Combat Commander Pacific – After Action Report – Scenario M3 – Rebuked at Rabi

Some games of Combat Commander are kinetic romps where both sides are attacking, taking losses, taking over territory, maybe losing territory.

And some aren’t…

Not that they aren’t fun.

Combat Commander is always fun.

But some of the games just start out slow, have a really kinetic and exciting middle, and then settle down into a “will I be able to get a cool event that will save me?” stalemate (funny, “Stalemate” was last month’s scenario!).

Wait, “stalemate” sounds like neither side is winning.

I’m actually talking about a “hold on for dear life and hope nothing bad happens” versus “hope something really good happens for me.”

Welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, administered by the magnificent Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.

You should check that out if you want some great Civil War game videos!

Once again we are in the Pacific theater of Combat Commander instead of the European theater, meaning we have some rules to remember that haven’t been used in 10 months or so.

Yes, including the fact that fixing your weapon actually activates you so that you can’t actually use it that turn, which I’d forgotten in September!

This month’s opponent was Dwight P, another repeat opponent. This time it was in a Mediterranean scenario back in June 2023, though I haven’t written about it because it was a pickup game rather than a Ladder game, and I had decided not to write about it for some reason (some of my pickup games I do write about).

Anyway, it was nice to meet up with Dwight officially for this scenario.

Sides were chosen at random right before we started, so I had no idea how to prepare!

This month’s scenario takes place during the Japanese invasion of New Guinea, with an Australian counterattack against some Japanese forces defending their initial landing points.

(don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)

The Japanese (white – me) set up first, up to 10 hexes from the left side of the board.

The Australians (tan – Dwight) then set up 2 hexes from the right side.

The little area of huts on the bottom left where some Japanese forces are situated is worth one point, but Objective 3 (the road hex where there’s one lone Japanese team in the back) is worth 5 points.

One big special rule is that the bridge across the steam doesn’t exist, so those two hexes are stream hexes (bad cover, takes a lot of movement points to enter).

The second special rule is that Level 2 hexes don’t exist. They are considered Level 1.

So there’s basically two low hills with a lot of jungle on both sides with a gully in between with a stream.

I set up a blocking force down on Objective 1 and the majority of my force (including the bunker and 3 foxholes, which are set up after the Australians set up) in the middle, where I thought they would have decent line of sight to most of the gully.

That was wrong.

Dwight then set up a sizeable force in the middle, but an even more sizeable force at the bottom, ready to run through the jungle and sprint past all the heavy guns that wouldn’t be able to see them much.

I should mention the other special rules before we continue.

Winslow, the Australian Hero, sets up in hex O10 with the Thompson SMG. He didn’t take part in any of the actual fighting, but he was instrumental in causing a lot of havoc among the Japanese.

More on that later.

The other big one is that, since the jungle was less dense in this coastal area of New Guinea, if the line of sight just goes through one jungle hex, it has a 4 hindrance rather than being blocked.

We used that one a lot.

Which one of us was I talking about at the top of this episode?

Let’s find out.

The beginning of the game was an exciting test of discarding skills, as the Japanese could literally not see anybody and the Australians couldn’t draw any Move cards.

With one exception that the Japanese Medium Machine Gun and Battalion Gun could actually see one small stack of Australians.

This is where I made my second huge mistake (my first was setting up the way I did): I completely forgot that I had put the Battalion Gun in that hex!

I think I fired 2-3 times before realizing that I had an extra attack, and by then they couldn’t see anybody again.

Anyway, I drew a 10 firepower attack, making it a total of 18, and both units broke.

The Battalion Gun might have killed them if I’d gotten lucky. Just sayin’…

Dwight had drawn an Advance and advanced them out of sight, along with the rest of the guys in the south.

Later, after many more discards on both sides, Dwight moved the Australian Hero up into the woods, looking over the non-existent bridge and at the only one of my squads he could see.

But that was enough to use the Reconnoiter card (you just need a leader with line of sight to an enemy unit) to see what the top card of his deck was.

He left it on top of the deck, then played an Asset Request, knowing that it would give him the radio he wanted.

Winslow was a pain in my ass for most of the game, and he was mainly just sitting there!

Thankfully the artillery he constantly called down on me didn’t do much.

All I could do is curse my bad setup, though in hindsight I could have moved a squad or two from the northern force to the southern one.

It was taking Dwight long enough to get moving and I occasionally did draw an Advance or a Move card.

But mostly I was drawing Fires and Revives, which are pretty worthless when you can’t see anybody.

I had dropped some Wire on them to slow their advance further, but on one of my many discards, Dwight had a Demolitions action that would let him remove a Japanese fortification.

This was not my night.

After a couple of more advances and moves, the Australians were finally in sight of my southern force, if only through the -4 jungle hindrance.

It was time to start firing, because as the Defender, even low attacks can be good because they churn through cards.

The first attack caused a Japanese sniper, which missed (and never hit during the entire game even though there are tons of Australians out there).

Also, after my first attack drew a 10 way back at the beginning, I almost always drew a 6 or less on every other attack the rest of the game except a couple of times when it didn’t really matter.

Meanwhile, Dwight’s sniper hit a couple of times, including this time where it broke Obata (who is leading the southern force).

Things were getting hairy, but they would have to cross the stream at some point and maybe take some heavy fire there?

Nope! Instead, Obata’s squad and weapons team were annihilated by the Australians fire from across the gully.

I retreated them into the jungle to save them.

That, of course, opened the way for him to cross the stream unmolested, but I figured my guys would die quickly if they tried to stay and fight.

Maybe I could entice him into some melee, with the Ambush cards I was holding?

I also had a Hidden Unit card all ready for when he had to discard, which took up most of the first half hour, so surely at some point he would have to again?

Dwight kept moving his guys and suddenly the northern Japanese units could see them!

They opened fire (also through a jungle hindrance) and sadly did nothing.

Due to poor setup, they literally could not see into the gully down at the bottom of the map (what the hell was I thinking?), but there were a couple of units left on the heights when it was my turn.

I decided that, since I couldn’t draw a Reconnoiter card to save my life (after drawing 2-3 of them when I literally could not see anybody), I would try a random draw for a radio.

Not much of a chance, 33%, and it of course failed.

The Australians made it across the stream and opened fire on Obata again, breaking him.

And then a second attack killed him.

The three remaining Japanese units down there were leaderless.

More movement and my southern guys were getting seriously crowded. I thought a melee was imminent with that huge force.

Meanwhile, Winslow started calling down artillery on the main bunker, breaking a unit and suppressing another.

Dwight also drew a completely unneeded Reinforcement event that brought another leader out.

Maybe he brought the Fosters beer with him!

Dwight then played an Advance and I thought it was curtains for my squad (even though the Japanese can actually move away from them before the melee happens, but my one Move card was also my Hidden Unit!), but instead the Australians ignored them like they were inconsequential.

So not only are they getting mauled, they’re getting dismissed?

That hurt.

I finally got to play my Hidden Unit when Dwight finally had to discard.

This brought a new leader to the southern force, destined to probably die quickly.

But would he?

Right now my only hope was to do enough little attacks to get Time advancing, and maybe end the game before Dwight exited this massive force.

We were up to Time 4 with 7 being Sudden Death (of course, the game might not end at Sudden Death).

Dwight put paid to that strategy by Advancing almost completely out of my sight.

So it was time to move my guys north, because I was also thinking my lone team in Objective 3 would be quickly overrun before Dwight exited, meaning not only would he get 27 points from exiting, he would also get 10 points for taking that objective.

The game would be over.

Not only were the guys moving north, it was time to just leave a screening force in the bunker and move most of the Japanese in the north back to see if they could prevent the exiting.

It was all heading for a showdown, with the Australians advancing one more hex and the Japanese moving into position.

Dwight decided that discretion was the better part of valor and to not take the objective, instead just exiting everybody for 2 points each (and one team for 1 point).

With the Australians doing that, it was time to move back to the center, and I also fantasized about trying to run some of my units off the board before the Australian exiters came back.

That exit had given the Australians an 8-point advantage and it was now Dwight who wanted to run out the clock (knowing that I would get at least 2 points before Sudden Death).

I did have more guys I could move forward with the new leader who was broken right now, but I couldn’t draw a Move card!

I thought it was time to give up on the fantasy of exiting and get my guys back into the bunker, especially when the Australians in the north who had done nothing all game started moving into the jungle to give them line of sight for some low-odds attacks.

When I drew a Time event and all of those Aussies came back onto the board, it was moot anyway.

Here’s where I’m going to stop doing the play by play because this literally descended into multiple rounds of firing back and forth, with me hoping for a good event or to get lucky with a sniper or something.

Along with one Japanese squad taking Objective 1 to get me 2 more points.

Basically, a good sniper or two, an event that gave me VP, and the game not ending for a couple of extra Sudden Deaths (so I would get Defender VP), and suddenly I would actually be able to win!

Anything can happen in Combat Commander, so don’t give up unless it’s totally hopeless.

The only thing that actually happened, and this could have been huge because we were currently at 4 VP for Dwight, was a new Strategic Objective was drawn!

I held four of the five objectives, so it would be almost guaranteed to give me points unless it was a “Double Points for Exiting” or “Double Points for Eliminated Units” or something.

Or if it was Objective 2, which was the only objective the Australians held.

Flip the objective counter…and it’s Objective 2 is worth 2 points.

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got through two Time advances this way, until finally Time 9 ended the game with the Australians holding a 4-point lead.

Here’s the situation at the end of the game.

There were five objectives that, if pulled, would have won me the game, and even more that would have won it if the Objective 2 counter hadn’t been drawn as well.

(As I was writing this, I checked to see how many objective counters there are in the mix that give points only for Objective #2. There are exactly 2 of them, out of 21 counters. That’s less than a 5% chance!)

And I was hoping for another event (or chain of snipers) that would give me a couple of additional points.

Very small hope, but it was there.

We were having fun laughing at the whole situation as well, so I didn’t want to concede until all hope was lost.

A bad setup on my part and bad positioning overall, and Dwight took advantage of it as any good player would.

He’s also a really fun opponent and I hope he does well next month as well.

This loss puts me at 34-30 in my ladder career.

Still not bad, but I don’t want a string of losses to continue.

Next month we go back to Europe, and into the ruins of Stalingrad with the Stalingrad battle pack.

The last year or two, we’ve been lucky to get scenarios that don’t use the Stalingrad special rules (they take place outside of the city proper), but I’m feeling that we will get one in the heart of the city next month.

If you enjoyed this write-up, why not join us on the ladder, where you too can play a monthly game and also probably a bunch of other games as well?

Heck, you could probably be playing every day if you really wanted to.

Before we head out, my advice to you is always check your line of sight when setting up defenders.

Otherwise you get a bunch of guys who can’t see anything and just hear the enemy running through the jungle.

Take care!

Combat Commander Ladder – After Action Reports

To see all of my Ladder After Action Reports since May 2021, go here!