I sometimes wonder about Pacific Rim Publishing. Are they really a serious game company, or is the whole operation just a giant tax scam, some kind of money laundering scheme for the mob? It was Pac Rim, remember, that launched “CounterAttack” magazine to considerable fanfare some years ago, and who have since maintained such a sluggish publication schedule that most subscribers have simply given up waiting on the thing. For an encore (and, presumably, to provide the boys with something to do between biennial “CounterAttack” mailings) Pac Rim Poo-Bah, Jeff Tibbetts - the Garbo of game designers (“He vants to be alone”) - started the “Just Plain Wargames” line of cheap games sold in blank, white envelopes. These have been generally well received, but they are available only by mail-order from an address so unresponsive that this buyer has trouble wrestling a price list out of it, much less a game.
Then Jeff decided to venture into store-distributed boxed games. He started with Mike Bennighof’s rather obscure paean to Bismarck, Blood & Iron, with the not so opaque $40 pricetag, obviously to discourage any casual purchasers… you know, all those walk-in, Prussian Junkers. For its second boxed release Pac Rim has chosen Chosin (which is about as alliterative as any of this gets), a grand tactical simulation of the epic retreat of 1st Marine Division and attached Army units from the Chosin Reservoir in northern Korea (or, as MajGen Smith, an obvious disciple of the Duke of Plaza-Toro, insisted, “We're advancing in another direction!”). The Korean War has not been a wallet-opener in the past, and Chosin doesn’t do much to change this.
The game box is a dull, blue-gray illustrated with a blurry, black & white photo of some depressed looking guys (“Counter-Attack” subscribers?) walking towards low, distant, snowy hills. Another blurry black & white photo adorns the box back, along with this statement: “100,000 Chinese infantry launched an offensive against 28,500 American Marines and Army troopss [sic].” There is a long tradition in this hobby of using the box to impress the customers with one’s illiteracy. Jeff seems to have attended the same class. Summa cum Laude, one expects.
Things don’t improve a whole lot when you open the box. The 22" by 34" map is drawn by Mr. Rhino himself, Mark Simonitch, but is one of his professional rather than inspired efforts. At a scale of 440 meters to the hex the eponymous Chosin Reservoir (nicely drawn in a cold looking blue cross-hatched with white) dominates the proceedings, almost dividing the land mass in two. Elevations are almost the only terrain on the map, beyond a few trenches, roads, and villages. The Terrain Effects Chart, plus several tracks and holding box, are sprinkled around three sides of the irregularly shaped map area and are colored the same dull green as Level Two terrain. The feel is a bit of a downer, an effect not wholly unsuited to North Korea in the winter.
The 300 counters (about 200 units and 100 markers) are likewise professionally drawn, but nothing to write home about. Combat units feature standard NATO symbols, whilst the game markers are plain white with black lettering or simple black symbols. The Chinese Communist Force (CCF) units at least are printed a nice tan and, perhaps to make up for their boring order of battle, are color-coded by division. US forces are printed in two different shades of green for Marine and Army units; unfortunately these are a little close for easy recognition, and the lighter shade (Army) tends to disappear against all those green hills on the map.
The complete US force amounts to only one reinforced division, but, since their units are companies and platoons (as opposed to battalions for the CCF), the Good Guy actually has more counters to sort through than the CCF player, and a much more complex order of battle to deal with. An erratum in the rulesbook points out that three of the US counters have incorrect unit designations which, as things stand now, doesn't make the their order of battle any easier to sort out.
The single Chart Card (the back of the box claims there are two) is rather revealing about the level of quality control at Pac Rim. The Fire and Assault Tables carelessly list some, but not all combat modifiers, and certain results on the Fire Table contain asterisks in addition to step losses, asterisks the post-publication errata sheet says to ignore. And then we get a real Homer Simpson piece of work. The back side of the card contains charts for the optional Logistics Rule and a set-up track for optional Task Force Drysdale units. Of course, if you decide to use the Drysdale option and place units on the track, you won’t be able to see the combat tables on the other side. Doh!
Unfortunately, while the rules booklet is attractively presented, this is where the real problems begin. I’m not going to insult the men of 1st Marine Division and imply that learning this game is an ordeal comparable to what they endured, but it is certainly wargaming's equivalent to the retreat from the frozen Chosin. The problem isn’t that the rules are badly written: the prose is fairly grammatical and not as typo-ridden as some. But the rules are sloppily composed and thricely afflicted with a lack of precision in wording, poor expression of concepts, and misuse of terms, all fatal to a document that needs to be far clearer than we get here. Terms such as “Line of Communications” and “Line of Supply” are used interchangeably, although they mean different things. And the “Ranged Fire Strength” is sometimes carelessly referred to as “Bombardment Strength.” And some of the typos that did slip through are whoppers, such as transposing the Ranged Fire and Assault Strengths on the sample unit diagram. The errata helps some, but it also adds new confusion. The rules, even with errata, suffer from a vagueness of expression and a lack of a comprehensive, illustrated example of play.
Even were the rules crystal clear, Chosin would still be a damned slow-moving experience. Setting up, to start with, is tedious. The only scenario is a full-length run-through of the entire battle, with an historical deployment that requires you to find the location of every single combat unit on a set-up chart and place it in its exact starting hex. There has to be a better way than this. Having placed all the counters, you are faced with the situation on the night of 27/28 November 1950, when the CCF descended out of the mountains onto the not wholly unsuspecting 1st Marine Division. At the time the Marines were still poised to advance beyond the Chosin, with both the 5th and 7th Regiments concentrated on the east side of the reservoir at Yudam-Ni. The attached US Army 31st Regiment was guarding the flank on the gravel track running down the west side of the reservoir, whilst elements of Chesty Puller’s 1st Marine Regiment were concentrated around Hagaru-Ri, at the southern tip, guarding lines of communication.
This results in the US forces forming three very dense clumps of counters, with the clump at Yudam-Ni in particular calling for the tweezers champion of gaming to come forth. Because, once the CCF player starts closing in on those US clumps, you find that Chosin combines dense counter stacks with a slow-moving, grand-tactical game system designed to show in detail the differences between the mass tactics of the CCF infantry and the heavy firepower of the smaller US forces. Each day is divided into two night and two daylight turns, with movement rates determined by the time of day (higher for the CCF at night, natch, and for the US when the sun is shining). Thus, 32 turns are required just to get from the start of the game to the end of the first stage of 1st Marine's retreat to a consolidated bastion at Hagaru-Ri.
The sequence of play is conservative Igo-Hugo, with first the CCF and then the US player working through the following phases: Offensive Ranged Fire; Movement (with opportunity fire); Defensive Ranged Fire; Assault; and Supply Check (with recovery from Suppressed and Disrupted results). US units, predictably, have high Fire Strengths for their size whilst the CCF units, being battalions, are big on Assault Strength.
While this does show the essential differences between the two sides, it is tedious and time-consuming. In addition to the wristage produced by the three combat phases built into each of the many player turns, the game is lumbered with some fiddly mechanics that add yet more die rolling: units that leave cover to move adjacent to the enemy have to be marked with a counter, and normally suffer an adverse die modifier. Except that, during night turns, the CCF player must roll for each such unit (and it is at night that he will be doing most of his moving) to see whether the modifier applies or whether the cover of darkness negates it. Interestingly, given that the game is a contest between mass on one side and firepower and troop quality on the other, there are no morale or quality ratings on the units. The better infantry tactics of the Marines, as opposed to the Army, is shown by the Marines being able to reroll (yes, more die-rolling!) adverse combat results, and Marine units having a different die range for success on the CCF night movement die-roll just mentioned (yes, more exceptions!).
The step reduction mechanics are also less than felicitous: CCF battalions have four steps for losses; the first two are represented by the back-printed unit counter, which is replaced with an anonymous remnant counter for the remaining two. US companies, with three steps, are treated with similar anonymity for their final appearance. Not far into the game you will have taken enough losses that you will have a lot of nameless counters to keep track of. And unit affiliation does count in this game, particularly when calling for fire support. There are some neat touches: vehicles and armored units cannot venture too far from the lowlands and must be protected by rifle companies in the hills; US units that are destroyed whilst able to trace a line of communications to one of their hospitals can be consolidated with other destroyed units and returned to play; destroyed vehicle units automatically create road-blocks, and combat units can dig in as well as build and clear road-blocks, though this also adds to the counter clutter.
If the mechanics are slow and tedious, the scope of the game is equally disappointing. I’d anticipated that Chosin would give me a chance to recreate the whole, epic withdrawal of 1st Marine Division all the way to their successful evacuation from the port of Hungnam. In fact, the game only covers the first stage of the retreat, to a consolidated position around the advanced base at Hagaru-Ri, on the south shore of the reservoir. Since only the action in the vicinity of the Chosin itself is included, the US player does not get victory points for evacuating units. He gets points for killing the CCF, for holding onto the Yudam-Ni and the west flank positions for the opening turns, and for holding onto Hagaru-Ri through to the end of the game. The reward for holding Yudam-Ni and the west flank is one of those “iron maiden” rules that force you to follow a historical strategy. The points for holding Hagaru-Ri through to the end encourage the US player to consolidate his three starting clumps of units into one mega-clump at the base of the map. Given the losses US firepower will inflict on the CCF, the game usually ends with this concentration of Marine and Army units holding on to their Victory Point hexes and looking as though they are there to stay. This just doesn’t feel like the historical situation, where the consolidation of forces at Hagaru-Ri was merely the prelude to further withdrawal.
A game of Chosin, then, usually consists of a slow, tweezers-enhanced, grinding push down both sides of the reservoir as the US player tries to form the mega-clump. He will be rewarded by some drama and a few tough decisions. Should he risk sticking around for the forward position victory points, or should he bug out early? His vehicle units, including his valuable hospitals, are confined to the low terrain and will need to be protected by rifle companies in the hills. The majority of the Army units to the west are probably doomed, no matter how skilled their handling, but attempting to get a few remnants to safety is the stuff of high drama indeed.
The CCF player has an easier time of it with fewer and more uniform units, but his is also the more boring side to play. He has only one ranged artillery unit to give his order of battle variety, and the initial set-up divides his forces into two distinct groups on either side of the reservoir. If he pauses for any major redeployments the Yanks will have time to consolidate, so he lacks real play options. He will face plenty of frustration, too, since he lacks sufficient ranged weapons to hurt the US forces from afar while, given the open terrain and the usually generous visibility ranges, the US player will pound him mercilessly with heavy weapons and artillery (probably to vent his frustration at having to move all those damn fiddly counters). The large number of turns only prolongs the agony. In the absence of fatigue or command control rules, every unit can move its full movement allowance every turn, so the tempo of play feels a little fast, without any of the lulls that characterized the actual battle. Suffice it to say that the US player has plenty of time to make it to Hagaru-Ri and to bombard the CCF player into shreds.
Even if Chosin did not suffer from the rules glitches, production problems, and dubious design decisions enumerated above, I suspect it would still suffer from “Custer-Rorke Syndrome.” The escape from the Chosin is a fascinating, dramatic topic to read about, but a jolly difficult one to turn into a good game. Like many military epics, after all, this one consisted of a tedious withdrawal in bad weather, interrupted by occasional brutal, congested slugfests at key choke-points. If this sounds to you like a game worth playing but once, then you’ve been paying attention.
It is obvious from the way Chosin turned out that questions of scale and topic have to be addressed very carefully if these are not to bog down in tedium and procedural fiddliness. The most successful of the historical tactical games, such as The Gamers’ TCS series, have streamlined combat mechanics, carefully chosen map scales, and used rules that punish dense stacks by making them very vulnerable to fire.
I'm disappointed, then, that Chosin didn't experiment with some more modern and imaginative mechanics to try and achieve a higher fun quotient than it now has. Yet this is a difficult topic, and the game, as it exists, does have its dramatic moments. I can forgive it a certain amount of tedium. What I cannot forgive is the carelessness evident throughout virtually every aspect of Chosin's development and production. Previous releases from Pac Rim seemed to indicate they were trying to become a quality outfit. Apparently not.
CAPSULE COMMENT
Graphic Presentation: Professional, but drab and unimaginative.
Playability: Vague rules, extensive errata, and a fiddly system make learning and playing a chore.
Replayability: A one-play slugfest.
Historicity: The essential differences between the two sides are brought out, but the activity level seems a little high for the number of turns.
Creativity: Minimal effort to provide anything other than a pedestrian view.
Wristage: It's a tactical game.
Comparisons: The old Inchon (SimCan) which did have an interesting impulse system, was fast playing, and had a real sense of movement. The recent “Command” game on that subject was far more interesting than either the former or the one at hand.
Overall: Too little excitement, too much tedium.
from PACIFIC RIM
One 22’ x 34” map; 300 1/2” counters;16 page Rulesbook; one Player Reference Card. Boxed. Pacific Rim Publishing Company, POB 23651, Oakland CA 94623. Feeling Lucky? Try 510-763-0928. $33
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© Copyright 1994 by Richard Berg
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