Rommel goes to Tinian

At the club's February games day Simon adapted the Rommel rule set to this Pacific battle.  It was more a test to see if the forces were balanced and the new ops charts appropriate.  The figures and terrain looked great.

First challenge was to get a photo of the whole island.

I ended up going for two shots, with the thought of trying to paste them together...

This is the northern end, Ushi Pt. and Mt Lasso.

The marines are already onshore.

The southern end, 

Tinian Town is just behind the beach.

Japanese supply points are located in the mountain squares (flagged).

Mountain sides that are grey are impassable, ones that have a khaki tinge are scaleable.

This long shot gives a good feel for the size of the gaming area 

and saves me the hassle of trying to splice the previous images

There are two beaches where additional US troops could land,

but as the game progressed we didn't take up that option.

The US forces had already established a beachhead.

I got off to a good start with some lucky rolls,

compared to Simon's (who was the defending Japanese) unlucky rolls.

The aim was for the US forces to wipe out the Japanese.

This meant the Japanese player was more focused on holding on 

(reorganizing forces, digging in and delaying).

Note Japanese armour going in for a counterattack.

With just 8 turns each trying to occupy the whole island would be a challenge.  As it was it took the US a week (24 July - 1 August 1944).  Which leads to the option of making this a multi day scenario.

Simon did all the work for this scenario, all the figures and terrain, the OOB and the variations and rules for island warfare and a Japanese ops chart. The main change was the provision of bunkers.  

As this was just the first play through, publication of the scenario will be some time off as yet :-)