Playing the WWII Midway scenario by Peter Landry (Teaticket) at 2018 Origins.
This one was full, with 14 players (7 per side). Undoubtedly the name recognition of the battle helped. Peter told me this match was originally for 12 players and he squeezed 2 more players in.
The U.S. players each started out flying a Devastator. Peter said we would each be picking up a Wildcat and a Dauntless “later.” It turned out he had a unique and novel approach to bringing them onto the map.
The Japanese Zeros were spread out in a line in front of us, blocking our way to the carriers at the far end of the map. This is photo is at the end of the first turn. The Zeros came straight at us – no subtlety at all here. I’m flying the Devastator on the far right.
When I saw the Japanese coming straight at us my immediate thought was “they’re going to regret this…”
And this is why I thought that. As you can see, on the first exchange of fire we’ve already gotten a fire on one of them.
The Devastator was a slow aircraft – in this scenario they have about half the movement rate of the Zeros (if that). The Zeros should have come around on our right side and swung in behind us and concentrated their fire to knock us down one after the other. They would have had short range shots of (if I recall) 2 C’s and a D versus an A from the Devastator’s single A rear gun.
BY coming straight through our formation they saved a bit of time, but exposed themselves to much more potential damage from our Devastators, since many of us had shots from both our forward and rear guns. This exposed them to the potential of much more damage from us than would have happened if they had taken their time to work around our side to get into our 6 o’clock. The guy on fire took two A’s from myself and the Devastator to my 10 o’clock. There was so much going on in this scenario I didn’t get a photo each card, but the Zeros got badly beaten up. One guy found himself in the middle of our formation and took no less than 5 A’s. I learned not to fly through a large formation in a B-17 scenario at Origins last year. A guy took his FW-190 through the center of the B-17 formation – it was basically like sending his plane through a wood chipper. Peter agreed with me, and said something to the effect that he thought the Japanese side had already lost.
As I said, I missed a few photos. Here, we’ve already lost two Devastators, and third just went down. The Zero on fire earlier went down, as well as another one. In this photo one on the left is smoking. And if you look over to the right, you will see two Wildcats and two Dauntlesses entering the map.
Peter had a novel way to approach the scenario – when you lost your Devastator, you got your Wildcat and Dauntless on the other side of the map. As you can see, they’re all alone over there.
I had turned hard to the right with my Devastator in the hopes of making one of the zeros break from their group and come chase me. When I saw how the new planes were going to enter, I immediately plotted left turns to move away from them – I didn’t want to draw any attention to them if I could avoid it.
As it turns out, it doesn’t matter – a Zero coming across in front of me hits me at point blank range, and down I go. Two Zeros who were shot down earlier are coming onto the map – and they chose to come in right in front the Devastators and keep pounding them, while totally ignoring the Dauntlesses on the other side of the map. An almost textbook example of target fixation. Another Devastator can be seen going down on the left side of the map, but he also shot down the Zero in his six.
Same as previous photo, seen from the left edge of the map.
And same again, this time from the right edge of the map.
The Zero that got my Devastator has belated recognized the threat from the right edge of the map from the Dauntlesses. However, he’s heavily outnumbered, and he will shortly be taking a swim.
We now have 5 Devastators down – but that means we now have 5 each Wildcats and Dauntlesses on the map. The Wildcats move to wall off the Zeros from getting to our dive bombers.
Wildcats chew on the Zeros. One of the ones we shot down is coming back on the map, and has placed himself directly in the path of the Dauntlesses.
A Zero down and another one smoking while we have a Wildcat on fire.
The Zero in front of the dive bombers came straight at our dive bombers, took heavy damage, and is on fire. Another is coming back on the map directly behind him.
An example of what I was talking about earlier. Already on fire, this Zero gets hit with no less than 5 guns. And he goes down. My Dauntless is the one directly in front of him. At the far right of the photo you can see the other Zero that redeployed in front of our dive bombers. He’s not nearly enough.
Meanwhile, I made a major mistake with my Wildcat, and I am now smoking.
This was my last photo. My Wildcat got shot down. We blew past the last Zero with no casualties. The leading Dauntless has a direct shot at the carrier in front of him, and plots his bomb cards. His other plane damaged the escorting destroyer. I’m lined up directly on it, so I decide to go for him and plot my first bomb card.
At this point, we run out of time and have to clear the table to allow the next match to be set up. Peter judges that the remaining Zeros are too far out of position to prevent our bomb drops, so we pull chits for damage. The guy in the lead Dauntless draws – I kid you not – the “fuzzy zero” for his hit, and sinks the carrier. I pull a high enough chit to sink the destroyer.
This one played out (within the confines of the game) almost exactly the way it really happened. The Japanese all raced to tear into the Devastators, and, even when they saw the dive bombers coming in on the opposite edge of the map, continued to try to chase down all of the Devastators rather than send anyone over to deal with this new threat. By the time they did, the Dauntlesses were too close to the ships, and there wasn’t enough space or time to stop them before they dropped their bombs.
I also have to say again how novel Peter’s mechanic was for how the dive bombers and fighters would enter the map. The only quibble I would have is that by the end of the scenario the Japanese player had only shot down 6 out of the 7 Devastators, which meant that the guy flying the 7th one never got to get his Wildcat and Dauntless – he was still lumbering along in his Devastator. Peter, if you read this, a tweak if you run this again might be that on turn “X”, anyone not yet shot down in their Devastator gets their fighter and dive bomber on that turn anyway.
Personally, I did not fly very well, but had a ball playing this.
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