Game of the Week, June 1-7

From June 1 through June 7, this week’s Game of the Week is Squad Battles: The Proud and the Few, on sale for 25% off. 

The title follows the United States Marine Corps across the island battlefields of the Pacific War, from the desperate early days after Pearl Harbor to the bitter fighting on the road toward Japan. As the USMC-focused sister title to Squad Battles: Pacific War, it is a game about patrols, assaults, ambushes, bunker lines, beachheads, fortified caves, villages, ridgelines, jungle, coral, volcanic rock, and close-range infantry combat.

The Long Road Across the Pacific

The Pacific War began for the United States in catastrophe. The attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was followed by a rapid Japanese advance across much of the Pacific and Southeast Asia. American, British, Dutch, Australian, Filipino, and other Allied forces were pushed back, defeated, or isolated. The war that followed was not a single front in the familiar sense, but an oceanic struggle fought across islands, sea lanes, airfields, ports, and remote outposts separated by enormous distances.

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt, 8 December 1941

For the United States Marine Corps, the war became both a test and a transformation. Before 1941, the Corps had spent years thinking about amphibious warfare and advanced bases. Now those ideas had to be turned into practice under fire. The Marines were not the only American ground force in the Pacific, but they became closely associated with the island campaigns that marked the American advance back across the ocean. Their task was often simple to describe and extremely hard to carry out: land on a defended shore, survive the first shock, and then destroy an enemy dug into terrain that favored concealment, delay, and defense.

The first great test came at Guadalcanal in 1942. It was not a polished demonstration of overwhelming American strength, but a desperate campaign fought at the edge of logistical endurance. The struggle for Henderson Field drew in land, sea, and air forces, but much of the fighting was decided by patrols, night attacks, river lines, ridges, jungle trails, and small defensive perimeters. It set the pattern for much of what followed: limited visibility, uncertain intelligence, difficult supply, and infantry combat at very short range.

As the American advance continued, the tactical problems became familiar but no less deadly. Jungle reduced visibility. Coral and volcanic rock made digging difficult. Caves, bunkers, and prepared positions could survive heavy bombardment. Heat, rain, insects, thirst, and disease wore men down before the enemy was even seen. Naval guns, aircraft, artillery, tanks, and flamethrowers gave American forces enormous striking power, but they did not remove the need for infantry to close with the defender. Again and again, positions had to be found, suppressed, assaulted, cleared, and held.

Marines Advance on Japanese Pill Boxes, Tarawa, November 1943 (CC BY 2.0) 

The Japanese defensive approach also changed. Early attempts to defeat landings at the waterline increasingly gave way to defense in depth, with troops dug into caves, ridges, reverse slopes, bunkers, and mutually supporting positions. The aim was often no longer to throw the Americans back into the sea, but to make every advance as costly as possible. This gave many Pacific battles their grim character: overwhelming American material power on one side, stubborn and often hidden resistance on the other, with the decisive action taking place at the level of squads, platoons, and companies.

私の帰還をあてにしてはいけない。私が死んだと聞いても、驚いてはいけない。

"Do not plan for my return. Do not be surprised when you hear that I have died."

–  Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi (7 July 1891 – 26 March 1945)
in a letter to his wife, Yoshi, from Iwo Jima

That is the world The Proud, and the Few brings to the Squad Battles series. The Pacific War was a campaign of immense distances, but for the Marines fighting it, the battlefield often shrank to a few yards of beach, jungle, ridge, trench, cave mouth, or village street. It was a war of small tactical problems repeated under extreme conditions: how to cross open ground under fire, clear a bunker, hold a night perimeter, push through jungle, or survive long enough for the next attack to begin.

What's in the game

• The Proud and the Few includes 72 Scenarios – covering all sizes and situations, including specialized versions for both head-to-head play and vs. the computer AI.
• Included are 37 unique maps ranging in size from 390 hexes to 77,028 hexes, covering many of the island-hopping operations in the Pacific theater.
• The Order of Battles includes the US Army, the US Marine Corps, the Japanese Army, and the Japanese Navy.
• Unit component, Order-of-Battle, and Scenario Editors, which allow players to customize the game.
• Map & Sub-map editors allow map creation and enable any included maps to be "chopped" into smaller segments for custom scenario creation.
• The Proud and the Few provides multiple play options, including play against the computer AI, Play by E-mail (PBEM), LAN & Internet "live" play, and two-player hot seat.

Books and Videos

Here are some book and video recommendations to give a deeper insight into the historical background of the game. Clicking the book cover brings you to Amazon.

Sledge, E. B. With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Leckie, Robert. Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific. New York: Random House, 1957.

Frank, Richard B. Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle. New York: Random House, 1990.

Hammel, Eric. War in the Pacific: The U.S. Marines in the Marianas, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, 1944-1945. Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2014.

Screenshots

Here are some screenshots from the updated game. Additional screenshots and details about the new update can be found here.

We hope you enjoy this week’s Game of the Week: Squad Battles: The Proud and the Few. Like all WDS titles, it provides countless hours of rich historical gameplay at a very attractive price.