Friday 20 July 2012

Sino-Japanese War

Managed to get in another game this month along at my mate Colin Jack's wargames room along with Bill Gilchrist and Mr Ray made a rare appearance from over the pond.  As usual with Colin very few of his games are mainstream and this one set in Manchuria in 1937 was no different with Bill and Mr Ray commanding a motely mixture of Chinese and Colin and myself commanded the Japanese.
The scenario was set at the river mouth of a Manchurian peninsula where a train commanded by Colin packed full of Japanese infantry were attempting to make their way down to meet up with a naval landing party commanded by me.  Unfortunately the Chinese didn't intend to let things go quite so smoothly so a mixture of regular troops and revolting students had blocked the main line and set up a series of ambushes.
My landing force at the other end of the table was a mixture of Marines and sailors backed up by a light gun, an Hmg and a tank.  There was even a chance of the airforce making an appearance.
Unfortunately I only had one bridge to cross over from my landing position which meant that I was unable to fully utilise the full strength of my force which already had a few units of Chinese bandits supported by artillery and an Hmg facing them.
Under the Triumph and Tragedy rules we use the high quality Japanese troops should have had few problems facing the poor quality Chinese troops and especially the students, unfortunately we forgot to explain that to Mr Ray who lauched his students in a series of charges against the halted train.
My troops managed to cross the bridge and clear away all the bandits facing me but just couldn't get to the train in time as Mr Ray captured one carriage after another.
To make things worse a Chinese plane made an appearance but fortunately it was too far away from my troops to affect them.
The Chinese final assault went in and managed to capture the whole train
and basically winning the game.
The final highlight for me was my Japanese plane finally arriving and shooting down
the Chinese one in a dog fight but it was too little too late.
Apart from the result it was a great game and good to take part in such an unusual period.

7 comments:

  1. Thanks to Bill for pointing me to your very nice blog.:-)

    Wonderful pictures and great air to air combat scene! I really enjoy off the beaten path games.
    Looking forward to more.

    Christopher

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  2. Glad you like it Christopher, gaming with Colin you can't help but having unusual games.
    The nearest I get to offbeaten track is the 1812 Anglo-American war, the Turks in the Crimean war or most obscure of all is Back of Beyond.

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    1. Back of beyond is great! I'm currently working on some SCW which is still not often done, but that is changing thanks to Empress. I've also got my eye on the Boxer Rebellion and the oh so cool Russo-Japanese War.

      Christopher

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    2. Colin and Bill already have hundreds of SCW figures but they are in 20mm but they still give good games anyway. I find it surprising that it's not a more popular period to game and as for the Russo-Japanese war Colin already has some figures painted already and I have some Japanese that I need to start on at some point in the future but my butterfly tendencies keep getting in the way, it's mostly Barry Hilton's fault.

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    3. I sympathize with the butterfly bit as I fit in that shoe without a hitch....

      Christopher

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  3. Splendid report Dave and wonderful pictures of the game in progress. You do get to play in some interesting scenarios!

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    1. Just like yourself David, I always enjoy following your blog and seeing that your dice rolling is as bad as mine, although in this battle it was Colin's poor morale dice rolls that lost us the game. At least that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

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