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PAGE THEGENERAL

valon Hill Philosophy Part 64ENER

rne ame Players Na gaz ~neThe Avalon Hi ll GENERAL is dedicated to the presenta-

tion of auth orita tive articles on the strategy, tactics, andvariation of Avalon H il l games of strategy. Historical articles

are included oniv insomuch as they provide useful back-ground inforr rrent Avalon Hill titles. THEGENERAL is the Avalon Hi ll Company solelyfor the culturi f the serious game aficionado, nthe hopes of i lame owner's proficiency of playand providing .herwise available to the AvalonHill game buff.

Publication 1s bi-monthly with maili ngsmadeclosetothe end of February. April, June. August. October , andDecember. All edl torlal and general ma il should besen t tothe Avalon Hill Game Company. 4517 Harford Ad.,Baltimore. O 21214 One yearsubscriptlons are $7.50.Trlal subscrlptlons of 4 issues for $5.00 are available. Atwo year subscription is only 512.00. Send checks ormoney orders only. Not responsible o rcas h lost in transit.All subscr~ptlons ent via bulk permit. Airmail and 1stclass delivery must be prearranged wlth the subscriptiondepartment at additlori al cost. Address changes must besubmitted to the subscription department 6 weeks in

-advance o guar antee delivery. No paid advertlsina of anytype is accep , news of ~ m r ewargaming cc ~ rinted ree 1 s

solic~ted.Articles from nuomrtlsrs are considered for puwgcatton at

the discretion of our editorial staff. Articles should betypewritten, double-spaced, and embrace the tenets of goodEnglish usags. There is no lim it to w ord length. Accompany-ing examples and diagrams should be neatly done in black orred ink. Photographs should have caption and credit linewrit ten on back. Rejected articles wil l be returned wheneverpo%ibIe.

EDITOR: Donald J. GreanwoaGRAPHICS: Jim Hamilton, IMoores, Steve Oliff. Charles

Nothing, i t seems, marches on at t he steady,unstoppable pace of inflation. The new year wi llbring yet another price increase for Avalon Hill

games making Christmas this year a doubleinducement for purchase of that Avalon Hillgame you've been putting off. Effective January1st all flat box games currently priced at $9. 00will sell for $10.00. In addition the followingbookcase games will rise to $12.00: ARABISRAELI WAR S, DIPLOMACY, THIRD REICH,PANZER LEADER, PANZERBLITZ, WORDPOWER, SHAKESPEARE, TUF, TUFABET, andOUTDOOR SURVIVAL.

NEW GAMES REPORT

ASSAULT ON CRETE, NAPOLEON, andSUBMARINE are all in various staaes of

A.R.E.A.

Action in the A.R.E.A. r ating pools has beenhot and heavy of late wi th more and more people

reaching th e verif ied stage. A:R.E.A. technicianRon LaPorte reminds everyone that in order tofile a complaint (or answer one) in regards to anA.R.E.A. matc h you must in clude a SSAE andstate the A.R.E.A. n umber of both yourself andyour opponent. If you don't know the latter youmust provide us wi th his last known address.Our records are kept by numerical order. Wecannot look up an individual alphabetically.Failure to follow these simple in structions bogsdown t he system and makes it impossible for usto act on your problem.

MAGNETIC GAMES

nstion on cutpublished by

11 edification omproving the gservices not 01

production and wil l probably be announced formail order sale i n the next issue, if not this one.All w ill sell for 81 2.00. Thosewhocan't wait canplace their orders now and the games will beshipped when they become available. For themore patient, full page adswill follow i n he nextissue.

Work cont inues apace on the 197 8 projects.THE RISING SU Nhas been turned over to newdeveloper Frank Davis for comp letion by nextJuly. Davis comes to Avalon Hill a veteran of sixyears of professional wargame design anddevelopment. SPI advocates wil l recall hi s workon WELLINGTON S VICTORYand FREDERICKTHE GREAT among others. Frank made theswitch to Avalon Hill to enjoy our less rigorouspublication schedule and looks forward toworking w ith the Avalon Hill playtesting system.His eye for detail and completeness of rulespresentation will be a definite asset in theproduction of the TRS monster.

Don Greenwood and John Hill have mappedout the SQUAD LEADERexpansion kit series.Plans call for an eventu al series of six gametteswhich will provide enough additional counters,maps, rulesandchar ts togamealmost anyW Wlltactical situation. Each gamette wil l be boxed inan 8" x 11" x 1" semi-bookcase box with fullcolor art. At least one ne w somorphic board andsix programmed instruction scenarios will beincluded in each gamette. The first twogameswill be entitled CROSS OF IRON andBLITZKRIEG-THE EARLY YEARS.COI dealssolely with the Eastern Front and will concen-trate on expanded and more realistic armorrules. Armor counters will be provided forvirtually all of the armor which saw action onboth sides. Also included will be cavalry,

snipers, and SS units. B-TEY will, as the titlesuggests, deal with Germany's early conquests.British, French, Polish and Norwegian infantrywil l be introduc ed as well as the early armor ofboth sides. Partisans, a ne w terra in feature, andadvanced infantry rules will offer even morevariety. Both kits should be available in early1978.

Work on GUNSLINGER, BISMARCK,TRIREME and NORMANDY continues onschedule with publication expected in time forORIGINS IV. In addition, J oh n Edwards-theAustralian designer of THE RUSSIAN CAM-PAIGN, is about to lay his western frontcounterpart on us. If up to John's usualstandards it could well be added to the 1978lineup.

Our n ewest service offering t o our customersis one whic h we fee l offers a great deal of both"charisma" and uti lity to wargamers. The

development of a new type of pliable, magneticmaterial has revolutionized many aspects of theoffice supplies indus try giving bi rth to a varietyof convenient inventory control and memodevices withou t ha ving to resort to the far lessversatile and clumsy metal magnet. We'vediscovered a way to apply this new ma terial towargames. The result is a product that anydevoted postal enthusiast wil l long cherish; theability to magnetize your favorite game@) Nolonger do you have to worry about your mother-in-law or child inadvertently knocking over thegameboard (as happened to this write r just lastmonth) and scattering your panzers across thesteppes of your living room. In act, we purposelydropped one of these magnetized games from aheight of four feet to test the results of just suchan eventuality. Only one counter was dislodgedfrom its original position. Don't you try itthough . . . continual shocks of this sort willeventually cause your pieces to lose theirmagnetism.

The usefulness of a magnetic gameboarddoesn't start and end with the postal player.Think of it . . . now you can display your gamesin progress vertically on the wall. Perhaps youplay by phone or during your lunch hour at work.Just make your move and leave it there to studyon the wa ll over your desk until tomorrow whenit's the re set up and ready to resume play. Andtalk about a conversation piece . . . what betterway to proclaim to any potential closetwargamer . . . "hey, I actually play those thingstoo."

Al l you have to do to magnetize your favoritegame is order the necessary magnetic tape andan unmounted mapboard. The magnetic tapecomes in %"wide, 1 16" thick, one foot lengthswi th self sticking adhesive already applied to thebackside. Using an exacto knife or ordinary razorblade cut the tape into % lengths. Each %"square bonds perma nently with the un it counteron contact. A pleasant side effect is that eachcounter is now Ye thick and easier to handle.NOTE: It is important to secure the countersuniformly to the magnetic strips so that thepolarity is not reversed. Therefore, we suggestyou use chalkor a crayon todrawa line along thetop of each magnetic strip before cutting

ted. However)mm uni ty 8s

Iortance to thf charge and

d

, Rodger Mac; Veit. Jean B;

:Gowan. Scotler. Stephanic

Czech, Margaret LehmanEDIT ORIAL STAFF: J. Angiolillo. R. Beyma. W. Buchan-an. D. Burdlck, S. Carus. R. Chiang. J. C onnolly. J. Davis.R. Easton. A. Gruen, R. Hamblen, R. Harm0n.T. Ha2lett.T.Hilton, J. Jarvinen. R. Livermore, R. Medrow. D. Mil ler, T.Oleson, G. Phillies, L. Pinsky, R. Plock, J. Pournel le, R.Reed. M. Saha. D. Turnbull. M. Uh l. C. Vasey. L. Zocchi.

PUZZLE EDIT

To facilitate sto Avalon Hill IS

follows:A.R.E.A. Technic ian: Ron L2Purchases of the GENERAL iept. - Gertrud.

OR: A. Richa~

correwondencbe marked in

rd Hamblen

e, we SugSast tlthe lower left

?at all envelope-hand corner a

me parts: Ordsr

Ouestions Concerning Play: Research & Design Owartmmt.Note: all questions should be throughly diagrammed. Noquestions will be answered that are not accompanied by astamped, self-addressed envelope. Only questions regardingrule clarifi cations (not hi stor ical or design subjects) can baanswered.

Articles for Publication, Lena rBrochures, and Readers Respot IOept. Donald Greenwood.

EXCLUSIVE AGENTS: ENG ,-- iHill(U.K.)Ltd..650 High Rd., No. Finchl ey N. 12 ONL; AUSTRALIA:JEDKO Games. 11 1 Beatrlce St. Cheltenham 3192.Victoria: SCANDINAVIA: A.H. SCANDINAVIA. P.O. Box329,13103 Nacka 3, Sweden; GERMANY: HOBBYCOM-MERZ. FeldbergstraBe 35. 6051 Dudenhofen, W. Ger-many; GREECE: American Book & News, 68 SyngrouAve.. Athen s 408; ITALY: Don. Alfredo Gentili. Tirrenia(Plsa). Via del Lecci 1; JAPAN: Taiyo Trading Co.. P.O. Box95, Asakusa, Tokyo 11 1AREA O COORDINA TOR: ( multi-player games only)Steve Heinowski, 1630 W. 28th St.. Lorain. OH 44052

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rs to the Editcrse Page submi

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THEGENERAL PAGE

NUTS BOLTS PHILOSOPHY A N D DESIGNBy Richard Hamblen

THE PHILOSOPHY

Consider, for a m oment, the war in the Pacificdurin g World Wa r 11. It was fought over40,000,000square miles-from Pearl Harbor to Ceylon, fromthe Aleutian Islands to the South Pacific-and thenature of thestruggle was such tha t there was alwaysa threat of a b attle everywhere along th e front line.This area is 30 times the entire area covered by th eRusso-German struggle-the "Eastern Frontw-during the entire course of the war Th e opposingforces included the greatest navies in the history ofthe world-the legendary B ritish fleet was only apoor thir amongst the combatants-enormous airfleets and millions of soldiers that could range farand wide across the combatant area. Land armieswould take mon ths to trud ge across distances thatships could traverse in days, and airplanes couldstrike over in hours.

Now consider the nature of the co mbat. With al lof these forces spread over all that area, the mostcrucial battles were often foug ht by small forcesfighting for the tiniest airfield. Yet these tacticallysmall battles could yield strategically enormousresults, with the victor's planes ra ngin g far,destroying enemy planes, ships and troops andcutting off supply lines so effectively that any

surviving enemy troops were isolated, helpless,effectively ou t of the war, s that the victor couldignore them an d carry his at tack to the next crucialt iny island. E normous armies and en ormous fleetscould be held at bay, useless, by planes operatingout of a single airfield that had been won in adesperate struggle by a few battalions.

How can you represent such a vast war-and,paradox ically. such a microcosmic war-in awargame?

Th e first thing to be recognized is that the gamemust recreate the strategic consequences of thenum erou s battles if it is going to resemble the overallwar in the Pacific. These strategic considerationsdid not merely determine the overall direction ofeach side's attacks; in the Pacific, strategic con-siderations had to be taken into account ateverystep, both because in a sea war every maneuver iscostly in effort and risky to boot, and because thesmallest tactical decision could have enormousstrategic effects. With the sudden increase inairpower 's deadliness, an island-hopping war a t seasuddenly had the capabil ity of winninga war almostby itself-and this was particularly true where bothsides were fighting across a vast ocean where the wareffort rested on the fragile shoulders of shipping.

Th e military maneuvering in the Pacific-the hof any Pacific war game-was permeated strategic considerations, so a game on the ovePacific war must reflect the strategic aspects ofstruggle if the players are to have the choicehistory.

Second ly, (and more obviously), the game mhave some way of recreating the land, sea andbattles that actually determined the course ofwar in the Pacific. This is no small task-in factalmost impossible to do while keeping the gplayable in a reasonable amount of time. problem lies in the different time scales thatinvolved in land, sea and air combat. Land utake weeks to cover distanc es that ships can crodays and planes can fly over in hours. Even woland un its in com bat can fight for months beforbattle is resolved, while battles at sea usually laday (it takes that long to brea k away if things stago wrong), and crucial air com bat and air str iketake place in minutes Unfortunately, all of ttypes of movement and combat should be goinat the sa me time, excep t in very different time scand worst of all, they cannot really be separbecause they are very interactive-victory in type of comba t would have a profound effect o

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P GE THE GENER L

continuation of the other types of combat. Theresult is a rat s nest of minute s and m onth s, milesand kilomiles, extending in time and spacethroughout the Pacific war.

Clearly, some of the comba t (and com batants)has to be lumped together an d severely abstracted inthe game system, to keep things manageable.Typically, individual air sorties are lumped intomissions that extend over months; only the majorredeployments of ships are portrayed, with the ships

lumped into groups. Thus has it ever been instrategic-level games , and really it s not all that bad,since in practice military units ar e grouped and incombat, s mall maneuvers an d small victories can beconsidered incidents that merely lead up to thevictory or defeat of the massed unit that is trying tocarry out i ts mission. The important thing toremember abou t these abstractions is that the gamesystem should include the incidents that make adifference in the outcome-for example, if thedamaging of a ship would affect an overall battle,either by lessening its combat ability or byencouraging a player to withdraw from the batt le,then that damaging should be represented.

So we are left with the parameters of a playablegame about the whole Pacific war: represent thestrategy, abstract the battles but represent theimpo rtant incidents. These were the parameters thatfollowed in designing V I C TO RY I N THPA CIFIC.

I L L U S IO N S O F R E A L I T Y

At the very heart of a ny game are the designer spreconceptions about his subject, so to explainVlTP s design, 1 11 start by explaining how I perceivethe strategy of the war in the Pacific.

Japan s first and essential objective was the oil ofIndonesia, which w ould be required if Japan smilitary machine was to be able to function at all.Thus, Japan s f irst priori ty in the war was tocontro land maintain the security of Indonesia and all theother Japanese possessions scattered across thePacific. It was fo r the sake of this security th at the

Japa nese were determined to ca pture all alien basesin these areas (both to gain the bases for Japaneseuse and to remove the threat of enem y action); it wasthese bases that lured the Japanese into war anddetermined the initial at tacks on Singa pore, Guam,Wake, Java and the Philippines.

Beyond these crucial areas, the Japan ese had n opressing military needs, only alluring opportu nities.The Japanese could at tack towards Brit ish India,towards Austral ia, towards the Austral ian andU.S.-mandated islands of the Sou th Pacific,towards Midway and Hawaii or towards theAleutians; and all of these areas was within theJapanese capability to take and hold (for a while,anyway), but none of them was essential so theJapanese could choose freely between them. All ofthem were within Japan s sphere of am bitions(which in fact extended beyond, into areas thatJapan had no hope of winning or holding in theimmediate future), and gaining any of them wouldhave the additional-and important-benefit ofcrippling the Allied war effort, thus enhancingJapan s chances of winning the war.

These were the Japane se objectives. Jap an wasnot trying to win a total war, destroying andoccupying their enemies, so their plans were to takethese objectives-and then hold them against theinevitable Allied counterattacks. Th e Japa nesestrategy for gaining these objectives was based onthe realization th at eventually Jap an would have tofight a defensive war against a superior UnitedStates Navy (due to superior Allied shipbuilding).The Japa nese strategy fo r facing this eventual Alliedsuperiority had a num ber of main elements: I) togain as much of an init ial advantage a s was possible,

gaining initial superiority an d using it to captu restrategic points that would reduce Allied warpotential, deprive the Allies of forward bases andmaximize the area that the Allies would have toreconquer; 2) to form a tough defensive perimeterfrom which Japanese land-based air could defeatAllied advanc es; 3) in the defensive phase, to use theJapa nese fleet as a spoiling force, raiding fromwithin the defensive perimeter as the opportunitiesto cripple the Allies arose; and 4) to avo id a war ofattrition-which would favo r the Allies eventualmaterial superiority-and instead to seek climacticbattles in which the massed, superbly trainedJapa nese fleet could destroy locally infer ior Alliedforces in detail. Unfortunately, these principlesconflict with each othe r so in practice a b alancealways had to be worked out between them, and s oalthough the Japanese Navy stayed with theseprinciples thro ugho ut the war, the balance betweenthe principles and the emphasis placed on particularprinciples changed with the Japanese fortunesduring the war. Their stunning early successes ledthe Japane se to overexpand. leading to the debacleat Midway; at Guadalcanal they accepted attritionwarfare to defend their perimeter line; and theJapanese desire for climactic battles grew morelimited a s the war progressed, until they would sallyforth o nly if the battle was to be fought in Japanes ewaters, under friendly air cover.

Th e Allies were fighting a tota l war aimed a t thetotal defeat and occupation of Japan , so theirultimate objectives were Japan s crucial areas-thesame areas Japan was after, but for the conversereason of hurt ing Japan s war effort rather thanhelping it. Thus Japan was the ultimate objective,Indonesia was a close second, and the Allies alsowanted to take or hold al l of their own advancedbases and resource areas that they would need forthe f inal drive on Japan .

But the ab ove ar e ult imate,offensive objectives;with the war start ing on a note of Japanesesuperiority and expan sions, the Allies had to startby protecting their efensive objectives. The Allieswanted to protect their own populations andinterests in the Pacific, while at the same timeprotecting the basic network of resources and basesthat they would need to prosecute the war. TheUnited States Navy wanted to protect Hawaii, theBritish Navy wanted t o protect lndia and the crucialBritish sup ply line arou nd Africa t o the fighting inthe Middle East, and both Allies wished to protectAustralia an d the supply lines leading to it frome astand west.

It is impo rtant to note here tha t Britain was ableto make only a l imited contribution to the war in thePacific because their resources were almost com-pletely tied up in the mor e threatening struggle withNazi Germany-and because the British Navy wasnot really equipped nor trained to face the deadlynew airstrike tactics that the Japanese were using.Th e British were able-and forced-to keep apowerful fleet in the western Indian O cean, but onlybecause the Middle Eastern supply routeabsolutelyhad to be protected fo r the sake of the war againstGermany and because a British Fleet there wasrelatively remote from the deadly Japanese centralareas and bases. The British navy might assist theUnited States if a crisis or a very safe opp ortun ityarose, but otherwise the British had to leave thePacific to the United States Navy.

Thus, th e impo rtant supp ly line to Australia wasthe one that the United States forces were usingandprotecting-the supply line from Hawaii, throu ghthe U.S. Mandated islands and the Coral Sea, toAustralia. Th is supply line was crucial both f or theprotection of A ustralia and f or the buildup of forcesthere fo r the ult imate assault o n Japanese territory.

Allied objectives were thus to protect HawaAustralia and lndia and the crucial Middle Esupply line; then, in preparation for the attack Japan, to take or to hold the required advancbases and posit ions; and finally to take Indoneand Japan .

Th e Allied strategy fo r taking and h olding thobjectives had a number of elements that stayed same throughout the war, and a number of elemethat changed as Japan ese losses and Allproduction changed the balance of forces in Pacific. Theoretically, the Allied had agreed concentrate on defeating Germany first and to fionly a holding action in the Pacific. In fahowever, the United States had a large navy thwas sent to the Pacific since it could not be usprofitably against Germany, and the United Stacomma nders, motivated by the United States lainterests in the Pacific and the outrage over PeHarbor and the fall of the Philippines, wdetermined to use this force rather tha n let it sit idAlso, the United S tates comm anders knew that thwould have to pay the price of recapturing territory given up so passively. As a result, UnitStates strategy in the Pacific was aggressive, with Russia not even fighting, and Britain passivabiding by th e Allied agreem ent to defend, aggressive United States strategy was de facto Allied strategy in the Pacific.

Th e cons tant e lements in this aggressive stratewere: 1) to ensure the safety of Hawaii, Austraand India, and their value as staging areas protecting th e Australian supply line and the cruoutpost a t Midway); 2) to keep up the pressurethe Japanese by defending pugnaciously whpossible and making pinprick-or even massivattacks whenever the opportunity presented its3) to fight a war of attrition t o whittle away Japacombat potential ; and 4) to use land-based airdominate and control areas, rather than t ie domobile surface fleets in circumstances where Japanese could bring on a potentially disastrfleet action-surface fleets were to be usedreaction forces to meet Japanese threats or toescamphibious assaults that would capture the batha t the land-based a ir could then use to gcontrol of a region.

The strategic elements that changed with tiand circumstance were: I) while the Allies wdesperately short of carriers early in the war, carriers werenot o be tied dow n to offensive actiothat would t ie them down where the Japanesecocome and attack them-instead, the carriers wobe a reserve, meeting critical Japa nese advan cemaking pinprick raids to whittle away at Japanese; 2) when the Japanese had been foronto the defensive, but before the Allied carrshor tage h ad been remedied, Allies would be limto peripheral advances and fighting a war attrition, particularly with land-based air;3) whthe Allies finally received all those carriers, tcould d eploy them offensively to escort ma

landings to capture bases deep in enemy territan d then to protect these bases-but only in mastha t were sure of su periority; and 4) the British Nin the Indian Ocean was available to help out icrisis early in the war or to grab at a safe opportulater in the war, but otherwise it was firmly tdow n to the task of securing the safety of the MidEast supply rou te and other Indian Ocea n activiuntil Germany was defeated.

The re was one special circumstance tha t helthe Allies throughout the war, and that reinfortheir decision to be reactive an d aggressive in tstrategy durin g the dar k early days: the Allies coread the Japanese Naval Code and so always kwhere the Japa nese were going and what they wplanning. In the.end, this meant that the Alalways had the abil i ty to react to each Japan

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THEGENER L

move with complete intelligence, giving the Alliesthe knowledge of what they were up against beforethey brought on a battle. Th e Allies could bes ure ofknowing about Japanese moves in t ime to parrythem, and could be sure that the Japanese were notin a position t o punish a n aggressive pinprick raid.

The at tacks that both sides made when they hadthe chance are worth a word o r two. The immediateJapanese plans were to at tack towards the SouthPacific and the islands of the U.S. mandate, with

subsidiary at tacks o n M idway and the Aleutians(t0shield Japan from Hawaii) and New Guinea (toisolate Australia and prevent the bu ildup of Alliedforces there). India was ignored a s being away fro mthe axis of the main naval threat-the UnitedStates-and the conquest of Australia and Hawaiiwould require major invasion forces that theJapanese army was not wil l ing to provide. TheDooli t t le raid on Tokyo made the Midway-Aleutians operation top priority, which brought theJapanese offensive phase to a marked halt at thebattle of Midway. Th e Allied counte rattac k startedby dealing with the threatening Japanese airbasethat was building at Guadalcanal , and developedinto a slow advance al l the way up the Solo mon schain. Generally, Allied strategy was to attac k allalong the perimeter to keep up th e pressure, so evenbefore Guadalcanal, Allied carriers were makingshort . sharp, casualty-producing raids into theMarshall Islands, and these raids grew in frequencyand power until islands like Taraw a (in theGilberts,just south of the Marshalls) and Kwajalein werebeing captured while the Solomons campaign wasgoing on. At the same time, Allied forces werestr iking on and over New Guinea, culminating ininvasions aro und th e Vogelkop Peninsula. With thecracking of the outer Jap anes e perimeter, the Alliescontinued to press all along the line, raiding Truk,clearing away the Japanese airbases in the SouthPacific and then striking into the Marianas-and oninto the Phil ippines and Indonesia, preparatory tocapturing Iwo Jima and Okinawa-the outworks ofJapan i tself . Depending on island-hopping anddeveloping the advance through land-based air, thefinal All ied at tack came up through the SouthPacific and Australia against Japan's southernpositions.

Those were the strategies that clashed in thePacific. There were other strategies involving theland forces that were fighting on the continent ofAsia, but in fact these land campaigns wereindecisive and were almo st guaranteed t o remain so.The Japanese an d Chinese armies simply lacked thetransport and resources to press home a decisivecampaign, and the U.S.S.R. a nd Britain would notspare at tacking forces from the war againstGermany-although they were willing to send inmore troops to hold the Japanese back should theneed arise. T he result was a stan doff th at was likelyto continue until all the Allies were freed from theGerman distraction.

Those ar e my illusions abo ut the Pacific war, theillusions that 1 tried to build into th e strategicinterp lay of VICTORY IN T HE PACIFIC. T henext question is: How were the strategies built intothe game?

THE DESIGN

Avalon Hill's WAR A TS EA ga me is a strategic-level, simple game of the naval wa r in the Atlanticduring WWII. The purpose of the game is tocontrol various chun ks of sea (with the board

divided into the important seaa reas in the theatre-North Sea, North Atlantic a nd Me diterra-

nean, for example) by having ships survive anddrive off any enemy ships that venture there. Shipgunnery and armor strengths are represented in a

simple fashion, and detailed, complex sea battles ar erecreated by the simple expedient of having shipsfire at each other repeatedly until only one side isleft. Man euvering in the battles is confined to a fewsubtle techniques of retreating.

WA R AT S E A S g a m e s y s t e m d o es a n i c e j o b ofshowing the strategic implications of assigningvarious ships to certain patrolling forces (assignedto various ocean areas); the combat system does notrecreate detailed naval battles, but it does recreatethe effects of the naval battles; ships are lost inbattle, and one side succeeds in driving away theother.

With strategic aspects recreated and anabstracted battle system that allows large navalbattles to be fough t over a long period of time, theWAR A T SEA system has al l the basic elementsrequired for a Pacific game. Consequently, wedecided to use the WAR AT SE A system as a basisfor the Pacific-with appr opria te modifications forthe Pacific theatre.

(Game-ographical note: Area-type sea strategicgames are by no means new-in fact, I have beenfiddling aroun d with a similar, different system forabou t four years. We decided to use the WAR A TSEA basic system fro m amo ng these simply becausewe had already published WAR A TS EA , so with asimilar Pacific game, players would be able tocompare the ships and campaigns between theAtlantic and the Pacific-thus giving interestedplayers a hand le on the overall naval struggle duringWorld Wa r 11. Also, the similar games would belinked in to one combined game about b oth theatres,and , by a strange coincidence, this article concludeswith a variant that al lows you to do just that .

The sequence of events that led up to ourpublishing the game is also worth a word or two. Asa WAS variant , the game started a s a variant I didfor my own enjoyment; this version had a bout33 seaareas, an d you could have fu n for a I-o-o-o-n-g timewhile you played it. Then we thou gh t we'd p ut it inTH E GENERAL-which we announced-and theboard was pared down to6 sea areas. This was toofew, and in add ition, it could not be don e right as amagazine game-there were just too many coun tersand too much board. So , at the last moment wedecided to publish it as a game and have it out byO R I G I N S '77. We ha d 10 weeks from the time wedecided to publish it as a gam e (most of which wasspent in a lot of hard playtesting), and we barelymad e it-everybody in Avalon Hill 's research an ddesign section had som e hand in getting it out-atthe last possible moment. In a way you could saytha t it was do ne in ten weeks-which isastonishing,since it is a very go od little game in my somew hatprejudiced opinion-but to be fair, I have to say tha tthe WAS version started development abou t a yearago, and I've been fiddling with area movement inthe Pacific for four years.

So: en te r VICTORY I N TH E PACIFIC, ou t o fWAR A T SEA . H ow is the Atlantic different fromthe Pacific?

T I M E A N D S PA C EThe Dimensions of VITP

SPACE Since the WAR AT SE A game system(which was to be used for VITP) is based on thenotion of controlling sea areas, the first decisionwas that the mapboard should include al l the areasthat the Japanese actually had a chance ofcontroll ing, and only those areas. This meant thatthe gam e would no t need any complicated, artificiallogistics rules to impose the logistics shortcomingsthat actually limited the possibilities of Japaneseexpansion during the war. I t was also desired tokeep the area portrayed a s small as possible, so thatthe areas could be portrayed in as large a scale as

possible-so tha t the crucial central area s whmost of the combat would take place would notshrunken and overcrowded.

The problems came around the edges. TAleutians had to be included, since importJapanese forces were diverted there during batt le of Midway (and contributed t o the Japandefeat there). The Bay of Bengal similarly sawmajor Japanese incursion which turned out to bwaste of time at a c rucial period of the war; alsowas clearly within the sphere of possible Japanexpansion. T he farther reaches of the Indian Ocsaw important Allied operations, but thoper ations were peculiarly restricted and passivand the area was really outside of the Japansphere-so it was just dropp ed off the map. In South Pacific, it was very tempting to put in NZealand an d similar south ern areas, especially sithe Japanes e actually had plans for taking them,in the interests of keeping the board small it wdecided to telescope their effect into the are asju sthe north-the result being tha t New Hebriactually represents both itself and New Zealan

TIME The time frame of the game was a liimor e of a problem. As a general rule, a game baon a n actual campaign should cover only that t iperiod w hen b oth sides actually have the capabiof fighting, stopping before one side or the othebroken-especially if the side was brok en whtaking a reasonable gamble. T he reason fo r this ithe gam e continues after that t ime period then player whose forces historically br oke can d o betha n history simply by being artificially passive akeeping his forces intact, thus preventing disastr ous exploitation that followed. Similathe other player must strain unnaturally to breakopponent on schedule (rather than pursue mreasonable goals in accord with history).

This meant that the game should end a t the titha t the Japane se were broken beyond the capabty of meaningfu l resistance. This time turns out toat the batt le of the Phil ippine Sea-theUM arianTurkey Shootv-where the remnants of Japanair power was destroyed. (Although the Japanstill had a fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, theylonger had an effective air force with whichcontest the Allied fleets-and it was air power tdecided battles in the Pacific.)

Start ing the game presented anoth er probleShould the initial Japanese attacks be includedthe game or should the game start immediatafter, amidst the wreckage? The initial attacwould either use up a w hole turn o r require a lospecial rules. In the en d, the attacks were inclufor a n umb er of reasons: the allocation of resouto the at tacks was a n imp ortant strategic decisthat the J apanese player should be able to maimportant decisions were made while the attawere going on , the attac ks were risky and the resuncertain and this uncertainty should be recrearathe r than being replaced by certain outcomes . Tuncertain results greatly increase game variatand allow the players to react t o all sorts of posssi tuations, and the poor frustrated Japanplayer-who always has to wait and watch Allied player get the last move, avoiding the mJapa nese fleet and chipping away a t weak pointgets at least one chan ce to shoot at a target that caget away.

S o he t ime of the game runs from Pearl Harto the M arianas Turkey Shoot. The temptationinclude Leyte, with the last sailing of the Japanfleet and the kamikazes, was just too muhowever, so I stuck it in too, as an optional niturn.

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N U T S N D B O LTS

T H E M A P B O A R D :Sea Areas: The placement of sea are asa nd bases

had to be carefully coordinated so that ships comingfrom the bases would have a reasonable range ofaction. Each sea area should represent all of thefollowing: an are a within which the geography is sointertwined tactically that battles there wouldinterrelate into a campaign, an d battles taking placeelsewhere would be separa te from tha t campaign;the area over which a surface fleet could maintain aneffective operational patrol; the are a with which anair tinit could operate without a major deployment(all of these criteriadefine ana re a of pretty much thesame size, since all were depe nden t on the range ofscouting aircraft). F ortunately, a little perusal of thehistory books yielded a number of very localizedcampaigns in the Pacific; the prolonged struggle inthe S outh Pacific is the most famous example, thecampaigns in the Marshall /Gilbert Islands, theMarianas Islands, Indonesia and the JapaneseIslands, and the operations at Pearl Harbor,Midway, the Bay of Bengal, the Aleutians and in theCora l Sea were also isolated by distance from oth eroperations. Scaling the sea areas to this size, therewere obvious holes, regions remo te and indepen-dent of all the above: the U.S. mandate, the NorthPacific and the Indian O cean. The sea areas in thegame were laid out to correspond with all of theseareas.

Bases: It was immediately apparent that any ofthe bases within the area of the mapboard weresubject to being captured by the enemy, but somebases were more vulnerable than others. Manybases had only small garrisons that could be (andwere) overwhelmed by amp hibiou s invasions, whileother bases were garrisoned by armies tha t wouldhave to be defeated in long campaigns. Sinceamphibious invasions were going to be an impor-tant part of th e game, it was necessary todifferentiate these types of bases-so the invadablebases were made into green-island bases, while themajor installations were made into red major

ports.The specific bases in the game were chosenbecause they were important ports, because theywere crucial central island chains that dominatedtheir sea areas, o r because they were needed for playbalance p urposes, t o reflect the a ctual defensibilityof a sea area to invasions. Pe arl Harbo r, Singapore,Australia, Truk, Ceylon, Yokosuka Navy Yard(also representing the other m ajor bases in theJapanese islands), and Sam oa were soimportant-and famous-that they had to be included, alongwith the important lesser ports of Saigon, DutchHarbor, the Phil ippines and the New Hebrides(Ra bau l was originally included as well, but it wasdeleted for reasons explained below). Midway,Maleolap, Attu and S aipan all represent the centr alisland chains that dominated their sea areas-thecrucial air bases that were the objectives of thefighting. In the South Pacific there were severalisland chains that were important, however, andthey wereespecially imp ortan t because they ran intoadjacent sea areas: Lae and Guadalcanal . PortMoresby represents the air bases in southern NewGuinea, which als o served as air bases in twoseparate sea areas.

Each invada ble base in a sea area is a defensiveweak spot, an ex tra place that has to be defendedlest i t suddenly turn into an advanced base forenemy ships and a source of swarm s of air units. Inthe game, the number of invadable bases in a seaarea should correspond roughly to that area 'svulnerabil ity to invasion. T hus, Okina wa, Johns onIsland and the An dam an Islands had to be includedbecause they were actua l weak spots in sea areas thatotherwise contained only uninvadable red ports.

The Marshall Islands was a highly vulnerableperimeter of islands that could have been invadedanywhere, so Kwajalein was added t o the board t omake that sea area more vulnerable. O n the otherhand, Rabaul had to be deleted from the SouthPacific because there were already two island basesthere-and to add a third would have mad e italmost impossible to defend (the Japane se don'tneed Rabaul anyway, since they have Truk, an d theAllies couldn't get to R abau l without first captu ringone of the borderl ine bases, so Ra baul turns out tobe functionally trivial anyway).

The exa ct delineation of the borders between seaareas, and the placement of bases, was don e verycarefully with the objective of recreating thehistorical s i tuation, so that ships coming from thevarious bases would have a realistic range of actionand bases were in theseaar eas where their air powerwas an impor tant factor. Ships had to be based inAustral ia (or Ceylon) to operate regularly inIndonesia, had to come from Austral ia or Sam oa tooper ate in the So uth Pacific. Sh ips from Hawaiicould raid as far as the Aleutians, Japan, SouthPacific and the Coral Sea, the Central Pacific andthe Marshall Island s were effective blocking are as inthe center, as were the Marianas Islands ( includingGuam) farther west; and so on. Midway was theblocking position between Hawaii and Japan, theMarshalls Islands werea shield between Hawa iiandthe interior of the Japanese island empire, theMarianas Islands/Guam controlled the easternapproaches to Indonesia, and so on.

One of the biggest questions was which basesshould be placed on the borders between sea areas.A bordering base is unusually important because itis harder to take by encirclement and starving i t out ,and ships and air units there have added rangebecause they can move into either sea area. Clearly,bases should not be placed on b orders if their effectwas local o r if they wereeas ily taken ; however, if thebases were crucial central p ositions affecting a largearea, then they should be on the borderl ine. Thus,significant naval bases with central positions wereplaced on borders: Dutch Harbor, the NewHebrides, the Phil ippines, and above al l Truk; i tshould be noted that these bases include all of theoutlying associated islands, where the air unitswould actually be based to range across an entire seaarea. Austral ia was placed on a bord er to m ake i tharder to capture-it was also an important centralbase, of course, althou gh it was never used as a basefor operations out into the Indian Ocean proper.Important air bases that historically affected twosea areas were also placed o n borders: Guadalcanal ,Lae and Port Moresby.

As a final note, theOwen Stanley Ridge wasinserted in New Guinea to separate Lae from PortMoresby. Northern New Guinea was really treatedas a single objective tactically-when the Alliesfinally invaded there they inv aded all al on g it atonce-and Sou thern New Guinea was the same, dueto the interlocking nature of the bases there. Northand Sou th were separated by a mountain range onland, however, and at sea the tips of New Guineastuck ou t enough to separate naval operations to thenorth from operations to the south ( i t was a majoroperation to circuit either tip because the swingwould take the ships close to enemy air basesguarding the passes). Both sides spent two yearstrying to conduct a land invasion across themountains, but in fact the terrain was so hard totraverse that the defender could always reinforcefaster by sea than the attacking forces could bringup forces overland. Overland attacks across thisOwen Stanley Ridge were thus doome d to fai lureuntil the enemy's bases had been capturedamphibiously-so in the gam e the fruitless overlandattacks ar e simply ignored. M ovement across theOwen Stanley Ridge is prohibited.

The Problem of the British Navy: The BritNavy was opera ting under the restriction that aball it had to guard the Middle East's supply linethe Indian Ocean; in effect, it always had to sbetween this supply line and the Japanese threThus, the British ability to return to ports in game was limited so that their fleet would alwayson the line between Ceylon and Japan; this is wthe British can not leave this line to base at, sAustralia. S imilarly, United S tates ships prohibited from basing in Ceylon because twould have removed them from the United Statareas of interest in the eastern Pacific.

Game T urns: With the game running from PeHarbor to the Marianas Turkey shoot, the gabreaks dow n nicely into one short surprise at tturn and seven turns of about f ive months eaEach turn turns ou t to be roughly the equivalentWA S turn , and there a re as many turns as inWAthe turns in the two games even correspond rougwith turn 3 of WA S equal to turn of VI(actually the shortened turn 1 of VITPisequ al tolast part of turn 3 in WA S .Th e dates specified the turns were modified a little in order correspond with the start ing and ending datesthe actual campaigns during the war.

The S urprise Attack Turn: The Japanese sthe game in Jap an to prevent them from gett incontrol ship into the Hawaiian Islands or the UMandate. The unique long-range str ike at PeHarbor is recreated, with the fuel limitations tapplied. Units are posit ioned a s they were att ime of Pearl H arbor, except for thePrinceof Waand Repulse which are positioned as hey were wthey reacted to the Jap anese invasion. ThescatteUnited States cruisers were committed patrol/convoy duties, so they cannot move, butJapanese onslaught in Indonesia cancelled assignmen ts in that are a, leaving those units frebe reassigned to other tasks.

The Japanese ran at Pearl Harbor after thfirst wave because they had lost track of where of the United State s carriers were (actually onlywas near Pearl Har bor). The location uncertarules for the American carriers recreate this untainty.

Reinforcements: Ships appear o n the turn twere available to be deployed in the Pacific example, the Shoho did not get its aircrews uafter the start of the war, and theYamato, launchin December 1941, was not functional until it used at Midway). Air units and marine usimilarly appear when those units, with tcapabilities, were fun ctional in the Pacific (the Marines were in the Pacific at the outbreak ofwar, but they were not yet equipped for amphib

operations). Each side gets its submarine unit durin g the period when th at side's submarines wregularly getting shots at enemy capital ships.

Eliminated air and marine units automaticreap pear afte r a five-month rebuilding perwhich w orks ou t well in keeping strength levels aaccu rate level durin g the play of the game. This seem a little fast, particularly for the notorioupoor Japanese training program, but it shouldremembered that while the United Streplacements represent new men and machijoining the war effort, the Japane se were rebuildtheir losses primarily by pullingexistingunits outhe war in Asia an d reassigning them to the Paccampaigns . By the end of 1944, the Japanes e exhausted their supply of these existing units, could no longer replace losses at all.

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The British Navy Again: Since British ships inthe lnd ian Ocean were available for tacticalat tacks,they had to be included in the game; since Britishpolicy was to not make an y long-term move into thePacific unti l Germany was defeated, som e way hadto be devised to prevent the Brit ish from taking thestrategic offensive. (T he British policies were to beassumed in the game because they presumablyreflected the true interests of the British Empire-after al l , who am 1 to argue with Winston

Churchill?)Early in the game, through turn 5, the Brit ishareprevented from going on the offensive simplybecause the Japanese are too strong. Therefore,durin g this period sh ips arrive and leave dependin gon the times they were available to be used in theIndian Ocean-ships that leave were actually goingeither to the Atlantic o r ( in the case of the pair ofcarriers that leave) to Madagascar to defend theMiddle East supply line; other ships that went toMadagascar for sh ort periods of t ime or that werebasing there but were still available to operate in theIndian Ocean are left in the game. (Since leavingships were going to theatres with a higher priority,replacement ship s must be sent if the listedsh ipsarelost.) From turn 6 on. however. the Allies are

aircraft carriers with enough 5 guns get a nominalfacto r because of the sheer weight of metal they ca nput out .

GunneryFactor

65432

I

Main Armamentx 18.I guns

8 or 9 16 guns8 or more 14 or 15 guns

6 15 , 9 to 12 x 12 . or 9 x 1 1 guns6 x 1 l guns

8 guns, and special cases(lesser guns, torpedoes)

The attack bonus was given to ships to reflectunusual accuracy in their surface combat. Inpart icular, the Japanese cruisers get the bonusbecause of their excellent training in night tactics(when most surface actions were fought), andbecause of the efficacy of the long-lance torpedoesthey carried. U.S. batt leshipsget theatta ck bon us toreflect the accuracy resulting from the gunnery-control radar they carried; all U.S. battleships wereeventually fitted with this feature (and so should getthe bonus, as indicated in the op tional rules), but theonly ones that are indicated right on the counters arethe ones that were equipped with gunnery control

Speeds are assigned as in WAS, except thatfactors represent marginally greater speeds in Vbecause of the greater distances that had tocovered in the Pacific.

Speed Factor Actual Speed34.5 knots32.5 knots

6 3 0 k n o t s5 27.5 knots4 2 5 k n o t s3 2 1 k n o t s

Each carrier airstrike factor represents roug20 planes carried by that carrier, or 10 plalaunched in a typical str ike (roughly the samWAR A TSEA) . Du e to the increased deadlinesair str ikes in the Pacific, due to superior equipmand pilot training in attack techniques, carrequipped with first-rate equipment and pilots wgiven the attack bonus. British strike planes training were inferior, however, so they don't geattack bonus; and th e Japanese system for traipilots was inadequate, so he later Japanese carrmanned by poorly trained pilots, also do not geattack bonus.

overkhelm ingly superior and ev;ry British ship radar when they were commissioned. Air Units: Land-based air units were a spebecomes an offenske threat-at exactly the t imethat the British were deciding to confine theircounterattacks to the Indian Ocean. T o simulatethis in the game, ship arrivals during this offensiveperiod are simply left out of the game-the shipsthat really arrived during this period a re presumablytied up in the Indian Ocean. Brit ish ships that ar ealready in the game are left in on th e theory that theBritish actually were willing to make a very minoroffensive, i f th ey had not suffered too many lossesand if the Japanese left themselves veryvulnerable-in reality the British did cont emp latesuch a move for a short while, unti l the Japanesebeefed up their Indonesia defenses.

The Unit Counters: Given that VITP was to usethe WASsystem, it was only sensible to use the samecriteria for assigning combat and speed facto rs inboth games, so assigning values was practicallyautomatic.

Ships: The first decision was to use only the sameclasses of ships that are represented in WAS:aircraft carriers and surface gunnery ships with afirepower equal to or greater tha n a heavy cruiser(i.e. battleships and battle cruisers). This is quitereasonable, since these were the ships that wereexpected to decide any major naval batt les thatmight happen-lighter ships, such as escort carriers,light cruisers and de stroyers w ere typically assignedas escorts and supports that were not expected tocarry the main weight of the action. As escorts, theopposing light ships fought their own fierce littlewar, but the net result was that they cancelled eachother out , so they are left out of the game. The onlyexceptions to this are the l ight cruisers that wereused as main fleet battle units-the De Ruyter, Oiand Kirakami-which are included in the game(the De Ruyter represents the small fleet of lightcruisers that the Du tch used as a main battle fleetsimply because they didn't have an y more powerfulships; the Oi and the Kirakami were speciallyequipped with 40( ) torpedo tu bes each for specialuse durin g fleet actions-although they never didget to use them.)

Gunnery factors indicate the size and quali ty ofthe ship's m ain arm ame nt, with factors assignedaccording to the samecri teriaa s in WAS, so that theships in the two games would be comparable. As ageneral rule, only guns of 8 or better confergunnery factors (since large-ship armor wasdesigned to keep out lighter shells), although

Armor factors are assigned using pretty muchthe same criteria in WA Sand VITP, except that inthe Pacific game, the factors are a l i tt le more biasedtowards representing defense against torpedoattacks, rather than protection against gunneryshellfire. This is particularly true of the armorfactors in th e U.S. f leet, because Japanese torp edoattacks played an unusually large role in Pacificsurface combat; generally, U.S. ships have a littleextra in their armor factors because of theirexcellent protection (torpedo bulges all over theplace).

Otherwise, armor factors are based on com-plicated comparisons of armor weight and place-ment, ship weight and design, damage controlpractices (in which theU.S. Navy became markedlysuperior, as the war wore on). Carriers, which had to

spread their arm or (when they had armo r) over alarger ship tha n battle units of the same weight, havehad their armor factors weakened accordingly,al though those few carriers that had a rmored fl ightdecks have been strengthened.

It is worth noting tha t those ships that were builtbetween the wars have comparatively higher armo rfactors, reflecting their improved design andtorpedo protection. No single criterion was used inassigning armo r factors, but the following chartshould give you a feel for h ow the strength s wereassigned:

ArmorFactor Maxim um Displacement

(Old BB) (New BB) (BC)9 over 50.0006 45,0005 40,000 35.0004 30,000 27.000 45,0003 24,000 35,000 35.0002 ***15,000 including heavy cruisers8**

Old battleships had generally been converted,adding weight and protection above the originaldesign-but this was not as effective as protectiondesigned in at the start. In addition , newer ships hadbetter underwater (i.e., torpedo) protection andcompartm entalization. BC (batt le cruisers) werelarge, fast ships with weak spots in their armor.Aircraft carriers are given strengths on a verydifferent basis, combining armo r, damage controland size with game interaction to arrive atreasonable numbers in the game.

problem. Each individual air str ike was comparin size with carrier air strikes, but the land-basedunits actually disposed of many more planes were constantly getting whittled away inday-to-attr i t ion. T he solution was t o give them the atstrength of a typical airstrike, with the Japaattack being stronger to reflect the supeattacking capabil i ty of Japanese aircraft-but give the Allies many more units with the sdefense factor, to represent the superior armoAllied aircraft, th e superior ca pacity of the Allireplace losses, and the greater number of air utha t the Allies could dispo se of in the Pacific. Sit would not mak e sense to have disabled resaffect air units , they would be roughly twice as to stay in action, so their defense factor need be half as large to represent the s ame ability to punishment-so, very roughly, an attac k farepresents a strike of 10 planes, and a defense farepresents 40 effective combat aircraft in that uSince land-based air was less vulnerable to destt ion than ships were ( islands being harder to sthe at tack bonus did not apply against land-baair; but land-based air pilots were not trainemake devastat ing pinpoint at tacks o n ships, soland-based air units d o not get the at tack bowhen they attack, either.

A lot of playtesting went into determinexactly how many air units each side should get ,exactly what their strengths should be. It finturned out that six was the r ight number forJapanese, al lowing them to cover their whperimeter but not al lowing them t o massoverwhelming fo rce without leaving somethingopen; th e Allies needed ten t o be able to deployway the Allies actually did during the war.

(Fo r those who are interested, the I th fougthe Aleutians, the 7th defended Hawaii, the and 14th fought in Indonesia and the rest wunder the comm and of the 5th Air Force, f ightithe South Pacific and bordering areas. For Japanese, the 21st, 22nd and 23rd started withattac k on the Philippines and then advanced toJapa nese perimeter, the 22nd sinking the PrincWalesand Repulsealo ng the way; the 24th defenthe Marshalls; the 25th an d 26th were formed funits that had been defending Japan, the 2staying there and the25 th going to the Sou th Pawhere it was joined durin g the disastrGuadalcanal campaign by the 22nd and 23rd. 21st was operatin g out of Timor, between Indonand Japan , a t tha t t ime. )

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I t is worth noting that the Japanese air units arenamed after naval air units, but they actuallyrepresent both naval and arm y land-based air unitsthat were taking part in the sam e campaigns. Thenaval air units were Air Flotillas ; the equivalentarmy unit was the Air Division. Much of the arm yair was tied up in the Asian land campaigns, but the2nd. 5th and 6th Air Divisions fought in thePhilippines, South Pacific and Indonesia-although they were often catastrophically un-derstrength.

Submarines: I t was decided early on thatsubmarines would be included only to the extentthat they attacked enem y capital ships; the strategicaspects of subma rines, includ ing convoys, would beleft out as being not relevant to the Pacific war andbeyond the players' control.

Submarines only got an occasional shot atenemy capital ships, so only one submarine wasincluded for each side; the submarines were giventhe at tack bo nus in o rder to generate a stat ist icallyrealistic number of casualties. Since the onesubmarine was symbolic, representing the oc-casional submarine that got a clear shot, thedefenses against it had already been factored in to itsexistence and it could not be defended against nordestroyed (after all, it is assumed to get a clear sh ot,

and it abstractly represents one of many prowlingsubmarines.) The Japanese get their submarineduring the period when Japanese submarines weregetting an occasiona l clear shot, and the Allies startto get theirs at the t ime when their submarinesstarted to sink Japanese naval units.

Land Units Marine divisions are a new addit ionto the game system, an innovation in VITPthat wasnot present in WA S . They were included becausethere had t o be some means of quickly taking smallbases, as often happene d in the Pacific.

Each Marine Division unit actually representsthe abil i ty to conduct a number of small , in-terrelated amphibious landings, in effect clearingout the whole area represented by a single base in thegame. Each unit represents the availability ofamphibious landing craft an d other logist ical andback-up support for an invason as much as i trepresents a particular body of troops. Consequent-ly, the number of Marine units available was madeto correspond to each side 's abil i ty to invade, ratherthan to the presence of a particular unit. The1stMarines thus represents the 1st Marine Divisionplus its backup elements, including the 25th andAmerican divisions; the 2nd Marines includes the43rd lnfantry and the forces that fought atBougainville and New Georgia, and s o on. There aremany gri t ty lnfantry divisions that ma de subsidiarylandings that are not nam ed in the game.

Fortunately , Allied amp hibi ous capabilitycorresponded nicely with the arrival of the MarineDivisions, so the Marine designations were used forthe Allied M arine units . The Japanese had a muchmore complicated arrangemen t, however. They hada number of infantry divisions trained inamphibious landings, but most of their invasionswere actually executed by hodge-podges ofbattalion-sized units operating together temporari-ly. The Navy's own infantry arm (like the U.S.Navy's Marine s) were a large numb er of small unitscalled Special Naval Landing Forces and namedafter Javanese Naval Bases. Thus. in naming thet h re e am p h i bi o u s u n it s th a t t he ~ a ~ a n e s e s h o u l det(based o n their am ohibious l if t caoabil itv) . I namedthem after th e threk m ost promin;nt b a s e s / ~ ~ ~ ~ s :Yokosuk a, Sasebo and Kure. Incidentally, theseunits do not become available because of newproduction by the J apanese d uring the war; instead,they become available as they were freed fromearlier assault duties that a re not represented in the

game, such as the conquest of Guam, W ake, andother outlying island bases. These landings werereally essential, so they are assumed in the game.

Actually executing an invasion had a tendencyto use up the invasion force. The actual invadingtroops nearly always took severe losses, and in anycase both the landing craft and logist ics buildupsupp ortin g the invasion were used up, so executingan invasion in the game uses up the invadingamphibiou s unit . T he basic unit was sti ll intact andcould st i l l be buil t back up to strength again, sothese units automatically reappear after arecuperative delay of five months.

The Garrison cou nters are worth a f inal word.For major ports these represent the armies, and forisland bases t he smaller forces, that garriso ned thesepositions. (At on e point1 was even going tog ive theunit designations for these garrisons, but wecouldn' t f i t them o n the counters.) The smallgarrisons represent ind ividual divisions or similiar-sized units, which could be overwhelmed by aninvading force and i ts supports . The garrison armieswere to o large to be simply overwhelmed, however,and would have to be defeated in lengthycampaigns-which is why major ports cann ot beinvaded.

N W TACTICAL SYSTEMS FOR VITP

In the first place, it was obvious that the airstrike system in WA S would have to be overhauledif it was going to represent the effect that air powerhad in th e Pacific. T he difference was that in thePacific air power was a n effective at tacking ar m,one th at cou ld win battles all by itself; and this wascrucially important because it meant that battlescould be won by aircraft striking at long range, sobattles could be resolved without either gettingwithin gunnery range of the other ( in fact , mostgunnery battles in the Pacific were fought by fleetscoll iding at night, when planes could not at tackeffectively). The devastating effectiveness of airpower in the Pacific was due to four elements: theJapanese and United States Navies had aircraftcapable of making the pinpoint at tacks required tohit elusive ship targets (unlike the British in theAtlantic, who had inferior aircraft); the Pacificpowers trained their aircrews to make such pinpointattacks; such at tacks were made en masse, with acarrier 's squadrons usually concentrat ing on onetarget-usually a critical carrier; and air attac kswere expected to d ominate th e batt les, so carriersand air units were expected to launch str ikesrepeatedly until the battle had been resolved. Asubsidiary effect of airpower's ab ility to win battlesby itself was that air units could suddenly controlsea areas all by themselves-they did not requirenaval patrols, and in fact land-based air couldeventually obli terate a n enemy surface f leet that didnot have air cover.

Three types of rules changes had to be made tointroduce thesechanges toV1TP:airstrikeattackingprocedure had to be changed to reflect the tacticsand deadliness of airstrikes in the Pacific; someprovision had to be made for f ighting purely airbattles, in which gunnery factors would n ot fire atall; and land based air units would have to beallowed to control sea areas by themselves.

The rules were changed so that eac h unit'sairstr ike factors at tacked as a group against on etarget. The expert aircrews, trained in pinpointbombing, were given the attack bonus to increasethe deadliness of their attacks-carrier airstrikeswere deadly, rather than disabling. Finally, air-strikes were given the ability to attack repeatedly,round a fter round, so they could f ight a batt leall bythemselves.

It was immediately obvious that battles in thePacific broke down into two very differentcategories: day actions o r carrier battles, and

night actions or surface actions without air covwhich mean t at night when a ir couldn't fly. Rarships would close to within gunnery range daylight, in which case air strikes and gunnwould com bine in a battle th at might best be titlmess. Anyway, it was clearly desirable to hav

least two different types of combat rounds in game, for day and night battles. A little mhitting of the old history bo oks and a lotplaytesting yielded the system employed in game; presumably the side that is seeking anbattle would have the advantage of aerial recnaissance in bringing on th e type of battle he waand the side that actually controlls an area wohave air and sea patrols out to sp ot the enemy foas they came so the current proprietor of an agets a similar bonus. With both bonuses, the oddfavor of some kind of an air batt le are 5-1, but od ds are even when sailing into enemy waters, whappears t o be abou t r ight judging from the histbooks.

The next change was that VITP, unlikeWAwould have to have bases and ports that chanhands as a result of the naval war. After all , the win the Pacific was essentially a naval wa r, unlikeEuropean war where land armies determined ownership of territory.

As expla ined in the TIM E AND SPAC

section, there were two types of bases in Pacific-those garrisonned by armies and thgarrisonned by m uch smaller forces. The ports bases in the game were correspondingly divided red ports and green bases. Now, the smalgarrisons could be overwhelmed by a relativsmall invasion, but the larger forces would havebe overwhelmed slowly over the course ofcampaign that could last many months. Conquently, the small invasion forces represented byMarine units could take a minor port-but tcould not take a major port . Since both kindsports should be capturable, this required thaspecial rule be formulated to allow capture of major ports-and so the rule allowing captu re atwo turn s of control was born. The rat ionale behthis rule is that during those two turns

controlling player is actually sending in large foto wage an extended campaign o n the port , but hable to win the campaign by breaking the enemsupply line- to p revent the enemy from se ndingforces to keep up the defense. Obviously, ttechnique would also work against lesser portsthe green ports were included in the rule.

This rule probably calls for a word o r t 'woabsom e special items of interest. Th e Japa nese Nadecided not to attack Australia because Japanese Army would not supply the10 divisiothat w ould be needed for the operation, yet in game A ustralia can be taken. T he rationale is, ifJapanese Navy had succeeded in breaking supply lines to Australia, the Army cou ld have btalked into supplying the troops that would needed; after all, f ir ccompli is an accepttechnique in politics, even military politics. Philippines and Saigon are special cases ofdifferent sort, min or ports with major garrisonsthere was a real question whethe r they should beor green. In the end the Phil ippines had to be grlest a major Alliedfleetmaterialize there on turn (see the next section of this discussion) and becaan invading army could actually capture outlying island or two, enough t o serve as a mibase (as the Allies did at Leyte). Since Philippines' imp ortan ce was in its usefulness toAllies (after all, the Japanese have plenty impregnable bases in the area), making it grlimited its usefulness early, but made it useful lawhich was convenient. Saigon, on the other hahas no m eaning at all after Singapo re falls, so it be a red base with no problem-and it is essentia

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a Japanese base for ships and planes early in thewar, to reflect their actual capabilities in the area.And those who think that Japan should not besubject to cap ture should remember tha t for most ofthe war th ere were only a few divisions garrisoningthe home islands.

Submarines are the very heart of WA R ATSEA but they were a major problem in designingVICTOR Y IN THE PACIFIC because the

Japanese and the United States were involved in adifferent type of submarine war than was beingfought in the Atlantic. T he United S tates was indeedusing i ts submarines to f ight a war to strangleJapanese shipping in Indonesia but it was nocontest-the Japan ese never came up with a mean sof countering Allied depredations. On the otherhand, Japan was not using i ts submarines againstAllied shipping a t all; Japanese d octrin e was to useits submarines as fleet elements, to bag Alliedcapital ships. Th e result was that there was no realcontest in either side's subma rine war. S o ratherthan jerry-rig som e kind of strategic subm arinestruggle tha t never happened-and never couldhave happened unless the Japanese had rethoughtsom e of their most basic notio ns of naval strategy-I just assumed th at the submarine wars o n shippingwere a constant, a nd built the historical results intothe game. Convoys and special submarine effectswere deleted from the game.

Movement on the VITP board presentedproblems concerning all of the units in the game.The f irst , and m ost important , problem arose out ofthe fact that in the war in the Pacific-being fough tagainst a roughly equa l enemy-fleets weredeployed differently tha n they w ere in the Atlantic,where a superior f leet was trying to contain aninferior fleet. In the Atlantic nearly all ships wereassigned to some sort of patrol l ing function in aneffort to intercept an enemy sort ie ( the only realexception to this is the employment of ForceH inGibralter). A lthough ships were assigned to patroll-ing duties in the Pacific, the main fleets were usuallyused quite differently, for prudence' sake. M ain fleetelements would be held back in reserve, spending

most of their time in port, and then when anoperation was decided upon-either a singlesmashing raid o r a parry of a n enemy move-themain fleet would sail to reinforce the forces alreadyon the spot where the trouble was occurring.

There were three important things to note aboutthese reserve forces: in the first place, the y were notcomm itted early to a course of action; second, whenthey f inally did go into ac t ion in a n area they werenot in that area long enough to maintain a constantpatro l there; and lastly, since they were not spe ndingtheir time to patrol back a nd forth in an area, theyhad more time to move-i.e., they could movefarther before striking (assuming they had therange).

In order to reflect this important aspect of thePacific war, it was necessary to differentiate

patrolling ship s fro m reserve o r raiding shipsin the game. Raiding ships get to move later, af terpatrol ling ships are committed, and they can movefarther-but they do not count towards controll ingan area. British ships, however, had a shor teroperating range-so raiding British ships d o otmove any farthe r (this also reflects the fact that theBritish were really limited to opera ting in the veryeastern regions of the board , because Ceylon-theirusual base-is so remote from the other areas).

An interesting point arose here. Ships thatat tempt to move an extra sea area must make aspeed roll as in WA S . Now, failing a speed roll

presumably means that the ship fai led to o peratesuccessfully in the manner that had been plannedbecause of its limited speed. A pa trolling ship thatfailed would thus not be able to maintain its

patrol-but wouldn't it still be present part of thetime, like a raider? So patrolling ships th at fail theirspeed rolls move as planned an yway, but they areturned into raiders. Raiding ships that fail a speedroll fail in their mission to get to the battle(presumably they arr ive too late to take part), andsimply return to port .

The next movement problem was that theredeployment of forces between bases was simplytoo slow using the WA S rules on the vast VITPboard. Ships that were simply changing basescouldcross the whole VITP board in a small part of a five-mon th turn; however, these transfers would have tobe planned ahead of t ime and preparat ions made forthe new ships at their new base. The solution was toallow ships to return to an y major (red) port fromany sea area on the board, the redeploymentrepresenting the assignment of the ship to a newcommand when i ts current assignment was com-pleted. Minor ports were excluded on th e theorythat supplies for major incursions of ships wouldnot be stockpiled at such bases(many of which weremere anchorages); the delay involved in ac-cumulating such supplies is represented by the turnit takes to deploy the ships there using normalmovement. Enemy cont rol of sea areas can beignored by deploying ships, which might be aproblem if there were major Allied ports behind

Japanese l ines or major Japan ese ports behindAllied lines. Fortunately the geography does notwork out that way so major forces cannot safelyredeploy into enemy lines, only out (presumablysneaking o ut on th e run). Allied forces redeployingbetween the edge bases of Ceylon, Australia, Sam oaand Pearl Harb or are presumably travelling a longcircuit through the vast sea areas tha t ar e off theboard to the south and east , far beyondany possibleJapanese interference.

Amphibious units were treated like ships butgiven a range of one adjacent sea area to accuratelyreflect the range of an amphib ious strike-after all,the marine unit represents the logistical backup an dsupport ing elements that have to be transported in

from the staging area of the invasion, in addit ion tothe first wave of assault troops.

In WA S he legal placement f or each side's land-based air units is indicated right on the board . Withairbases changing hands du ring the game in VITP.this system clearly had t o be replaced by a generalrule. S ince air units could easily redeploy anyw hereon the board within the t ime frame of one turn, aslong as they had bases available, the final rule wassimply that air units could be placed o n any sea areatha t contained a friendly base or port, regardless ofrange (planes could fly for enormous distancesthrou gh enemy territory if they were just chang ingbases, and in pa rticular they could even be ferried towithin rang e by escort carriers).

(Digression o n air raids: since units com ing fromislands could bom b sea areas, clearly ships in the sea

areas should be able to conduct air raids againstthose islands. Only carriers can make these surprisestrikes, however, because in practice land-based airnever did successfully raid an enemy port;presumably the land-based air, operat ing fromdistant and well-known bases, would be spotteddurin g its appro ach, giving the ships in port enoughadvanced warning to put to sea and escape theattack.)

Submarines, of course, could turn up anywhereso the symbolic submarine counter can be placed inany sea area.

With all of the tactical systems worked out, thelast problem w as settling on a sequ ence of play. Th edesired effect was to have thedifferent typ esof unitsdeployed in the same order that a real commanderwould have to commit them, with units that

required more prepara tion or an earlier stamoving before units that could be shifted on shonotice.

Patrolling ships would have to spend all thet ime to keep up their patrol , with no t ime to wait asee what the enemy was doing first, so patrolliships are deployed first. Air units require cosiderable prep aratio n of bases and supplies, so thcannot be easily shifted; thus air units are placnext. The deployment of amphibious forces inaction takes a comparatively short amount time-just the sailing time for the transpor ts to gto the objective, followed by t he rapid follow-up support waves. This is still longer than the sailitime of fast combat ships sailing directly incombat, however, so am phibious units move thiand raiding ships move after.

The submarines are special cases because theare symbolic units. They represent the reguloccurrenceof surpriseat tacks, so their abil ity to gesurprise attac k each turn has already been assumin defining the unit. In order to ensure that thsubmarine always gets this at tack, and in order mak e it impossible to know where the attack willahead of time, the su bma rine unit is always placlast.

That's t he orde r in which units move. Since tAllies, having broken the Japanese code, alwa

knew what t he Japan ese were doing before they hto com mit their ow n forces, the Allies always getmove after the Japanese. T o compensate somewhfor this enormous advantage, and because for muof the war the Japanese had the ini t iat ive enoughdetermine exactly when operations would at tempted, the Jap anese player has thechoice of torder in which battles are resolved.

Air units are placed alternatingly one at a timbecause both sides could shift them m ore or lesimultaneously to meet enemy redeployments.

The batt le sequence was designed on the theothat aircraft w ould always get to at tack at lorange before gunnery could get in range, excewhen ships slipped to within close range at nighSubmarines usually had to spend a significaam oun t of time jockeying in to position before th

could get a clear shot at ships in the area, submarine at tacks occur after the f irst round com bat. With defending fleets intercepting invasiforces sailing rapidly for an objective, a m arine unobviously should have to survive the interceptibattle before it is allowed to land.

T H E G M E I N C T I O N

Th e last task was to assign PO C values so ththe players would place the proper importance each sea area . Fro m a particular side's point of viea sea area can have three statuses: under friendcontrol, in which friendly commerce can mosafely; under enemy control, in which friendcommerce is completely prevented; and uncotrolled, in which commerce is possible but can

attacked by light ships, PT boats and the likClearly, if commerce in an area was importa nt one side, then that player shou ld get a lot of POCthat area s o he will be motivated t o completecontr ol it. O n the other hand, if completely stoppienemy commerce in a n area was im portant , a playshould get many PO C for control there. Places thwere important primarily for tactical reasons dnot need m any P OC , since the game's blocking ruwould pay tactical rewards to the player wcontrolled it and thus blocked enemy movemeand gained the reconnaissance benefits of cotrol l ing the area during a daylnight role there.

The basic procedure for assigning POC wasevaluate all the sea areas in comparison with eaother, f ind out how many total POC each arshould be worth, assign tentative POC values on t

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basis of the value to each side of controlling thatarea (as explained in the paragrap h above), and thenshift P OC points between the Allied and Japa nese ineach sea area so the net gain turn by turn would totalout to a close game. The historical campaign wasexamined as if it were a game and PO C gained forcontroll ing sea areas each turn, and the PO C valueswere shifted s o that the final result was a close Alliedwin. Then the PO C values were examined with aneye for possibilities. Regardless of how well they d oearly the Japanese should lose if they have nothingleft at the end to defend against the final Alliedonslaught, so the maximum POC limit was set sothat the Allies could win th e game o n the last twot.urns no matter how badly they have done up to th att ime. T he Japanese planned perimeter was examin-ed; the Japanese fel t that holding this perimeterwould be an ad vantage for a s long as they held i t , soholding those areas should result in a smallJapanese edge in PO C each turn. Areas wereanalyzed as to whether commerce there had to beabsolutely protected-in which case enemy raiderscould win PO C just by breaking enemy controlthere, as in Japa nese Indonesia-or whethergradually m ore interference with shipping there wasworth gradually increasing amounts of POC-sora iderscan win-^^^, but patrollers stopping tradecan win even more, as in gradually strangling theAllied supply line through the Coral Sea.

There are a few things worth explaining in thePO C values th at f inally resulted. Indonesia, forwhose sake the war was started in the first place,seems undervalued-but this is because the Alliedsubmarine campaign there was devastat ing, reduc-ing its value far beyond Japanese expectations.Also, since the very vulnerable Japanese shippinghad to be protected from even minor raids fromadjacent sea areas, so me of Indonesia 's PO C wereassigned to bordering areas such as the Sout hPacific, Bay of Bengal and Mariana s. The IndianOcean contained a moderately important supplyroute, but the vastness and emptiness of the seasthere made i t necessary to patrol i t constantly toreally break the line, so the Japan ese get points onlyfor controll ing i t . The Central Pacific and theAleutians are important tactically, but otherwisethey are worth a net swing of only one POC, whichwas assigned according to their value in protectingshipping in nearby sea areas. T he result is a game inwhich very large P OC swings are possible, but thatshould average out t o a very close game.

In order t o win, the Japanese must use their earlysuperiori ty to garner POC and establish theirdefensive perimeter, and then hold off the Alliedcounterattack, which means that they must alsopreserve their forces. Generally, the Japanese needto be 20 POC ahead by turn5, because the Alliesaresure to gain a lot in the last three turns. In order togain 20 POC, the Japanese must come outside oftheir basic perimeter somewhere, sometime-theonly question is, where and when?

Attacking towards Bay of Bengal can gain aslow, steady POC profi t and has the addit ionalbenefit of knocking the British out and m akingIndonesia far easier to defend; unfortunately, itleaves the United States forces free to get into allsorts of mischief. Capt urin g Australia can knock th ebottom out from under the Allied war effort fortactical reasons, but it is not easy in any case and it isvirtually impossible without capturing PortMoresby first, which is no easy task. Gaining POCby attacking and raiding into the Coral Sea and theU.S. Man date is a m uch safer, if less profitable, wayof gaining PO C each turn-and this was indeedwhat the Japa nese were planning to do. Otherwise,the Japanes e can gain a few PO C in building theirperimeter in the Aleutians and Midway, but notenough to win-in the north the perimeter is more

important tha n the POC. Th e only other Japaneseoption is to shoot for the moon and try to takeHawaii. This r isks catastrophe, fo r if the Japanesetry it on turn 2 the Allies have a nice counterattackin Indonesia tha t can knock the middle r ight out ofthe Japanese war effort , and if the Japanese try i t ontur n 3 o r later the Allies have swarms of land-basedair to make l ife really rough f or the Japanese. Th ethreat against Hawaii must be guarded against, butassuming competent American play it is adangerous long shot.

The American strategy must be to defend thecritical areas, such as Hawaii and Australia, butotherwise to be very, very cautious; the Allies hav eaway of losing carriers a little at a time, until they ar efacing a crisis on turn 5. This is particularlyimportant because the Allies really need to make ahole on the Japanese perimeter on turn5 so tha t h i sturn 6 carrier swarm can get int o the heart of theJapanese Empire, where al l the POC live. At thesame time, th e Allied player has to be whittling theJapa nese fleet down-the Allies will have to divideup their f leet into many groups to gain PO C whenthey swarm ou t late in the game, but they won't beable to split up if the Japanese have a massed fleetavailable to pounce on the separate groups. Andabove all the Allied player must fight for bases-advanced bases where he can use his air units incombat, advanced bases so his ships can stay inadvanced posit ions instead of having to raid eachturn from the red ports around the edge of theboard.

For the Japanese , expans ion , per imeters andraiding. For the Allies, carrier preservation,cautious defense of critical positions, a war ofattr i t ion t o keep up the pressure on the Japanese,and finally the struggle to capture bases for Alliedair use. The illusion is complete.

DETAIL: THE OPTIONAL RULES

One problem with a game designed to representstrategies is that i t can easily be inadequate inrepresenting the tactical level of the conflict, andsuch is the case with VITP It is not crucial, since thegam e yields casualties in realistic proportion s, but itis irri tat ing; so I added the optional rules to azz upthe tactical level of the simulation.

The 9-turn game: This is a slightly different case.As I explained above, Leyte Gulf has a certainshowy attraction, even if i t did come after theJapanese were really throu gh. But who am I to turndown a showy attraction? Besides, it gives me achance to t ro t ou t theShinano and w hoca n resist a60,000 ton aircraft carrier with a 10-inch armoredflight deck?

Task Forces: This is the most important of theoptional rules, since it recreates two of the mostimp ortan t tactical phenomena in Pacific battles: thedesperate search to f ind th e enemy before he f indsyou, an d t he cataclysmic results if you d o not, andboth sides' tendency to have different groups ondifferent missions operating in the same area, withall the r isks inherent in having one group caughtalone. It is very hard to refight such crucial battles asSavo Island and Midway with any degree ofrationality unless this rule is being used.

Gunnery Radar: This just gives the UnitedStates ships the capabili t ies that they actually had. I tis not strictly accurate, since the ships were beingfitted out a few at a time from mid-1943 on, butgiving specific dates would be too difficult,particularly since which ships got fitted out wasreally a matter of chance, depending on whohappened to st op over at Pearl H arbor. Given thesereservations, it seemed an optional sort of rule.

Island Combat and Anti-aircraft: These arereally scaleddown holdovers from the enormous33-sea-area version of the gam e, in which every

division and every carrier a ir group in the Pacwas rep re~e nted y a separa te counter. I t was rekind of fun, and a lot of interesting tactisitua tion s cropped up, so 1 couldn't resist puttinin the game. The real problem with it, of coursetha t you're fighting that ma ny more little battwhich takes that much more t ime.

OUTTAKES

There ar e a number of rules that didn' t quiteinto the box because they would unbalance game. You might like to use them in the gamethey tickle your fancy; they certainly can add sfireworks to the play.

24 SURPR ISE YOURSELF TOJO

The Pearl H arbor com mander almost got wof the at tac k before it happened because somebin Washington had read a coded Japanese messand knew tha t something was up. So, just befexecuting the Pearl Harbor raid, the Japanplayer rolls a die.24 1 If he rolls a 1, the code-b reaker finds GeneMarshall in Washington right away, instead having to hunt for him. Marshall is a sma rt cooso he sends ou t a warning right away (as he didand the player rolls the die again.24 2 If he rolls a agai n, the messenger boy

Hawaii immediately picks up the telegram pedals u p to th e U.S. com mand todeliver i t , insof having the message delivered just a fter the attstarted. Roll again.24 3 Th e Army or Navy com man der is in his offso he immediately gets the message and routino r d er s a n a l er t. T H E J A PA N E S E L O S E OROU ND O F SUR PRIS E ATTACK But a l so, ragain24 4 The commander in Hawaii immediately sthe significance of the alert The Japanese bombcome sweeping up over the hills above PHarbor-and find Pearl Harbor EMPTY (Whd a w ed o no w ?? ) T H E J A PA N E S E G E T N O S UP R I S E AT TA C K S : T H E Y C A N N O T R UBEF ORE COMBAT-AN D (with their aircra l ready commit ted to th e Pear l Harbor s t r ike)T

J A PA N E S E C A R R I E R S C A N N O T AT TA CAT A L L O N T H E F I R S T R O U N D O F N O R M AC O M B AT, W H I C H I S A U TO M AT IC A L LY DAY ACTION. The U.S. player rolls normally his carrier groups before the fi