For the first time in this year, I have finally gotten the time to play a F2F wargame with a wargamer from Japan. He insisted to play this game with a local after owning it for so many years and after playing it today, I’d say it’s probably the best game ever on this rarely simulated WW2 Campaign:
He assured me that this will not be some bullshit magazine wargames that Malaya campaign was often subjected to. That’s right, my country and the British Commonwealth Forces deserve better wargame treatment yo.
However. the Japanese title is supposed to be “Malay Blitzkrieg” but the English title is the lamer “Malay Campaign”. Fine. My Japanese friend laboured to translate it to English and after reading it, it sort of reminded me of the recent release of Nemesis: Burma. In “Malay Campaign”, the British player actually has a chance to hold out and causes as much attrition to the Japanese forces, while the Japanese player needs to strike a balance between Blitzkrieg at the risk of overextension and conservative operational pace but missing out objective dateline.
Some examples of rules and actions:
On 8th December 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise two pronged attack on British Malaya: an amphibious assault on Kota Bahru and another land attack from Patani towards Jitra. The Indian brigades from both cities were forced to retreat.
In Jitra, the poor Indian brigades crumbled against Japanese regiments like toilet paper touches water. The game was just a clusterfuck for British player (me) until Australian troops were activated after turn 3.
One of the things I liked about this game is the British player is given the liberty to blow up the bridges around Sungai Perak during the movement phase. I miscalculated the ZOC (a translation error) so a bridge was left undamaged. However, this created an unintended effect in which the Japanese player decided to lead all his forces for a Blitzkrieg through the remaining bridge and hence created a bottleneck.
On the Malaya East Coast front, after getting better understanding on the game, British forces adopted a very passive elastic defence strategy. The second cool thing about this game is during every British turn, the player is given 4 fortification tokens (blue star icon) to build 4 fortification on one different hex and remained hidden until Japanese infantry attacks it, 2 of the tokens are dummies and another the real one. The British player has the opportunity to make bluffs to intimidate the Japanese.
The third thing I liked about this game is only the British player is given the even card every end of the turn. All the event cards are pro British and designed to bring balance to British player. Some cards do not have the text “Hold Card” must be resolved immediately after drawing and usually the effect is milder e.g. reinforcement or Spitfire assistance. “Hold Cards”, on the other hand, is placed into player’s hand and it’s usually more powerful but rarer in the deck of 20+ cards. If used timely, it may influence the momentum of the Japanese player. For example, this British card was used during Siege of Kuantan and successfully repelled the Japanese forces.
The game was ended prematurely after Kuala Lumpur was captured by the Japanese. We’ve played this for almost 7 hours and had to call it a day. However, I consider this a moral victory because I stopped the Japanese from achieving early victory condition (to capture KL and Kuantan by turn 7).
What’s more, there’s also a shorter game included in the box, which is the Siege of Singapore:
I’m happy to see “Malay Campaign” just doesn’t stop at… Malaya campaign. The game continues with an entirely different game of Singapore with different rules set and units. It’s a game I can feel the designer put a lot of love into this campaign and offer a thesis of what-if the British decided to hold out and make this war as blood as possible. This game works brilliantly and I really wish there would be a English version being published soon. (The Japanese reprint is soon to be released end of this year/early next year, after being out of print since 1984.)
