Pacific Battles: Volume 1, The Rising Sun

Pacific Battles is a wargame series covering the great land battles of the Pacific theater in WWII. Units are battalions, with companies and regiments. Most games in the series have players commanding anywhere from a division to a corps worth of forces, and employment of combined arms tactics becomes critical. The system shows the evolution of tactical doctrine in both the Japanese and Allied armies with Banzai charges, superior U.S. fire coordination, naval bombardment, airpower, amphibious landings, and engineer operations. Games in this volume include: The Fall of Singapore is a simulation of one of the worst military defeats in British history. From December of 1941 to February of 1942, the campaign is a case study of a smaller but better-lead force of Japanese outmaneuvering a much larger but poorly trained and ill-led British. Struggle on Bataan recreates the desperate U.S. and Filipino defense of the Bataan Peninsula between 9 January and 9 April 1942. The defense of Bataan, though ultimately doomed, constituted the only serious disruption to the string of Japanese victories during the first six months of the war. Turning Point: Guadalcanal is the struggle between the United States and Japan for possession of the island of Guadalcanal in the southern Solomons chain. The battle lasted from August 1942 until early February 1943. The opponents on Guadalcanal were approximately of equal strength and with control of the seas around the island still to be decided, Guadalcanal was the last time in the war when an American amphibious operation faced the prospect of total defeat.