Current mood:	tired
Entry tags:	a&a:pacific, axis and allies, boardgames

Axis and Allies: Pacific
Brian cancelled on us, but Roman was not to be denied!  Two-hander evening was declared, and on the basis on "most time served on shelf without any plays", A&A:Pacific was nominated.

On a toss of a control marker, I was the Allies (both the British Empire (India/Australia), and US/China, which are the notional splits for turn order, and the possible two-side three-player game).  First turn was pretty brutal, as one might expect: special rule means that all allied units apart from in Chinese territory all defend at "one".  No surprise that I immediately lost the fleet at Hawaii, and control of the Philippines, Hong King, several island territories, and some "convoy" spaces;  bit painful that I seemed to avoid doing any casualties at all for the first half of the turn.



Pearl Harbor:



The first dead Japanese soldier (compare with great pile of Allied losses):



Game probably turned on two combats.  The first was the turn two "Battle of the Solomon Islands".  I'd converged the surviving and rebuilt US fleet on Roman's "post-Pearl" strike force there: three carriers on each side.  Defender has an advantage in that match-up, but I had more "soakage" (and I rolled rather luckily, this time, and only lost 8-pointers).



Second was the big Japanese push on India.  Large amphibious landing there, with a lot of air support.  I lost this, but managed to inflict enough casualties that I had a good shot of taking it back the next turn... with Chinese troops, who'd wandered into Burma.  Since it was getting late, we decided to "fast forward" to that combat on the next turn, on the basis that if I didn't retake it, I'd lost, and if I did, Roman was pretty much doomed -- having thrown everything into it, the eastern Pacific was already a US lake, and it was likely to just be a mopping-up exercise.  The odds were in my favour, and I did indeed win it.  Thus, we wrapped up there.

Japanese India...  about to go Chinese:


Significantly different feel from original A&A, moreso than A&A:Europe, I thought. Perhaps due to the centrality of the naval element. Looks like India is the key to a possible Japanese military win.  (They can also "run out the clock" and win on VPs, but that would mean keeping the game alive for a significant number of further turns.)  I think I messed up by losing all three fighters in that sector of the board early on (the two Indian ones in forlorn defence of Burma and Malaya, the US one in China by pressing an attack to kill some Japanese armour, which left its landing territory underdefended.  Those would have been key to defending India better, as would having sorted out the navy situation in that side of the map. I think having an "unlimited" industrial complex in Hawaii is a huge benefit to the US, and even perhaps seems slightly anomalous.  Roman reckoned it needed to have hit the economic targets even harder: it looks that by taking some land in Asia, and the British convoy centres, India can really be starved of cash.



set of photos