Battle For Hong Kong

For the third week in a row Daniel and I played Memoir '44 on our Thursday evening club-night.

Last week we did some non-WW2 actions. This week we did two linked WW2 battles, set around the Japanese attack on Hong Kong. They introduced a few new things to Daniel, (and one new thing for me): special national characteristics for the British and the Japanese, bunkers, wire, night-fighting and the beach-landing board. 

The first scenario we played was The Gin-Drinker's line, which sees a Japanese attack on the British defensive positions outside Hong Kong. 

The British position looks strong, with wire and trenches, and even a bunker in the centre, but it's night so weapon ranges are severely limited and the Japanese infantry can move quickly and still attack.

I played the Japanese in the first game. There's some interesting objectives in this one - the bunker and a hill beyond it. They count for whichever side has possession, so the British start with two medals. It does tend to put the onus on the Japanese to focus their assault on them as well. And, fortunately, I was blessed with a hand of cards that enabled me to assault aggressively in the centre, and then keep assaulting. 

Before it got light enough for the British artillery to be really dangerous I'd grabbed both objectives. Then it was just a matter of mopping up a few units to win the battle. 

Naturally we swapped sides. Daniel's attack wasn't as all-out as mine and the bunker in the centre changed hands a couple of times. Daniel managed a bold attack on my left that broke through the lines and reached the outskirts of Kowloon, but it wasn't enough. I held both objectives and, with the casualties inflicted on the attackers mounting I picked up a win for the British. 

The key bunker, still in British hands at the end (but not the original defenders). 

We then set up the second game, which covers the Japanese landings in Hong Kong itself, and the subsequent fighting. The Japanese have numbers on their side, but the British can whittle them down as they come ashore. I took the Japanese in the first game and started with a strong attack on my left that, sadly, quickly petered out and was broken up. 

There's armour in this scenario - the British have one unit and the Japanese three. So we had a 'tank' battle in the centre. By this stage I was ashore in the centre and had defeated the British defences there. After some hard-fighting teh Japanese won 6-4.

Time to swap sides. Daniel ponders how to get everything ashore whilst I planned my defence. 

This was an epic game. Daniel got units ashore across the board. I spent a couple of turns hitting each infantry unit just to remove one figure and stop them getting their horrible close-combat bonus for being a full-strength unit. The British armour attacked right down onto the 'beach', the Japanese air-force put in an early appearance, the 'stiff-upper lip' rule claimed a few Japanese figures, and we even had another tank battle. 

Both sides were on five medals, and the next casualty would decide the battle. I found a quick easy kill on my turn, got it and scraped a narrow win for the British. But it was a great fight. 

Thanks to Daniel for four great games. And we played them through in just over two hours.