Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: topeverest

While prospects are poor, I would not throw in the towel yet. How many men can you get on the island how fast?

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ORIGINAL: Wargmr

Once the allies get their teeth in it is very hard to dislodge them. He will have to risk quite a lot for an amphibious assault on the west side of the island.

Right now your best defense is the rough/jungle hexes between the eastern beaches of Hokkaido and Sapporo but at this point the game is over.

He can have a level 9 base within fighter distance of Japan within a month.

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ORIGINAL: topeverest

These speed games make me wish we could advance the arrival of the kami through rules, because it is an awesome weapon - perhaps the primary late war weapon - if it is given a chance to blossom. IMHO, speed games take the inferior power, and make her even weaker. It already is so very difficult to play empire...

We've seen enough of these speed games to set a house rule to it in our games. In our current mod, we decided that the allies had to activate the Kami 90 days before an invasion of the home islands could occur. Something you might want to consider the next time around.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

Have a look at GJ vs rader. In a very similar circumstance rader held pretty well and counterpunched extensively. This was before the beta change back to a more realistic coordination of strikes, but it still should give you hope you can do something this early. He still have only four bases, and while he can backfill throughout he Kuriles, if you keep on the front while backfilling Hokkaido, you can still give him problems. Do you have no free troops you can ship over to Sapporo?

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ORIGINAL: castor troy

That's the difference with the game and reality. In real life the Allied thought three times about invading the home islands as they were fearing the losses, this with an already starved Japan in a hopeless situation. In the game you can just pack everything you have into 15 hundred ship task forces, move to a place, land and stay there forever pretty much ending the game. Works for both ways of course but even more so for the Allied as they pack ten times more stuff in 44/45 than the IJ does in 41/42.

Valid way to play of course as it's a game, I still preferre games that stay somewhere near a plausible way of advancing.

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ORIGINAL: obvert

Yes, the Scen 2 helps with the number of units and air groups of course.

He played with abandon with airframes, not considering losses due to his souped-up industrial capacity with India and China in hand. Very different, but still, gives some clues how to defend this kind of hold on the Northern areas.

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

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ORIGINAL: obvert

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ORIGINAL: mind_messing

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ORIGINAL: Alfred

As always, Kushiro was the key to everything. Eventually you will find out how close were the Allies to failure had everything been singularly focussed.

Alfred

With near enough a 4:1 advantage in raw AV (to say nothing of firepower, troop quality and armor), Lowpe could have bombed and bombarded with all his might and thrown planes and ships wholesale into the meat grinder and the Allies would have still taken the base. Yes, they'd probably have some pretty damaged and disrupted units, but the base would fly the Stars and Bars.

In going for the ships, Lowpe has gained the VP's. Those are VP's that need to be made back by the Allies before they can declare victory.

For every in-game situation there's a perfect counter, in theory. Sadly the realities of PBEM play mean that putting theory into practice is far from easy.

+1

I disagree. Bombing the beaches made sense to me. Great that there's VPs now from the ships, but... just bombing out Sapporo will make those points back for him several times over. You really need to pay attention to land combats to see the effects of disruption, but it's there. Even if your bombs cause no casualties.

With three US Divisions, plus tanks, it would take a hell of a lot of bombers to drive disruption up to the point that it could overcome a 4:1 advantage in raw AV. Perhaps you could do it if there was no opposition in the air.

Otherwise, between Allied bombing and bombardment efforts and the disparity in troops, there was little chance Japan could have held on to the base.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe

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ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
I disagree. Bombing the beaches made sense to me. Great that there's VPs now from the ships, but... just bombing out Sapporo will make those points back for him several times over. You really need to pay attention to land combats to see the effects of disruption, but it's there. Even if your bombs cause no casualties.

I understand the bombing the invasion hex. The only supply there is in the units themselves, bombing would raise disruption and increase supply consumption hopefully diminishing his attacks.

So maybe you are right. Heck, I dunno.

However, the only way I think I could have held was flying in troops to Kushiro on the first day the invasion moved south. I didn't. Nor did anyone recommend that I do so. Instead I reinforced the island, and simply moved 2/3rd of a division there.

Such is the fortunes of war.

Now it is to dealing with the current situation, making the Allies pay as high a cost as possible, and to hold on to what I can in Hokkaido.

I kind of feel sorry for you Lok, since you are already facing Kamis against MM, and he supersized his squadrons. My goodness, how that would have changed the battle here.

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ORIGINAL: DanSez

Some of the best lessons are the hardest.

Think how much better you will do with a Scenario 2 game started from the beginning.
Just watching over your sholder has helped me understand the game.

I just shifted 7th Inf/A to Kurisho in my game (15th March 1942) and more will come later.

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ORIGINAL: Lowpe
You will need much more than the 7th A there.