Meanwhile I accumulated building control VPs and buffed my nails while waiting for Ivan's infantry to get forward.
Nothing daunted Ivan brought on his infantry and married the leading stacks up with his tanks, obviously intending to armoured assault his way to victory. Unfortunately his leading stack consisting of three squads and a leader married up with a tank in line of sight of my mortar. When the mortar ran out of rate a squad was dead and the leader wounded but on the other hand another squad had battle hardened and generated a hero so, a little something for everyone.
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| Mortar starting to work |
Sadly despite this wholesale carnage the remainder of Ivan's force pushed forward. He rolled his two remaining functional tanks up to my centre position while he detailed troops to work their way through the dummies I was pretending with increasing desperation were real units. With big metal monsters (ok, HA GOs so not that big) looming over the defenders Ivan pushed infantry units forward to threaten the position. A morale check sent one of his halfsquads berserk but it died on its mad rush to my defences. Still he got a half squad into CC with my atr crew and the ensuing close combat killed both units.
At this point Ivan felt that the game was pretty much lost. I had amassed a staggering number of CVPs and my hold on the village buildings was netting me a solid six points per turn. Still he soldiered on and in truth the happy times were nearly over for me. Ivan had run the gauntlet, paid his dues and now the wind was about to change. I mean that last comment literally by the way. Ivan rolled a wind change which led to a breeze blowing across the battlefield. This would prove to be significant in a turn or two. Ivan swung his last two tanks around to effectively cut off my centre defenders and then swamped them with troops.
I wasn't particularly concerned, I still held the village tightly and Ivan would have to come down the road to get me (we both eschewed slopping around in the padi fields early on in the piece). Then Ivan used one of his mortars to drop a smoke round on my defenders. Inconvenient but not tragic except for the fact that with a breeze now blowing the result was to stretch a smokescreen directly across the path he needed to cross to approach the village.
In considerably less time than it takes to write Ivan had pushed his remaining forces up to the wall around the village safely shrouded in smoke. Suddenly I was in genuine danger which not even the killing of another tank with machine gun fire could completely free me from. Ivan charged into close combat with my closest defenders. It's fair to say that I didn't come off best from these contests. I certainly inflicted casualties, at least another two Japanese squads paid the ultimate price but I lost scarce units too and suddenly the gap between my victory points and Ivan's started to narrow.
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| The happy times are almost over |
The battlefield had been compressed to the village itself and with nowhere to run every failed morale check was a killer and my troops did not stand up to the fire well (although my mortar crew survived an overrun from his remaining tank). With one half turn remaining and Ivan running rampant over my few remaining units I retreated the survivors (one squad and a miserable 6+1 leader) off the board for some exit points. This left the field to Ivan who exited a tank and two squads for his own VPs.
With the killing over we added up the points. I had gained eighty four points in total. Ivan had scored thirty. This made me fifty four points ahead, one short of what I needed. ONE SODDING POINT!!!
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| The end |
This was a brutal game. At the end Ivan had two squads and a tank left and I had one squad and the 6+1 leader. Pretty much everyone else on both sides had died. We approached this scenario with a fair amount of hesitation but it has to be said that we got a lot out of it and both of us had moments when we thought it was in the bag. Sadly for me Ivan had that impression at the end when it counted.
The two orderlies staggered out of the padi field covered in mud.
"Well," said one, "that could have been worse."
"Worse!" shrieked the other, "everybody's dead."
"We're not," replied his companion. He pointed to the corpse of a Dutch officer sinking into the mud, "And they are!"
"Good point. What are you going to do now?"
"Hide out for a few years and then take over the country when the Dutch try and come back."
"Do you need a hand?"
"Sure, I could do with an orderly."
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