Don’t forget Mark Herman’s Pacific War. Although Mark tells people not to play the campaigns.
I still have my copy of CNA but it’s not in mint condition. I still look over many of my old games from time to time but don’t have the time to play them or the heart to sell them.
I had been that way – not having the heart to sell any of my collection. But I suddenly realized that I’d never play some of these games, especially as I acquire new ones, so I began selling off a few games I know I’ll not really miss. Especially ones that might be getting a remake soon, like CNA.
Who is remaking it? SPI is long gone of course.
Decision Games, I assume? They own the copyright to all the old SPI games.
Wacht Am Rhein, Highway to the Reich, Atlantic Wall. All republished.
Ah, ok. Thanks.
Interesting, I did not know that.
Fellow grognards, Decision Games are now having a $30 off for purchase above $120. I’m very interested in Axis Empires: Dai Senso as I always wanted to play a WW2 Pacific Campaign that involves Sino-Japanese War as one of the important theater to play. Has anyone tried Dai Senso before? how does it compare to other Pacific campaign games like Empire of the Sun… and yes… another Mark Herman’s game–Pacific War. Should I wait for P500 reprint of EOTS and for the latter, Pacific War, there’s a senior grognard happens to own this game and we both agreed to tackle it once we’re retired.
Incidentally, I also know about War of the Sun from MMP, I don’t think I can bring myself to play this in my lifetime. Do recommend if you guys know any great Pacific Campaign or 2nd Sino-Japanese War wargame.
I know nothing about these games, but I’m certainly intrigued in theory (ain’t no way I’m buying these sorts of games any more) about the Second Sino-Japanese War as a subject. It’s sadly under-studied in the West, even though it had and continues to have long-lasting significance.
For instance, much of the leadership in the South Korean military during the time of the Korean War and afterwards got their start with the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria. Even Park Chung-hee, president of South Korea from 1963 to his assassination in 1979, got his start with Japanese imperial military training and service, and kept a life-long admiration for bushido and the general philosophy of Japanese military thought. Likewise, many of the Communist leaders who fought in the Korean War and were prominent in politics afterward (until Kim Il-sung purged most of them) fought against the Japanese in that war, with the Chinese usually.
The Japanese imperial expansion from 1931 to 1945 still casts a long shadow in other ways, too, so it’s really cool that there are people looking at the Sino-Japanese war for simulation subjects.
Mark Herman and I talked for a while about Pacific War wargames here:
Verdict: Fire is the Sky is great, his own Pacific War is good but the campaign doesn’t hang together and doesn’t really fit with the design so just play with the scenarios. He likes War of the Suns but I don’t know because it is sitting on my shelf unopened.
@TheWombat You certainly know much more about Sino-Japanese War than me :). I think a big part of me wanting to play a good 2nd Sino-Japanese War wargame has to be me being a Chinese descent where growing up listening to atrocities committed by IJA from my grandparents and school history curricular was a pretty big part on how I viewed about WW2. I find it surprising that there is a dearth of wargames for such a significant event that still reverberates till now. I mean, we have many wargames focusing on Battle of the Bulge, Market Garden, Eastern front, North African campaign, etc. but there’s hardly any Sino-Japanese wargames on neither operational, strategic, nor tactical level battles. I’m suspecting whether is it because it’s not commercially viable due to lack of interest among wargamers which predominantly consists of Westerners? I’m really interested to know :)
@Brooski Thanks for the episode linked! I listened to it and it’s a shame I forgot about this, probably I wasn’t that fervent on board wargames as much as I do now. I’ve checked on Fire in the sky, it sure looks good but boy it’s OOP and look at that aftermarket price! Why is MMP not reprinting it :(
Unfortunately MMP is much slower about getting things into print than GMT.
Dai Senso looks interesting, but I’d always heard the naval system in those games is somewhat abstracted. I suppose that might be a plus for you, if your main interest is the Sino-Japanese conflict. For me, it would be somewhat of a minus but not a deal-killer.
There are other candidates, of course, but I’m not sure they’d give you what you want. The new World in Flames is about to hit the stores. It does model the conflict inside China, because it is a global-war game, but you’d have to play an awful lot of European stuff too. Plus it’s pricy. Matrix’s WIF is cheaper and has a larger-scale version of the China conflict, but there’s no AI yet, so you’d have to play via internet or solitaire. Mark Herman’s excellent “Empire of the Sun” is a terrific representation of the Pacific War – except for the part that you wish to explore, heh. (It completely abstracts the war in China.)
Finally, the Grigsby/Matrix monster "War in the Pacific - Admiral’s Edition’ features a very detailed land map of China and daily turns. Still, at 30 miles per hex, daily turns mean movement happens sloooowly. I don’t think that game’s engine is as well suited to land combat as naval/air combat. It’s still my favorite Pacific War game, though. I’ve probably logged 1000 hours in it, both vs AI and PBEM.
Also: has anyone played Desert War enough to post some impressions? I’m still thinking about taking the plunge (to use an entirely misplaced metaphor).
I think there is a lack of popularity of the war in the Pacific in general for American wargamers. Naval stuff has received a fair bit of attention, along with the sort of grand strategic treatments like Grigsby’s games, but the ground war certainly has been under-represented.
I suspect there are a bunch of reasons. The war against Japan was prosecuted under vastly different psychological circumstances than that against Germany, starting with the whole “revenge for Pearl Harbor” bit and of course being inseparable from the racial element. That, combined with the generally small-scale nature of the ground war, as opposed to the sweeping vastness of the air and naval campaigns, makes games on the topic less appealing I think. Cramming a bunch of people on to an island and rooting out dug-in, suicidal defenders is hardly as compelling a narrative for most gamers as, say, driving tank divisions across the steppes or invading France. Even the bigger scale stuff runs up against the plain fact that the Germans had cooler stuff, in gaming terms. Japanese tanks can’t compete with German weapons for gamer mind-share.
And if American gamers aren’t interested in a part of the war that absorbed so much of our effort, and lives, they certainly aren’t going to be interested in the Japanese fighting the Chinese I’m guessing.
Someone should archive that Avalon Hill post that was posted earlier. It’s not loading for me, and considering it’s an Earthlink account…
Hmmm, loads fine here…
My only impression is that the game has tons of problems, but I am not getting tired of it the way I got tired of Check Your Six! in thirty minutes.