BOUGAINVILLE GAMBIT by Joni Nuutinen
LINKS:
⊕ Play Store
⊕ Amazon
⊕ free
⊕ local apk
You are in command of Allied forces tasked with carrying out an amphibious assault on Bougainville. Your first objective is to secure the three airfields, using American troops. These airfields are critical to gain air strike capabilities. Once secured, Australian troops will relieve the US forces and finish seizing the rest of the island. Beware: a huge Japanese naval base nearby may launch a counter-landing, and you will be facing a fierce counter-attack by the battle-hardened Japanese 6th Division, which has seen combat since 1937.
⊕ Taking place from: 1943-11
⊕ Map size: 2500 = 50 x 50
⊕ Specials: Various US units land to secure 3 planned US airfields, but are redeployed, and Australians finish seizing the island. Unique Japanese counter-landing on top of Americans, fierce Japanese counter-attack by elite 6th Div. Pacific.
⊕ Released: 2024-10
WELCOME:
Bougainville Gambit 1943 by Joni Nuutinen is a turn based strategy game set on the WWII Pacific theater.
You are in command of Allied forces in WWII, tasked with leading an amphibious assault on Bougainville. Your first objective is to secure the three airfields marked on the map, using American troops. These airfields are critical to gain air strike capabilities. Once secured, fresh Australian troops will relieve the US forces and take on the task of capturing the rest of the island.
Beware: a massive Japanese naval base nearby may launch a counter-landing. Additionally, you will be facing the elite and battle-hardened Japanese 6th Division, which has seen combat since 1937. Air strikes will only be available after the three designated airfields are under your control. On the positive side, the western coast, though swampy, should initially have a lighter Japanese presence, unlike the heavily fortified north, east, and south sectors. Good luck!
Unique Challenges of the Bougainville Campaign: Bougainville presents a number of unique challenges. Notably, you may face a rapid Japanese counter-landing almost on top of your own ongoing landing. The Japanese will repeatedly attempt to reinforce their troops, though many of these efforts will fail. This campaign also marks the first combat action of African American infantry units, with elements of the 93rd Division seeing action in the Pacific Theater. Additionally, partway through the campaign, US forces will be replaced by Australian units who will need to secure the rest of the island.
This campaign is often overlooked due to its role in the wider passive encirclement of Rabaul, one of Japan's most fortified positions in the South Pacific. active periods of combat in Bougainville were interspersed with long stretches of inactivity, contributing to its lower profile in WWII histories.
Historical Background: After assessing the heavily fortified Japanese base at Rabaul, Allied commanders decided to encircle and cut it of supplies rather than launch a direct, costly assault. A key step in this strategy was seizing Bougainville, where the Allies planned to build several airfields. With the Japanese already having constructed fortifications and airfields on the northern and southern ends of the island, the Americans boldly chose the swampy central region for their own airfields, catching Japanese strategic planners by surprise.
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
The object of this scenario is to control all the 110 Victory Points as quickly as possible.
QUICK TIPS: Settings: You can change hexagon size, city icons, unit icons, and many other aspects from settings, or via the four round buttons in the upper-left corner of the gaming view. Unit markings: Lower left corner shows HPs (Hit Points), upper left corner shows the number of MPs (move points), right side has several type of markings: warnings on red, attached resources on white, ground information (what's under unit icon) is marked on green. Zooms buttons (Z) are located on upper-left corner. Combat core concepts: adjacent units critically support each other in battle encircling is often more efficient than using brute-force direct attacks. TMP-system: By controlling Key Tactical Locations (green diamonds) you will gain TMPs (Tactical Move Points), which can be used to move between two hexagons sharing Tactical Route (yellow-green arrow between the hexagons) without losing regular MPs.
CAMPAIGN NOTES:
Victory Conditions: Control all 110 Victory Points (VPs), which are gained from the cities.
Massive part of this particular scenario is redeployment of American units. The US Marines are first to land, but also the first unit to be redeployed elsewhere in the Pacific. After that the US Army Infantry will be redeployed, and lastly, even the Americal Division will be sent elsewhere. Leaving you in command of Australians, Fijis, and some elements of the US Colored 93rd Division as they finish seizing the island.
NOTICE: Special airfield airfields: There are regular old airfields that generals can use to fly from to another nearby airfield. But there are also big zones of planned major airfields (marked with circles), and controlling those areas will give the player air strike resources.
Timetable: So, Bougainville campaign is filled with unique and interesting events, but also, sadly from the game-flow point of view, also includes several multi-month nothing-happened time periods. This game basically skips over all the nothing-happened months to condense this 2 year prolonged struggle into 2-4 months.
Another massive what-if variable is the fact that Japanese outside this particular map, sent several convoys of troops to Bougainville: Some turned back due to US naval interference, some made landings in the middle of US troops, some landed elsewhere on the island as reinforcements. These landings are depicted to succeed a bit more than they did in reality.
Road-building: Since the landing zone is the swampy area of the island, it is fairly free of roads. You will automatically get only a few build-road resources and it is possible to get build-road resources as rewards for seizing major targets. Generals can request more, but the cost keeps getting higher and staying high longer, the more roads you build. Actions by Generals: The Sabotage and 'Request Road Building' menu items alternate by general and by turn.
The WWII Allies had exceptionally poor maps of this island, and as a result, the period maps include names that do not match the modern place names at all. So, I have been merrily mixing the names from all sources to be able to fill up the map.
The map has been slightly tilted to sit on north-south axis, and slightly widened to prevent AI going haywire. The northern island of Buka has been connected to the main island via land, but that land is filled with rivers.
You can land elsewhere on the island, but the reinforcements will continue to appear in front of the Torokina, so the supply route will be more challenging as it gets longer. Plus you will miss air strikes, as these only became available once the area around the three planned airfields has been seized.
The 93rd Infantry Division will arrive in two completely different waves, to represent the fact that some elements of the division saw active combat (25th regiment), and the rest were carrying out labor and security tasks (368th and 369th regiments).
In this particular scenario the landing ramp unit type cannot be disabled, since it is a crucial starting point which allows you to place any future Build-Road resources on the map in the landing zone (since they must be placed adjacent to an existing road hexagon and the landing zone is a swampy road-free area).
Tip: You really want to prioritize seizing the area (range 1) around the three planned US airfields. The resulting air strikes will give you a fighting chance against the fierce Japanese counter-attack. After you have handled the Japanese counter-attack, you can speed things up by landing units along the coastal line as the front-line advances. The redeployment of units elsewhere, gives Call-for-Support resource some extra weight, as you can still ferry out some HPs out of those units about to leave to units that will stay around handful of turns longer.
Scenario Specific documentation that includes links to more generic documentation on how the game series and the underlying game engine works.
To get a feel play the free turn-limited demo version (sideload or Amazon App Store), while screenshots are available on the app stores.
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-- FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) about game series overal
-- Developer Log: tidbits about military history and scenario updates
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