Marines DLC, "Blissful and Goodtime" report

[Longasc]

A very nice scenario, requires very exact planning and unfortunately a bit experimentation and restarting/reloading, otherwise you might fall in some traps. I almost rand out of time to clear Mono Island in the end due to an error in placement that cost me dearly, the 30 turns are providing you with a lot of resources but time is short.

Initially I landed with 1 Heavy Infantry and 1 NZ Infantry, 1 105mm Howitzer and the Flak on Mono Island.
The small island below was taken by three Marines and gunboat support.

For the Choiseul theatre, I waited. For the two supply ships in the north of Mono Island to come over. In the meantime I used two Raiders to destroy the northern and southern fuel dumps. I lost the southern raider and later raided again with a core force raider after I took the big city on Mono Island and got some reinforcements.

Then I made a mistake. I shipped supply ships and gunboats around Mono Island and also two Infantry units, while others combed the Island for enemy units. That took a lot of time, I should have deployed some units in the North of Mono Island to quickly take the city there. But I didn't.

So I literally in turn 30 killed the last enemy group deep in the jungle of Mono Island. That was quite stressful. On Choiseul my units killed a lot of enemy units, but in the North I got surprised by sudden reinforcements and had to flee. Fortunately I had only a non-core raider and non-core Marine unit there.

Maybe if I would have taken the northern city on Mono Island earlier, the troops in the Jungle would have come to me automatically due to lack of supply (the AI apparently tends to do that).

Later on I read that JFK was involved in Operation Blissful, evacuating some Marines.

All in all, a really nice scenario. I think it can be done differently, but that's the way I figured out so far. You can invade Choiseul without supply ships, more Raiders and fewer Marines, but without having taking the capital on Mono Island I don't think one has the forces to survive Chinese counter attacks. But the aim is rather to kill 10 Chinese units and blow up 4 fuel tanks, so... maybe there is a better strategy for this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_Choiseul
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of ... y_Islands

[mikekt]

I lost my first go round, I didn't realize I had to clear mono island of all enemies. I figured I just had to capture the VPs. It's not easy rooting everyone out in that jungle. I put too many forces on Choiseul as a result. It wasn't hard to hit the secondary objectives but I missed a main one.

I'm on my second playthrough now and have a majority of forces on Mono, north and south together. At game start I only added one core infantry to the Choiseul theatre, lower down. The PT boats add enough supply for two hungry infantry units. The raider works well to soften up an enemy unit for the normal marines to follow-up. So far I've destroyed the middle oil tanks, and I'm invading north and south. Once I destroyed the tanks in the middle, I evacuated by boat.

For my second go, I got landing craft for my infantry units. This helps a lot with softening up shoreside enemies, and gives the marines an attack move when they hit the beach. This has been really valuable to me so far.

[Longasc]

Yeah, this is a drawback of this scenario. I also completed the secondaries easily but taking Mono Island in time, that can be impossible or tricky if you don't know that you really have to hurry. I also deployed too many forces on Choiseul, even if you have to hold nothing there, only to destroy.

[GiveWarAchance]

Choiseul was the famous diversionary raid by the famous Krulak 'the Brute' which was two groups of raiders landing on the island to cause havoc and then evac before the Japanese could figure out was going on. Any game that has this kind of mission included is obviously made by designers who know the Pacific War very well.