Bloody Buna

In 1942, the Japanese High Command decided that to isolate Australia, they would capture the airfields of Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea to use them as a forward air base against Australia. In July 1942, Japanese amphibious forces landed on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. They moved inland towards Port Moresby, having to traverse the dense rainforest of the Owen Stanley Mountains. The only defence available was under-trained Australian militia, nicknamed "Chocos" because they were expected to melt like chocolate in the heat of battle against the jungle-trained Japanese forces. But unexpectedly, the Chocos managed to slow the Japanese advance to a crawl, making time for Australian Imperial forces to arrive. Slowly the Australians began to roll the Japanese forces back through the mountains. The Japanese tried a flanking maneuver near Milne Bay but were repulsed by a joint Australian-American force. Tropical diseases such as dengue fever, malaria and dysentery plagued both sides, with one Australian battalion losing a quarter of their strength to disease in one month.^[1]

Bloody Buna is a two-player wargame where one player controls the Japanese forces, and the other player controls the Australian and American forces. Critic John Kula noted that as of 2000, this was the only board wargame that focused on the jungle war in Papua New Guinea.^[2]

The game system uses an alternating "I Go, You Go" series of turns in which one player moves and attacks, followed by the other player. This completes one game turn, which represents one day of game time. The game has 192 cardstock counters and a hex grid map of Papua New Guinea.

In addition to rules for movement, combat and supply, there are also rules for air superiority, airlifts, off-board movement, sea movement and armored combat.^[3]

To simulate the dangers of forcing a path through the jungle, both sides face attritional losses if units leave the forest paths and try to cut through the jungle.^[2]

The game comes with three scenarios simulating each phase of the New Guinea Campaign:

• Milne Bay: The initial landing by Japanese forces.
• High Water Mark: Can the Japanese reach the airfields?
• Bloody Buna: Allied forces converge on the Japanese.

A campaign game links all three scenarios together.

Bloody Buna was designed by Bob Latter and published by 3W as a free pull-out game in Issue 9 of their house magazine The Wargamer. 3W also released a boxed version of the game.^[2]