On August 23, the SEF, led by Iwane Matsui, landed in Liuhe, Wusong (吳淞), and Chuanshakou. Chiang Kai-shek had expected these coastal towns to be vulnerable to Japanese landings and ordered Chen Cheng to reinforce the area with the 18th Army. However, the Chinese were no match for Japanese firepower. The Japanese almost always began their amphibious assaults with heavy naval and air bombardment of the Chinese coastal defense works and trenches. It was not unheard of for the Chinese to lose an entire garrison to such bombardments. However, the Chinese would reinforce almost immediately to counter the Japanese troops who had just made their landing after the bombardment.
In the two weeks that followed, the Chinese and Japanese troops fought bitter battles in the numerous towns and villages along the coast. The Chinese troops fending off the amphibious assaults had only their small-caliber weapons to depend on, and were not sufficiently supported by the ROCAF and the almost nonexistent Chinese navy. They paid heavily for the defense. An entire regiment could be reduced to just a few men in action.
Attacker: Japanese (Elements of 3rd Infantry Division, Shanghai Expeditionary Force)
Defender: Chinese (Elements of 18th Army)
7 turns
Players: 2 OBA: None Night: No
Unit Counts:
Squads: A:16.0 D:17.0
AFVs: A:0
AFVs: D:0
Guns: A:0
Type 89 Heavy Grenade-Launcher x 3
D:0
Mortaio da 45 Brixia x 2
Misc Rules:
PTO, LJ (Exc: Huts are Buildings) All buildings wooden. Banzai NA Turn 1.
Scott decided on an approach entirely east of the stream, even with his reinforcements. The good news is that he was able to muster some massive firepower; the bad news is that his approach was limited to three hexes. Any way you slice it, this is brutal terrain to attack through. This game will obviously see a fair share of banzai. He was able to punch into the central valley on Turn 3, grabbing his first building, and take complete control of the higher hill on Turn 4. Turn 5 saw us snap our strange streak of each of us only having casualties on our own half of the turn after we wiped each other out in the first of what would be many CCs. He grabbed one more building. With only two turns left I thought I did a sufficient job of blocking the way with bodies, but his Turn 6 banzai taught me otherwise, and both of our body counts that turn matched the entirety of our losses up until that point. Still he only took one more building, and would need seven more on his last turn. With three all but guaranteed, and three more a relative certainty (I thought), I figured it would come down to strongly protecting one building (or being forced to recapture one on my last turn). I had deemed my reinforcements an unnecessary luxury, but in the end I was in dire need of them to stave off the Jap horde, as Turn 7 once again eclipsed our previous turn's body count. But in the end the Japs came up short with only seven buildings.
2024-01-30
(D) Will Willow
vs
Neal Ekengren
Chinese win
Went to last Japanese turn where they ended up with five bldgs.
2023-12-29
(D) Rob Schmitt
vs
Scott Martin
Japanese win
I was Chinese defender vs Japanese attacker. VP was for Japanese player to capture greater or equal to 10 buildings. Infantry only game. Japanese advanced across the entire front. I was able to defend well on my left flank and inflict many causalities. These units held out to the final game turn 7. My defense on the right was not able to slow him down enough to stop him short of the final victory buildings in the center. My turn 4 reinforcements did reach a couple of the center buildings but he had already grabbed the others. My mortars both broke quickly and were never effective. My DMed squads were not able to fall back and rally due to efficient Japanese encirclement movements. Close game that came down to just a few melee rolls on the final turn.
2023-07-02
(D) Jobbo Fett
vs
RootinPutin
Japanese win
W10 is a stream hex.
A third party brought up the fact that W10, as seen in VASL, isn't a stream hex. Since this was brought up at the start of the game and we could not find a rules reference otherwise, we played it as open ground. The amount of movement this gave the Japanese allowed them to immediately set up a foothold on the near side of the water and in front of my concealed defenders. Sadly, the close combats were anything but, and by the end of the 2nd Japanese turn things looked decided. We played it out for another two game turns until I threw in the towel - the Chinese mortars never managed to fire more than one shot each, my machine gun never got rate, and the attrition-style game I was hoping to play didn't pan out. Afterwards, we both agreed that W10 should've been a stream hex. (Because of the VASL board, we couldn't even truly determine what the true nature of that hex would've been otherwise so we deemed it Open Ground to get on with playing.)