Bolt Action: Campaign Mariana & Palau Islands

Disclaimer: This is not a physical product. You will receive a digital download of your eBook after your purchase.

This supplement for the Bolt Action game gives players all the information and tools they need in order to recreate the historical battles that took place during 1944 in the Pacific Theatre, specifically those in the island-hopping campaign of the Mariana and Palau Islands. The scenarios detailed are based on real battles and each describes the events that occurred, informed by considerable historical research. This book also contains the relevant force selectors, units, and rules specific to the Marianas and Palau campaigns. However, to play these battles you will need the Bolt Action rulebook and the Armies of Imperial Japan, Armies of the United States, and Empire in Flames supplements. Additionally, the Tank War supplement will benefit players planning to re-enact the larger tank battles.

The Pacific island-hopping campaign was a naval blitzkrieg that took the US across the Pacific to the very gates of Japan. The invasion of Saipan took place at the same time as the Normandy beach landings in June of 1944. In September of the same year, one of the bloodiest battles in American history was occurring on a small Pacific island, as the US Marine Corps fought to take Bloody Nose Ridge; at the same time in Europe, vast formations of Russian tanks were rumbling into the Baltic and a tiny contingent of British paratroopers were holding Arnhem bridge, hoping to be relieved.

The island battles of Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, and Angaur were relatively unknown to the public until the 2010 HBO series The Pacific highlighted them. The campaigns were controversial and bloody, and tarnished the reputation of more than one military commander. The inhumanity witnessed on Peleliu rivals that seen in the Battle of Stalingrad, and most American participants thought it was a totally futile fight. Some Marines who fought there completely lost their minds. There was a possibility that the US Army would replace the United States Marine Corps (USMC), which meant that there was considerable inter-service rivalry and a partisan attitude by some of the commanders that arguably cost lives. The role of the US Army in these operations was often dismissed as just a mopping up exercise, when in fact they faced the same battles that the USMC did.