Tanks on
Leyte
When we brought out MacArthur’s
Return in 1994, we promised to someday
produce a variant for it, our very first.
Just what possessed us to make such a ridiculous
vow is hard to say this many years later.
We certainly meant it at the time, but the
resources to produce an additional counter
sheet just for variant pieces never came to
us, not did the means to effectively get it
in the hands of our fans (short of just sending
them out in a shotgun mailing).
With our new program of daily updates to
the Web site and the many free downloads we’re
offering, we now have the means to redeem
these ancient promises. MacArthur’s
Return will soon go out of stock, and
it’s good to be able to deliver this
variant while the game is still on our shelves
and those who have missed it still have a
chance to grab this exciting game.
Actual counters are
1/2" square.
The counters we’re providing this time
are somewhat different from those in the original
game. In 1993, when we created the game, we
did art very differently. Mark Simonitch did
the map the old-fashioned way, cutting out
pieces of ruby film to build each layer by
hand. Brien Miller did the counters on a computer
(itself an innovation for 1993), but in an
ancient program we no longer possess and in
files that became corrupted years back. The
game pieces drew attention at the time, but
today they show their dozen years’ age
in a field that progresses rapidly almost
by the day.
Therefore the variant pieces are done to
the style we might use were MacArthur’s
Return published by us in 2005. They
are perfectly compatible with the original
pieces, but are far more attractive. These
are the same style pieces that we’ll
use in Tiger
of Malaya, a Classic Wargame
proposal.
The 2nd Armored Division
The Japanese concentrated their 2nd Armored
Division on Luzon, the main island of the
Philippines, to await the American invasion
there where the terrain suited mass employment
of tanks. Two companies went to Leyte as reinforcements,
but the bulk of the division stayed on Luzon
and fought the Americans there.
Motorized infantry on Leyte.
To have the full division waiting behind
the Leyte beachheads would have required a
gamble the Japanese commander, Gen. Tomoyuki
Yamashita, decided not to take. The Japanese
did not have complete intelligence on American
plans, though they could estimate that an
assault on the Philippines was coming and
that common American practice would dictate
seizing ports and airfields first.
Leyte offered both.
The Variant
The new units are used in Scenario Five only,
as a variant giving the Japanese a greater
chance of battlefield victory. They may be
placed anywhere on Leyte, within eight hexes
of the division HQ unit. Keep all other conditions
(including victory) the same. Note that none
of the new Japanese units are jungle-capable.
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