For posting to your fine site: CBI review and replay March 2005 Review: “Vinegar Joe’s War: CBI (China-Burma-India Theater of Operations),” or CBI, is the game in Strategy & Tactics 227. It’s the first recent S&T game I’ve played in some time. CBI covers the World War II campaign in Southeast Asia: Malaya, Burma, Indochina, and adjoining areas of India and China. CBI is a fairly simple game: the war from December 1941 to 1945 is covered in 16 quarterly turns. All critical operations are covered, however, including land and air warfare, special operations, and logistics. There are the now-usual 280 counters—-Japanese and their clients (Vichy French, Siamese) and Commonwealth (British, Australian, Indian), Americans, and Chinese. Generally the counters are nice, although the tan of British and ivory of Japanese are a bit close color-wise for my eyes and the entry-turn type is very small. It also would be nice to have some marking on the reverse to indicate that a unit is reduced. Finally, apparently there was some problem in printing the counters that held up the game—-the rules refer to an entirely different color scheme than the counters show—-but this doesn’t affect play. As for the units themselves, the Japanese and Allies have distinctly different forces. The key differentiation is between light and heavy forces, which doesn’t reflect combat strength but rather support and mechanization. Light forces don’t benefit much from roads but have ZOCs in most all terrain types. Heavy units speed along roads but lack ZOCs in obstructed terrain. The Allies, which are mostly heavy units, also have many onesie-twosie special units—SAC, special forces, Chinese armies, etc--that take some thought and practice to find out how best to exploit each of them. I’m not sure why there is no airbase (and maybe an airstrike or two to use it) in Singapore at the start of the game—-it’s clear there was Allied airpower there historically that was quickly wiped out (but what if the Japanese don’t attack Singapore until later—see my replay below). By contrast, the Japanese have a simpler, more organic force of mostly light units and slower-moving logistics units. Rules are 16 pages long, counting several pages of charts and tables. The organization is adequate (but see below on map) for such a “big” game, but there is considerable flipping around as you get used to the system. There are the usual niggling rules questions. I’ll post the clarifications once I get them from Decision. The map is standard size (22x34), showing south-east Asia into India and China. It’s nicely and naturalistically colored, although it seems to me there are rather too few swamps—-just a few hexes here and there around Ganges delta, Mekong delta, etc. Perhaps given quarterly turns, swamp just didn’t have much effect? Then again, those Swift boats guys and flood victims in what is now Bangladesh might disagree. There appears to be one town missing (Bamho in Burma). I’d also have liked to see at least an outline of Sumatra shore across from Malaysia. I know it wouldn’t affect play, but it would help understand the setting of Singapore. Lots of charts and tables and rules are scattered on map like an old early 70s SPI game—-be sure to read all the fine print and study the terrain effects chart. There are any number of key little rules hidden here and there, e.g., light units in fortifications don’t have ZOCs; ZOCs of heavy units extend along roads into otherwise restricted terrain; roads in jungles and rough terrain cost 1MP, not 0.5; various stacking restrictions in different terrain types, etc. Unfortunately, there are still more charts in the rulebook-—random events table, airstrike table, etc-—so each turn requires some flipping back. But the overall effect is not bad and reasonable given the broad scope of the game. The game uses a basic double-impulse system with a few twists. Players must expend supply to use their second impulse, and there are a wide variety of air missions and units to play around with in the usual Miranda style. There’s random events every turn, which can be significant but not fatal. Overall it feels a little like old USN—-maybe not surprising since designer Miranda counts that among his favorites and was working on the USN update at the same time as he was doing this one. Each player has a lot of territory to cover and limited forces to do it with, so it’s important to pick your lines of advance and battle. Once you get things going in an area, it can take several turns (representing a year or more) to play matters to completion, or just to withdraw and reassign sufficient forces elsewhere to accomplish anything. Logistics were the key to the theater and are important in CBI. To keep things playable, the game uses the old supply unit mechanic to good effect: you get a few supply units (called depots here. Surprisingly, they fight as well as Allied brigades!) each turn and have to move them to where the action is; they can be expended for stronger attacks, second-impulse movement and attacks, replacing and rebuilding units, building roads and railways, digging in, and various other things. Of course they don’t move fast and there are rarely enough. It all works simply and neatly to provide realistic-seeming flavor, constraints, and motivations for the players. For example, there are real reasons to build the Ledo Road and Burma Railroad or fly the Hump—-not just to gain some VP (although that carrot is used in places too). Overall, I like it. Miranda succeeded in his aim of playable, one-map game showing a whole theater. It’s quite natural-seeming, no odd mechanics or strange artsy-fartsy maps, so players feel like a commanding WWII General. There are lasting decisions about where to make offensives, how to move supplies, where and how to commit airpower, where to draw the line and dig in. The theater itself presents some drawbacks, however. Much of the map is unused—-Siam and Indochina can’t be reached by Allies (other than the odd weak guerilla unit) until the last couple of turns of the game if that. Malaysia becomes a similar backwater after the initial invasion. The Japanese can’t enter China, so their initial offensive eventually stagnates along a 10-15 hex-wide front in upper Burma after a few turns when it outruns supplies and aircover—-rather like the Soviet offensive in East is Red, another game that uses supply units. And it’s always hard to judge levels of supplies. Armies may or may not keep good OOBs, but they rarely keep good OOS (Orders of Supplies) so far as I know. Perhaps there are records of how many tons of good were unloaded at particular ports in particular months. In any case, it’s easy for a designer to adjust the number of supply units allocated to each side on each turn to get the desired result (I know from using a similar mechanic in my slow-gestating tactical game on American Indian battles, where I use supply-like markers for force activation) but the struggle to move units and supplies to there kept my interest anyway. I don’t know what else could be done to show the Burma-India fighting in the context of the whole anyway. And that’s the point of the game—-to show the local in the context of the whole—-and at that CBI succeeds nicely. Replay: I played CBI solitaire and probably favored the Japanese side slightly in the game, probably because they have a simpler army and more time to get used to it. To keep things simple I used no optional rules nor contingency units for either side (although I dearly wished to at times, especially for the Allies who seem to have some real bargains). I screwed up the air battles for the first few turns, which may have accounted for the lack of Allied airpower later in the game. For the initial thrust, the Japanese decide to attack towards Rangoon and Burma instead of the historical strike on Singapore. They brush aside the weak Commonwealth covering forces in the first turn (1941-IV) and continue to drive north. The Japanese grab most all of Burma by mid-1942 and probe into India, but attrition of units, lengthening supply lines, and outrunning of airpower preclude a rush to Calcutta. Instead the Japanese consolidate their position, bring up supplies, and reposition airfields towards the combat zone. In the meantime they redirect a force made up of reinforcements and replacements south to attack Singapore, which has been fortified by the Allies. There were no Allied units to spare to bolster the Singapore defenses—--the apparently missing airbase would’ve been very helpful to the Allies--and ZOC problems and Japanese amphibious capabilities make a sieve of any line, so the Allies merely shipped in a few precious depots and built fortifications in Singapore and the two hexes north of it to stall the Japanese. This strategy seemed to work and delayed the inevitable until mid-43 (which means my game is draw as of one-year “Fall of Empire” scenario, but the Japanese build up 20+ VP lead into 1943-4). Once the Japanese offensive stalls, the Allies begin slowly to build up forces. They push into north-east Burma with the Chinese in mid-43. Guerillas turn up in the random events phase twice and destroy an airbase in Indochina and recapture (but not for long) the oilfield hex. Both sides are running low on aircraft; Allies never seem to build up much TAC and Japanese are slowly being whittled down. As a result, many extra airbases are available to both sides. Very few withdrawals have been rolled yet—-just one-two units for each side. Turn 1944-I sees Mandatory Offensive as the random event for both sides. Japanese burst through the Burma front in center-west and rush almost to Calcutta. Allied reserves and reinforcements, including depots and airfields, move to form a very weak line. Allies already meet the Offensive criteria in Burma from their 1943 attacks so they concentrate on their defenses and the Japanese counterattack. In 1944-II the Japanese reluctantly pull back from breakthrough—-there’s just not quite enough units to cover the extended line into India, almost no aircraft left, and they can’t get supplies and HQs transferred across Irrawaddy fast enough. They concentrate instead on surrounding and destroying Allied divisions in center-north Burma, which is a double-edged sword as both sides suffer heavy losses in the next couple of turns but the Japanese come out slightly the better. Only 2 Japanese TAC remain. For the Allies, the Chinese units are mostly stalled due to random events for most of 1944 (the plan to send them to take Hanoi in 1945 falls hopelessly behind schedule). With eyes on the endgame, the Japanese abandon the Burma railroad one hex short of completion because of worries it will benefit Allies more than them. By 1944-IV Allies are getting in place for their final offensive. I’m learning how to use all their unique units—-air-droppable airfield, SAC bombers, raiders, etc-—but probably too slowly. The Japanese defensive line is being destroyed by heavy bombing and repeated attacks, but Allies lack enough strong divisions for many attacks or paradrop/naval thrusts (the Japanese 1944 attacks in upper Burma may have paid off). To defend the theater, the Japanese scatter reserve forces throughout map to hold VP cities against sneaky Allied air/naval attacks in case their weak Client forces are lost by random event. The last couple of turns see a desperate back-and-forth struggle about halfway into Burma—Allies capture oilfields after a surprisingly long struggle but Japanese line keeps them well outside Rangoon. Replacement thrust (after Chinese bogged down again) on Hanoi falls 1-2 turns short—probably because MAC with airdrop airfield and escort TAC were shot down. Shoestring invasion of Malaysia gets two lucky rolls and captures Singapore. Lack of A/C on both sides—end up with 1-2 TAC each, 1 MAC. Am I doing something wrong? The final score: net 16 VP for Japanese, which is a marginal victory for the Empire. The last 1-2 turns saw Allies capture the oilfields and Singapore to swing the game from an Operational victory to Marginal. I look forward to a replay, now that I have a better idea of how to use the Allied forces and some new strategies to try out. Paul Haase San Rafael, CA