Mo’ Kakazu Ridge

J14 On the Hoss Side

An old scenario, but with the dearth of cave scenarios it’s still relevant (like Craig)

Craig and I have been planning to play this since December 2019 when I beat his ass at J13 The Gorge. 

To win the Americans don’t even need to move out of their setup area. They just need to keep two or more unbroken mmc on one of the three Kakazu West summits, one of which starts in their setup area.

Its an odd scenario because, although the Japanese are the scenario defender, they’re not really they’re just the attacker that moves second.

The Americans start with a good foothold, might want to push forward just a little bit and then they need to defend against the Japanese counterattacks. Its also a great scenario for showing off the power of MGs.

The Japanese get 20 447s to push the Americans off Kakazu West. The Japanese caves here are mostly used in an offensive manner. They are conduits for attack. Craig likened it to the Starship Troopers scene where the bugs just boil out of the ground.

The Japanese and Americans have a SAN of 4 and an ELR of 3. Nothing mind blowing. The Japanese have fair support in terms of MGs and DCs. They do have 3 knee mortars which are important to their counter attack plans.

The Americans have 7 heavy and medium MGs, enough leadership to prevent them cowering and a -3 leader for general usage. One radio with an 80mm module.

As the American I setup as much out of LOS as possible, heavy on the VC hex side. For the first two turns I dug FHs and cycled units back and forth to gain concealment. I kept a SR moving round but LOF, reverse slope and HIP caves meant there were no targets to engage with my OBA. 

Craig took a few shots with spotted fire that broke at least one mortar (this adversely affected his final attack). 

The Americans are under no time pressure. The scenario is only 6 turns but the Americans don’t even need to move out of their setup area. Im guessing that the slight swings in favour of the Japanese on ROAR are American players getting too testosteroney and moving forwards unnecessarily quickly and getting wasted.

The American radio bust a tube after one FFE1 and never came back. I managed to dig in most of my MGs and get a FT adjacent to 2 Victory hexes which between them had I think 5 caves, one of them overstacked. 

The 10-3, after directing FH digging, took position behind Kakazu West in F10, where with 2 667s and mmgs, he was ready to melt face and rally losers.

The platoon of 666s and mmgs which start near to the main body of Kakazu Ridge found a hole in the defence and got above the Japanese in the east. Their mmg fire did a lot of damage to Japanese in caves on Kakazu West .

There’s a nice synchronicity which one does not often see in cave scenarios. Normally the weak ML Americans need to move into the caves’ beaten zone and survive long enough to damage the Japanese. Here they need to do just that to occupy the further two VC hexes. However, here The Japanese also need to crest the same two hexes into the face of truly intense MG fire to wrest back the VC hexes. Both sides attack and defend.

I used all of the tricks the American has available. All of my DCs were made by the lowest bidder and didn’t withstand the shock of being dropped into caves.WP grenades into caves worked well, there is an odd lack of bazookas for the Americans.

The scenario ended on an American win, Craig needed to win two HtH CCs as the final run attacker. he won one and lost the other. American win, 2 unbroken mmc remaining in the VC hexes. I hate wins like this, both of us had an even chance to win. Craig just didn’t make his roll. Hardly drinking from the skulls of your enemy.

Mistakes Craig made 

Poor mortar play. They were setup in a position for spotted fire, in fact they could have been set up for direct lay. He lost one to a malf for no gain. That hurt his final turns’ counterattack.

Dispersed defence. He had three or four caves on the main body of Kakazu Ridge. They could have been more profitably placed near the VC hexes. He had the ability to set up caves in hexes in my set up area. He didn’t use this. However, I think this was a missed opportunity. He could have had a threat vector direct into my rear areas, instead he had those caves set up a number of hexes away from the VC area.

Overstacking a cave. Ive never seen this done before, it was the best move he had available otherwise he would have, after a successful CC, remained next to about 100FP of MGs.

Not using SMC overrun. At one stage, as mentioned above, Craig had, I think, 5 caves that were threatened by an adjacent 8-1 with a FT. Some of the caves were accessible same hex caves, but still the FT could have affected a few squads. His solution was to in effectively prep one squad and then retreat the rest of the units back to the complex. The squad that ineffectively prepped was KIAd by the FT. If he had overrun the SMC he would have had a more effective and cooler solution.

Relying too heavily on caves. Just because everything can setup in a cave doesn’t mean it should. I think the positioning of his MGs could have been better. I think that they would have been better in the Kakazu West Complex, shooting PB at the doggies.

Poor last turn planning. He had a couple of units that were not positioned for the last turn.

Things Craig did well

Generally excellent tactical play. Very very few play errors. You can’t sleaze a win against Craig.

Craig has really matured during the pandemic. Probably because he had to spend so much time in his own company. He no longer whines absolutely and inordinately, about my dice. He had periods of poor IFT but made up for it by excellent CC rolls. I had poor CC and OBA events and some great rof tears. At one point I offered to TI a 346 that was in the same hex as the machine guns of doom as he was obviously running back across the gorge for more ammo. I swear when I touched those mmg counters I burnt my fingers. 

After one torrential rof event Craig picked up and rolled my coloured die, it didn’t roll more than 3 for a good few rolls. I picked it up and it refused to roll more than 3 for me too. However it was the same coloured dice that Malfed my 50 cal a few seconds later.

So in short, Craig did not play optimally, I lost my OBA after one FFE 1 that drifted off course. I think the two balance out. 

This is a balanced scenario. The Americans need to play very slowly and get their MGs working. The Japanese conversely need to get their counter attack going from the start. Kakazu West is the key, main kakazu is a distraction. The American platoon that starts over on main Kakazu should be easily defeated or contained.

Was it a fun scenario? Hard to say, Im coming to it off the back of Korea, so I miss snow, napalm and Corsairs. I enjoyed it and I’d be happy to play either side again.

It was a game between two good players. I am Craig’s nemesis, but he is my favourite opponent.