I have just put the finishing touches on my latest project, titled Indian Ocean Adventure. It seems that I have been threatening to do it for some months (even years) and have finally seen it through to completion. The game deals with the Japanese raids on Ceylon, staged in April of 1942. The entire period between Pearl Harbor and Guadalcanal is a favorite of mine, it being punctuated with a lot of balanced naval battles and a great deal of ground action. I have always felt that after the big push began in August (and especially in the wake of the disastrous Japanese defeat at Midway), that the war was in many aspects a lost Japanese cause. But 1942 is really a wide open year.

Indian Ocean Adventure is one of those battles that never really happened, in many ways like playing Jutland, but never finding the enemy fleet. The British knew that they were facing a Japanese juggernaut, and that their fleet in the Indian Ocean (rather puny actually, with but two CVs, one good battleship, and four old bad ones, plus a mess of destroyers) was quite vulnerable. So, straight out of a Humphrey Bogart movie, they built a secret base.

The Japanese raided Ceylon, missed the fleet, and never did find out that the secret base was within striking distance. Meanwhile, the British had the base, but feared that someone knew about it, and thus lost much of the advantage they had.

Now think about the situation for a minute: it requires a secret base rule to keep the Japanese guessing, but not so secret that the Japanese feels he can never find the British fleet. And the British player needs to be at least a bit uncomfortable about the secrecy of his base, or he gets cocky. The rule works; both sides are uncertain, no matter what location is in force, and discovery simply forces a battle, rather than giving the whole thing away.

IOA uses the same naval and air system as Coral Sea and Battle for Midway. but adds an interesting historical touch. A blow-by-blow account of the actual situation is presented in game terms, indicating what historical forces were where and did what in game terms. While it will work once as an opponent for solitaire play, its primary purpose is to give the players the feel of what actually happened.

Indian Ocean Adventure also uses the same map scale as Coral Sea/Midway. As time marches on, I hope to cover some of the other situations in 1942, (such as Java, Malaya, etc) at the same scale. Master maps exist here so that ultimately the games can be spread from Guadalcanal to Ceylon, and north to Japan.

IOA is scheduled for release at PennCon in June, but may well miss the deadline. I feel confident that the game will be out by Origins.

Speaking of 1942, 1 should mention that I am involved in the revision project for Pearl Harbor. When the game ran out of stock on its print run earlier this year, I argued that it suffered from such terrible rules problems that it should be pulled for rewrite and possibly some design changes.

While I was not especially involved in the original version, I found that many aspects of the war that I thought essential to a good simulation (amphibious operations by army troops, naval combat, naval movement, stacking, clarity of scenarios, force commitment requirements, the Indian Ocean Adventure, the submarine campaign, the mine campaign, and French IndoChina, to name ten) were missing or fragmentary. Of course, I was also assigned the task of producing the revised game, which is now one of my projects. I expect it to be done later this year. Please, don't ask for it until we put out a flyer or I mention it here; we would just have to write saying it wasn't ready yet.

We do intend to distribute the revised rules to anyone who has purchased the game previously; in all probability exchanging a rules booklet for the cover of your old one.

Two new Series 120 games are scheduled for realease when IOA comes out: Guilford Courthouse and Lobositz. Guilford Courthouse is the idea of Greg Novak (who did our as yet unreleased Fire & Steel Napoleonic miniatures rules set), and was then refined and developed by Frank Chadwick. It deals with a turning point battle in the American Revolution. Lobositz is a splendid little game from the Seven Years War; beginning in early morning, no one can see through the morning mist, and troops simply blunder around. Slowly, the fog clears (on high ground first, giving some units an advantage) and the battle gains momentum.

Following those two 120s will be two more (my own, as a matter of fact). Assault is a Modern Squad Leader game concentrating on infantry on the battlefield. The map could come straight out of an Illinois (or West German) countryside, with trees scattered about, a stream and cropland. In essence, we find an American company (squads in APCs, with some light machinegun, Dragon, and TOW support, meeting up to two Soviet companies (squads in APC's, plus some tanks). They clash, or chase, or whatever the particular scenario calls for, really demonstrating how modernsquad level infantry will (or won't) go about doing its job.

One very visible innovation is the use of combat letters rather than numerical factors. The presence of a letter (L means light machinegun) 'allows' fire once per turn using the LMG table. That table relates range with hit probability (in increments of 10%; the game uses a percentile die) to determine whether the target is hit or simply pinned. We've been using the Army's TRADOC manuals, and the discrepancy between maximum effective range (down to 10% hits) and effective range (about 50 or 60% hits) is amazing.

1942 is the other scheduled 120, dealing with the Japanese operations against the Philippines, Malaya, and Java. It is entirely land and air oriented, assuming the Japanese naval superiority that did exist, and allowing over water movement based on available transport capability. The units (brigades, regiments, and battalions) battle it out as the Japanese try to beat the clock and take over the entire area before time runs out.

At this point, I again get reluctant to say exactly what will be brought out at Origins, primarily because whatever I predict could still be cancelled, with something else being brought in in its place. I stand certain that IOA, Lobositz, and Guilford Courthouse will be there, and I am fairly certain of Fire & Steel. I also feel confident that we will have Crusader, the monster game on North Africa.

It is possible that we will have a supplemental booklet on Traveller, dealing with mercenaries and mercenary activity; it is also possible that we will have Assault and 1942. In any event, Origins will have a nice selection of new games for those attending; our regular flyer will go out at about the same time to keep those who do not attend informed.

Finally, I would like to say a word about customer service: write! You must be aware that when you send in an order, it gets read by one of our employees, who then fills out a little form which gets sent to the warehouse and shipped. Down there, they can make mistakes, even lose things. So, if you ever go for longer than 30 days without hearing from us on an order, something is wrong. Drop us a note saying you haven't received whatever, and we will check it out right away. Things do go wrong, and we stand bound to correct them if they do.