Itchy Haiku or whatever...Scen 2...Spence(A) vs fcharton (J)

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spence
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Itchy Haiku or whatever...Scen 2...Spence(A) vs fcharton (J)

Post by spence »

Perfectly perfect
Probably improbable
Probably, I hope.

The game begins with the IJN dropping an atomic bomb on the Pacific Fleet and its base at Pearl Harbor: 40 ships sunk or damaged including 3 BBs, a cruiser and 3 DDs. American flak fired off an incredible amount of marshmallows: claiming no less than 2 Zeros! From the Intel Screen it seems confirmed that not one single attack plane was lost over PH.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse now also sleep with the fishes although here at least a dozen of the attack planes were downed in return.

I've never played or seriously looked at Scenario 2 before. Hey, all you AFBs out there got any advice?

One thing I was sorta wondering although it's not really applicable to PBEM is does the IJ AI develop new planes or is that only something for an active player to do?

Well here goes...Urrah!
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denisonh
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RE: Itchy Haiku or whatever...Scen 2...Spence(A) vs fcharton (J)

Post by denisonh »

Increased pilots and much better trained at start. More airframes, the 21st Army and more Base forces. (bigger force pools to start like 66 A6M2 vs 26 in scen 1 and R&D for later models accelerated by a couple of months , like the KI-61 Tony from 43-02 to 42-11)

The 21st Army starts showing up end of Dec 41 in Indochina (Cam Rahn Bay, Saigon, Samah and Bangkok). It has 3 x 55 exp Guards Inf Divisions, 1 x 55 exp Guards Tank Division, 1 x 55 exp Independent Guards Inf Regt, a guards cav rgt and a guard eng regt. Also a 50 experience Amphibious Bde as well as 8 militia regiments that show up in Malaya, the Phillipines, Burma and the DEI to relieve those forces for follow on ops.

Also there is the 72 para squad, 90 exp Yokosuka Assault Force that shows up 1 Feb 42 at Samah.

That is a lot of punch in early 42 in time to still use the amphib bonus.

Not sure about any naval unit improvements.
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obvert
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RE: Itchy Haiku or whatever...Scen 2...Spence(A) vs fcharton (J)

Post by obvert »

For the navy, the Shinano is a Taiho class CV. MUCH BETTER! Also more CLs I believe than Scen 1.

There are more R n D and factory slots as well, and better supply and fuel stocks. On the downside economically the extra pilots mean more HI drain each month, but the Japanese should be able to make nearly as many planes as they want.

The main thing are the extra troops and the Tojo IIa in June. You will face about 10 groups flying those by August. The extra forces will clean up the SRA quicker and Burma is toast soon if he wants it to be, so get supply to China ASAP even if you have to sacrifice many transports at Rabaul to do it. Closing the Burma road more quickly means China will struggle mightily.

Conserve your fighters and only use them in hit and run surprise missions. Dan Nichols did this effectively when I was playing Scen 2 against him (my AAR South of the Border, West of the Sun) and he kept a good fighter force until the game ended in February (IIRC) due to his being unable to continue for personal reasons. The main thing is that with all of those toys the Japanese player can get a little happy with himself. Make him feel like you can't react and then hit him hard and run.

Have fun!
"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
spence
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RE: Itchy Haiku or whatever...Scen 2...Spence(A) vs fcharton (J)

Post by spence »

For the second turn I put up as many fighters as I could muster over Pearl Harbor and it seems they did a decent job downing several quite a few snoopers and putting up a stout defense against "Fuchida's Raid (the third strike he claims to have strongly advocated). The 144 Kates which survived the previous raid, 40 odd Vals and an escort of 50 odd Zeros only managed to sink one DMS shoot up the airfield some more for a loss of about 5 each Vals, Kates and Zeroes, all to the CAP. An American submarine got a shot at HIJMS Zuikaku but missed unfortunately. The IJN counterattack was equally unsuccessful though.

ONCE AGAIN AMERICAN FLAK SEEMS TO HAVE NEITHER SHOT DOWN NOR DAMAGED ONE SINGLE STRIKE PLANE. It seems to me that no amount of training or preparation could have allowed WWII aircraft to completely avoid the flak. In previous games it has seemed to me that American flak had been somewhat nerfed in 1942 (and IJN flak a bit overpowered). This nerfing seems almost like a bug though. Not one single IJN aircraft flashed red or yellow during animation of the bombing while subjected to the flak.

The Japanese also attacked in the Philippines, Burma, Malaya and China. Not exactly surprising though several raids by G4Ms in the Philippines were unescorted and suffered accordingly. For the loss of a minesweeper the 24 Pursuit Group can claim 15 G4Ms and a handful of Zeroes. Several P-40s were damaged. All but one of the many ships evacuating Manila succeeded in clearing the harbor and the northern Philippines. An inconclusive engagement between an IJN invasion force and some Philippine PT Boats resulted in an aborted landing that was later attacked by USN float planes that succeeded in hitting two APDs with 250 lb bombs. A small Japanese force did manage to land in northern Luzon though.

In Malaya Khota Bharu fell although RAF Vildebeests managed to put 3 torpedoes into a large transport offshore. The Japanese pretty much contented themselves with bombing various northern airfields and supporting the assault on Khota Bharu.

The Japanese ran into the AVG over Rangoon. A large IJA raid by Sallys escorted by Oscars was partially broken up with minimal damage to the airfield. A subsequent sweep by a small number of Zeroes failed to clear the air for a large raid by G4Ms which suffered the loss of 5-8 bombers for one hit on a damaged freighter in the port.

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