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The battle we set up was to mirror the actions of July 7th on Saipan when the Japanese made a massive night time charge on the Marines. To help with the “Fog of War” and the confusion of night time fighting we made all troops “acquire” their targets before they were allowed to fire (until they actually closed for melee). This was just an even or odd toss of a D6, but it is amazing to me that 50/50 odds can make such a change in a game. We had the Japanese on the field at a 4:1 ratio to the Marines. Again, because it was dark it was not easy for either side to effectively direct fire, but once the Japanese closed on a fox hole it got tense fast!!! In most cases the Marines could not count on cross fire from friendly troops because of the risk of being hit themselves and to send a runner out into the dark to get help was scary too. We had two incidents where the runners came under fire from friendly forces because of our make shift “acquire rule”. (Nervous kids shooting at noise in the dark….stay in your fox hole!!!). Here are a few photos of the action. The troops and tanks are all the work of my friend Steve Dake who has been painting armies for various manufactures and collectors for about 25 years now. We built the table and all of the terrain and change it out every month or so. This Pacific Island battle has been a dream of his for a long time and once we finally made it happen, we were reluctant to change the table too quickly. We had the board set this way for four months and had many folks come and play.
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