So, John and I played our first Empire of the Sun game yesterday.

Overall, we found the rules to be pretty clear. They're also
surprisingly redundant (as in "explaining things several times to
enable gradually getting deeper as one continues into the heart of the
rules") for something that Steve Newberg had his hands on (not that I
dislike SimCan rules but many others are not too fond of them).  Some
of the clarity does rest in the new parts of the living rules, and
there were a couple of issues that were clarified since then. (For
example, if there's a star marked on the '9' result, and no star on
the 'more than 9' result, then the rule says that the star only
applies if you get a '9' result.  Sorry, Stephen - it would have been
better to leave the stars out entirely.)

We played the 1942 scenario, and it started out reasonably historical.
I went for Singapore first and eventually took it, and then Rangoon,
defeated some interservice rivalry, shifted China, turned away a brief
interservice rivalry interlude, had one failed try at Manila and the
turn was over.  (At this time I didn't have any appreciation for the
card distribution, but looking at it from afterwards, I had a single
black card in the first two turns, in fact most of the second turn I
played with 1-rated reaction cards.)  There were two failed attempts
on Manila because the number of hits generated was one too low.  The
limit on one declared battle hex is not a problem if you can only
activate a few units to go after a big target hex anyway, but with a
'1' card you can't activate both air and naval support.  I used a lot
of cards to get the obvious targets and only managed to take Manila on
turn 3.  By this point things had started to seriously diverge.

Our inexperience turned the game into a bit of a drole de guerre (the
usual CDG effect).  The strategic maneuvering is quite similar to Pacific
War at reduced scale - setting up air units to keep your supply lines
open. One has to get used to that - as a result we saw a lot of deep
strikes at unprotected HQs.  Losing a corps is a good exchange for causing
four or five step losses to the other side in the attrition Phase, so both
the ANZAC HQ was taken out and SEAC put out of supply despite the fact
Rangoon had been retaken by the British. Conversely the only reason Hanoi
and the Japanese South HQ didn't fall were the restrictions on Chinese
movement, and I missed the easy way to take the Australian Mandates by
grabbing Guadalcanal immediately, and the next turn the whole area was
absolutely crowded by Allied ground and air units and the chance was past.  
In the end, the game was a tactical Allied victory.

The combat system seems to work well, the card system, too. Lots of
colour, lots of hard decisions, and a pretty good feel of the overall
forces shaping the course of the war.  I assume (hope) that the screwy
effects are a question of the learning curve.

It seems to have the same problem as in every other game that has corps
level units: not enough counters to cover all the terrain, so a lot of
places are left entirely undefended (I now see where people get the idea
of landing on the Japanese Home Islands in 1943). It does not have quite
the same degree of strangeness as some of the other card driven games in
that most cards are military anyway, so choosing a flexible 3 OC invasion
instead of a event card with 6 logistics but only one land unit shipped
does not strike one as incongruous. However, one aspect that *is* odd is
the War in Europe cards, where you essentially say 'OK, I'm ignoring that
victory in Europe now to do some things over here in the Pacific.'
Certainly in the scenarios, playing a couple of WiE cards is more
important than playing two 3-rated operations to grab that resource hex in
Burma.  That feels weird.

In another angle, taking Rangoon makes the Japanese more vulnerable,
not less, since they can't supply it by sea, when historically the
opposite was the case, at least from what I've read. Here they South
HQ has to be moved to Singapore (costs two operations) to enable sea
supply to Rangoon.  The ABDA HQ occurs by a card - if you don't get
that by turn 2 and Manila and Singapore fall according to plan, all
the Dutch units will starve on the map (Perhaps that's planned because
they are too tough otherwise?).  And while moving through an air unit
Zone of Influence means the other side has a greater chance of being
at your target in time to defend it, it has no effect on any losses
you may take, thus reducing the main historical risk to deep strikes.

Overall, the game feels like many of the one-mapper Pacific Games, but
with the cards effectively providing a lot of individual chrome random
events, sugarcoating the planning issues one normally focuses on. The
planning has not disappeared of course (since one plans with the cards
all of the time) but the connection between physical means,
objectives, and plans that I'm used to in Pacific games seems a bit
more distant, as if operations were handed down from FDR (or Emperor)
instead of planned by the Chiefs of Staff (or the Imperial Staff).
Not bad, quite colourful, and certainly something to be played a lot.
Not sure it will replace Pacific Fleet as my favorite one-mapper.

Markus

Last 3 games played: Bay of Bengal, Singapore, Empire of the Sun
--------------- http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/mst/games/ ---------------
"Bakayaro! Bakayaro!"  ("Stupid Bastards!  Stupid Bastards!") -- Admiral 
Aritomo Goto's last words to his staff, October 11, 1942



_______________________________________________
Consim-l mailing list
Consim-l@mailman.halisp.net
http://mailman.halisp.net/mailman/listinfo/consim-l