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.