Components similar to Iron Bottom Sound II ... editorialese for "can't find the box". Like many gamers, my first experience with naval war games took place with my opponent hidden behind a cardboard screen. Midway and Bismarck, and later Norway 1940 and Ironbottom Sound found a ready audience in those of us who grew up playing Battleship, and provided a greater degree of challenge than open movement games. Many remorseless grognards who confidently destroyed my armies in face-to-face engagements were reduced to doubtful paralysis by the problem of finding my units at sea, which has made this sort of game a favorite of mine. So, I had high hopes for Jack Greene's double-map game on the Japanese raid on the island of Ceylon in April of 1942. The hidden-movement naval game is, to a large degree, Jack Greene's pavate territory, and the opportunity to game an engagement I've never seen simulated before made it doubly appealing. Playing the game proved to be quite simple, with systems adapted from Norway, 1940, and updated to simulate the increased complexity and importance of air operations in the Pacific. The biggest problem the Japanese player has is managing his large compliment of carrier aircraft as they conduct raids against Ceylonese ports and hunt for Allied ships. The Allied player has a much more difficult problem, finding the Japanese fleet, and inflicting damage on it without losing his badly outnumbered carriers and capitol ships. The bulk of each turn consisted of moving one's forces and designating hexes for air search, with combat occurring fairly infrequently and usually between air units. Combat is resolved on a variety of tables that cross-reference attacker and target types, and can sometimes require a lot of die-rolling. Once both fleets ftnd each other, and can maintain contact for a second turn, the game is likely to be all but decided in shon order. The Allied player's task is made even more difficult by the fact that he doesn't know what the Japanese player's objective is. They may be conduct a small cruiser raid to shell the Indian mainland, they may be out to destroy shipping and port facilities on Ceylon as in the historical raid, or they may attempt an amphibious invasion of the island. If the object is a raid, the Japanese may well strike and exit the vicinity before the Allied forces can find them. If the plan is to invade, the Allied fleet can hide, but it isn't likely to survive contact with the Japanese main force. While I had a great time playing it, White Ensign, Rising Sun is deeply flawed as a game. In large part, this is because the forces available to the Allied player are outnumbered and badly obsolete. Options that allow the addition of extra fleet carriers and the resurrection of lost units like the battleship Prince of Wales in the Allied starting forces can do a lot to improve the game balance, but it's only a matter of degree. The British have one tactic for which the Japanese have no response: night torpedo-bomber attacks. But the range of the Swordfish and Albacore aircraff that can conduct these attacks is so short that no competent Japanese player needs to get close enough to be in danger from them. His aircraft can all hit Colombo and Trincomalee from six hexes away, and the British can offer only a minimal combat air patrol to oppose them. Had the Allies been able to inflict any sort of major casualty on the Japanese carrier group at all, the engagement would have to be considered an Allied victory, no matter how much damage was done to Ceylon in the process. The game's victory conditions do not reflect this. A major missing detail is some victory points for Allied elimination of Japanese aircrew, the Empire's most irreplaceable resource. It would also make sense for the Allies to receive points for ships which survive the attack and remain in the region after the Japanese withdraw; alternatively, it might make sense to give the Allies credit for getting their ships off the board in the event of the invasion of Ceylon. Physically, the game is simple and attractive, the map artwork by Beth Queman is easy to look at, and the counters show up nicely against it. The small snarl of tables and charts is maintained entirely off board on a pair of player aid cards, and the ship roster sheets keep the game almost entirely free of informational markers. The rules could use some tighter editing. as there is considerable confusion over the determination of each side's initial dispositions and the Japanese objectives. MiH has made some errata available, but other problems have not yet been answered. This is an entertaining system, but a game which not everyone will enjoy. An Allied player content to die well and possibly bloody his attacker's nose is essential to a friendly game. On the other hand, a little tinkering with the victory conditions is well within the ability of most gamers. and could make this a very tense and interesting design. The novelty of the subject matter alone ought to be enough to sustain one through a few lopsided games. Jack Greene is to be commended for making the effort to cover such a little-known battle. Too bad he didn't pick a battle that had some play interest. CAPSULE COMMENTS Pretty much the same as for IBS2, except that WERS is an Ancient Mariner system saddled with an albatross of a situation. Hard to imagine who, other than naval history buffs, will want to play this. For those of you who do, the system works very nicely. Back to Berg's Review of Games Vol. 2 #28 Table of Contents Back to Berg's Review of Games List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by Richard Berg This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com