Greetings.
Welcome to my AAR of "Battle of Bataan", the third scenario/mission of the U.S. Pacific campaign.
As discussed previously I purchased the "Magnetron Radar" and "Block Construction" specialisations. You may recall that I stated they would be irrelevant for this scenario as it is a land battle. That is mostly true but I had forgotten that the designers gift the U.S. forces two PT Boats (one core, one auxiliary). The radar range isn't critical but it will help a bit (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1 - Campaign screen, briefing |
The teaser and briefing messages don't stress enough how difficult a situation the U.S. and Philippino forces found themselves in 1942. When played carefully the scenario won't become a train wreck because that would discourage the player but there's definitely the potential for a catastrophe.
We as the player are tasked to hold at least one of four Primary Victory Points for the whole 25 turns of the scenario.
If we can hold all four for the first 20 turns additional resources will become available (US$50 and PH$20).
Likewise if we can hold on to all Secondary VPs for 5 turns we'll be granted US$20, one U.S. Heavy Infantry (motorised) and one PH Recruit, both deployed at Mariveles.
Finally if we can inflict ten points of damage with the Fortress Battery a (land) Commander will join our roster.
In order to accomplish these objectives we are assigned four PH Recruits, two U.S. Infantry, one AA/AT gun, two PT Boats, nine Bunkers and 30 Land Command Points (US core only). Moneywise the PH branch starts with PH$50 and the US branch starts with US$453 but neither will have a turn income.
What all this means is that I deployed exactly the same core units as participated in the previous scenario: all of the 1st Btn (three regular and one heavy infantry), USMC/B Coy, Cav/C Sqdn, Eng/B and C Coy, No. 1 IC and 5th "Hickam" and 14th "Punaluu" AA/AT Bty. At least 1/B and 1/D Coy had to take minor repairs but those were the only deployment expenditures. This is going to be a very parsimonious scenario.
Time to look at the (strategic) map (Figure 2). It depicts Bataan peninsula with Manila Bay to the East and the South China Sea to the West. There's two imposing blobs of mountain terrain that as stated in the briefing will restrict movement and the whole western half of the peninsula is a contiguous mass of hill terrain with two large strips of jungle close to the shore. The eastern shore is mostly open terrain. As in the previous scenario there's a network of rivers that couldn't be more propitious for a defensive battle if it had been designed that way. Most of the rivers are highlighted by my planned consecutive defensive lines and all bridges will be blown as my forces retreat behind the river lines (some bridges are already destroyed as per the red crosses on the map).
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| Figure 2 - Strategic Map |
The four Primary VPs (Mariveles, Cabcaben, Lamao and Limay) can be found on the southeast and holding all of them for 20 turns (even 25) won't be particularly taxing.
Holding all Secondary VPs (all other named places, highlighted in white; also the underscored nameplates indicate "town" terrain, those not underscored are "villages") is a more tenuous proposition: Abucay in the East and Moron/Eman Point in the West are very much vulnerable (side note, Google Maps states that the location is called Morong; either someone's inner 12-yr-old at the Artistocrats got the better of him/herself or the inhabitants got tired of being made fun of and arranged a baptism).
I don't place much faith on the first defensive line as my units haven't had the time to entrench and the Abucay line is placed in atrocious terrain for defense.
The Eman Point line is also a "maybe" line: as the Abucay line falls quickly it becomes easily cut off.
I didn't place much trust in the Bagac (half)line as it lacks a river, it will prove surprisingly resilient. The Pilar (half)line has problems: Pilar itself is vulnerable to unavoidable flanking attacks and quickly becomes untenable.
The Fortress Battery is located about halfway in the Bagac-Orion line (the black dot). Its range (five tiles) is depicted by a thin black line.
The PT Boats are pre-deployed at Paysawan and Mariveles. Their presence in this scenario is a clear message from the designers to the players that some naval action will take place. We handled a couple OPFOR PT Boats and Gunboats in the "Fleet Command" tutorial scenario and they aren't "serious" fleet weapon platforms. As we can trust the designers not to hand us lambs for an inevitable slaughter (we can, can't we?!) our PT Boats won't meet an unsurmountable opposition. For that reason I assigned Admiral P. Clark to my core PT Boat for added Anti-Air capabilities.
I've had an interest in military history for some fifty years now and I've known about the plight of the Bataan and Corregidor defenders for most of those fifty years. Alas it was a shallow acquaintance and mostly name recognition.
I must admit that it was only about a month ago (September 2024) that I had the curiosity to go look at a real life map of the Bataan peninsula (courtesy of Google Maps) and read the article on the Battle of Bataan on Wikipedia.
I remember oh so many years ago reading that the mark of a good wargame is to motivate the player(s) to go look at the actual history. In my case OOB has become a good wargame: it troubled me that being given two PT Boats they should both go towards the western edge of the map.
Spoilers: in the actual battle the Japanese conducted some landings on the western shore of the peninsula and the PT Boats are the designer's way to help the player deal with that. In any case I am now aware that if the Japanese had been able to conduct landings on the eastern shore of the peninsula the U.S./Philippino forces would have bigger issues beyond just handling said landings as it would mean that the Japanese had somehow neutralized Corregidor and could roam freely inside Manila Bay.
Prime landing locations (beaches) are indicated by a yellow line along the shore. Beaches are also important because they are more costly to traverse and thus impact the relocation of my units from one defensive line to the next.
Beaches and their impact on movement provide a convenient segway to Figure 3. It depicts the movement alternatives for the AA/AT unit during the first turn. Instinctively it shouldn't be able to move so nimbly, is has no organic transport and its "chassis" is of the "towed" persuasion. Somehow the designers grant "towed" units with the ability to move into/through any terrain (other than mountains) at one movement point per tile... and then granted two movement points to the majority of towed units. So far no infantry unit we have come across in this playthrough has the ability to traverse two (roadless) jungle tiles in the same turn.
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| Figure 3 - "Tow" chassis movement |
The table in Figure 4 contains movement costs from the "standard" chassis.csv file (as opposed to "wet", "arid" and "winter") for some terrains and chassis. Our M3 Stuart and the JP Type 95 Ha-Go share the "track light", the JP Type 97 Chi-Ha is of the "track" variety.
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| Figure 4 - Movement costs |
Just in case it is a deal breaker for whether this AAR is worth your time, I'll state it here and now. I am documenting the AI side of things by lifting the FoW at the end of each of my turns i.e. after finishing my moves and combats. That means that I "quick save", console command "#orbitalcommand", take as many screenshots I deem necessary and reload the "quick save" to restore the Fog-of-War. That inevitably has an impact on my situational awareness but I don't think I took any action during the playthrough of this scenario that I wouldn't take anyway.
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