First Campaign - Guadalcanal

The First Solo campaign – Guadalcanal

For my first solo wargaming campaign I have decided to start big. My original plan was a small size campaign, perhaps one of the pint sized campaigns from Too Fat Lardies for Chain of command. However as I read more I was increasingly inspired, especially by the campaigns on the blogs “Grid based wargaming” and “Grymauch's wargaming blog”.

https://gridbasedwargaming.blogspot.com/2019/01/ecw-campaign-game-14-setup-and-report.html

http://grymauch.blogspot.com/

So I have decided to go all out and after thinking about it, I chose Guadalcanal. There are a few reasons for this. The main reason is that it has air, sea and land actions for both sides at a relatively balanced level. Most other campaigns don't have all this elements involved to the same extent. I also love carriers.

I have done a fair bit of research and have produced for myself; a list of notable personalities, a list of all the land and sea forces and the formations they are in as well as their entry into the campaign and a list of the air wings aboard the carriers.

Rules

My ideas for rules are based off of the ideas used in “ Grymauch's wargaming blog” for his ww2 Mediterranean campaign. As such I will use “Bag the Hun” by Too Fat Lardies for the air campaign. General Quarters 3 for the naval campaign and Blitzkrieg Commander for the land campaign. As this is a solo campaign I will make small rule changes when I need to to help everything flow.

As for the strategic rules I have made a few charts for spotting and movement based on the campaign section in GQ3. Both sides will try to follow their general doctrines for the time but I have also made a few crude charts to act as a kind of A.I. For the sides so I don't control all their actions. This should make the campaign more fun and surprising. These rolls will also be influenced by the personality of the commander giving the orders.

I have made a large size strategic map for the naval side of the campaign and a smaller one for the land conflict on the islands.

Miniatures and scenery

I have ordered the air forces in 1/600 scale from tumbling dice. The ships are in 1/3000 from Navwar and the land forces are in 6mm scale from Heroics and Ross. I have ordered a bit of scenery from Time cast and a load of trees and plant life from china. This is my first foray into the small scales in wargaming and the prices are very agreeable compared to the larger scales.

The rest of the scenery I will make myself. I will also make a board which will have sea scape on one side and land on the other.

Historical overview.

The Guadalcanal campaign took place approximately 2 months after the battle of Midway with the landings starting on August 07 1942. Despite their heavy carrier losses at Midway the Imperial Japanese forces had yet to adapt their strategy to a defensively minded one. The construction of an airfield on an Island next to Guadalcanal threatened the sea link between Australian and the US. This lead the US to put together a Task force to take the airfield and nearby islands to fortify this link and lead to its island hopping campaign to win the war.

The unseen arrival of the American task force would allow them to take the airfield quickly. Over the months that followed a long attritional campaign would continue on land air and sea. The Japanese land forces would suffer terribly. The naval forces would do much better than their land counterparts but would later suffer heavy losses. The Air forces would also have some successes but this campaign would see the losses of many of their experiences air crews who could not easily be replaced.

The American forces would see fewer losses, especially on land. However some mistakes and poor choices would cause losses at sea early on.

As time went buy the American positions became stronger and the position of Talugi airfield would prove critical and would allow the US forces to reinforce and resupply the islands easily compared to the desperate night time resupplies by the Japanese navy.

The Japanese forces would decide to withdraw from the islands by the end of December 1942.

We will see if anything will change during the re-fight.

I leave you with a map of Guadalcanal