TARAWA: ASSAULT ON THE ATOLL 1943 by Joni Nuutinen
LINKS:
⊕ Play Store
⊕ Amazon
⊕ free
⊕ local apk
Tarawa gave the US Marine Corps a chance to put to the test its doctrine on how to do an amphibious assault on a fortified atoll. Several challenges emerged: The smoke from naval bombardment killed visibility, and the coral reefs shredded the boats (resulting founding of the US Navy Underwater Demolition Teams AKA US Navy SEALS). In spite of the nightmare start the Marines waded on the beaches in several locations, only to end up in the middle of positions which had survived the week of aerial attacks. Japanese commander Shibazaki: 'It would take one million men 100 years to conquer Tarawa'.
⊕ Taking place from: 1943-11
⊕ Map size: 2500 = 50 x 30
⊕ Specials:Navigate the reef surrounding the atol, choose where to land units.
⊕ Released: 2020-02
WELCOME:
Tarawa: Assault on the Atoll 1943 by Joni Nuutinen is a turn based strategy game set on the Pacific theater during the Second World War. It would take one million men one hundred years to conquer Tarawa-Japanese commander Keiji Shibazaki. In Operation Galvanic the U.S. Marines tried to do it in much less time, with much less men.
You are in command of the U.S. Marine forces tasked with carrying out an amphibious assault on Betio, which is the largest island in the Tarawa Atoll in spite of being only 0.59 square miles. Tarawa, located in the Gilbert Islands, was needed as a forward air base for future operations in the Pacific, giving the U.S. Marine Corps an opportunity to put to the test its doctrine on how to execute an amphibious assault against a fortified atoll.
Several challenges instantly emerged: the U.S. naval bombardment created so much smoke that all visibility was lost, and the coral reefs shredded both the landing plans and boats (resulting in the founding of the U.S. Navy Underwater Demolition Teams, the precursor to the U.S. Navy SEALS).
In spite of the nightmare start, the U.S. Marines gallantly waded onto the beaches in several locations, only to discover that they were in the middle of fortified Japanese positions, which had survived the week of aerial attacks surprisingly well.
The only option left for the U.S. Marines, squeezed between the reef maze and fortifications, was to keep the costly assault going against the men of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who knew they had nowhere to fall back to on this tiny island.
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
The object of the game is to control all the P_WINVictory 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 100 Victory Points (VPs), which are gained from the cities.
The island is surrounded with reefs which slowly vary to represent changing tide and currents. No unit can move into reef hexagon.
Technically this is just a battle of Betio Island, which is the most significant land mass on the Tarawa atoll (which is part of the Gilbert Islands). The most of the Japanese forces were located on the island of Betio.
There are no moveable airforce units due to the very small physical size of the area in play and (resource-based) airforce strikes have been replaced with (resource-based) Naval Bombardments, which can be turned off from Settings. Naval bombardment can also be used to scout unseen enemy area.
The one single airfield dominating the tiny island has been marked with black (railway) styled lines to make it easier to visualize, but the black lines do not have any functional meaning.
Exceptionally in this particular campaign Japanese Navy units form the main bulk of the regular enemy ground combat forces.
The location of Japanese Tank units (and related artillery and General units) are varied greatly to maintain high re-play value.
The very long and narrow South-West-Western tip of the island has been reduced in length, as there is not much sense advancing all the U.S. troops along a very narrow long piece of land historically fairly devoid of enemy forces.
Antiboat-fire happens between turns but will eventually reduce as Japanese lose control of the beaches (in previous scenarios antiboat-fire only took place during the first turn).
Less Units feature has been disabled in this particular scenario since the number of ground combat units is already fairly limited.
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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