Empire of the Sun Second Edition

2 player historical wargame, ages 12+. Playing time around 4 hours.

Empire of the Sun (EOTS), uses a variant of my card driven system. The game has one map that covers the Pacific Theater of operations from India to Hawaii, and from the Aleutians to Australia. EOTS is the first card driven game to use hexes, which facilitates calculating movement and aircraft ranges. Each game turn covers 4 months (three turns per year) with a special December 41 (special two card) game turn, for a total of 12 game turns for the campaign.

The game is at the strategic level using naval units built around a capital ship class (e.g., CV Wasp, BB Washington, etc.), air units at the Air Force/ Air Flotilla/ Air Division level, and most ground units are Corps/ Armies although there are a host of specialized units at the division and below level. The game has 165 cards divided into an Allied and a Japanese deck.

The game uses a two tiered combat system with air-naval combat preceding ground combat. The system has players roll for combat efficiency, which is a strength multiplier from .5 to 2. This value multiplied by the unit strengths is the number of hits the enemy takes in combat, with some special conditions based on number of CVs present and the like.

As far as game play is concerned, China is abstracted using a track whereby the play of certain events and Chinese offensives puts pressure on the Allies to support this theater with resources or see it fall and hurt Allied morale. This is balanced against the fact that Japanese land replacements come from this theater, so the more they draw it down for conflict in other locations, the more likely China will survive.

Northern India and Burma are active theaters of operation where the majority of the continuous ground warfare in the game occurs. If the Japanese can successfully occupy Northern India, they can drive this nation and its Commonwealth units out of the war.

Australia can also be knocked out of the war, although it is hard to keep it out permanently.

Then of course there is the famous island campaigns with the US driving across the Pacific to knock Japan out of the war.