This is one of the Victory family of games that I had managed to avoid by the cunning ruse of not buying any copies. The abstract topic and witless tendency towards equilibrium were not really something I sought. Pacific Victory though is the rather more interesting and racy cousin of this stolid family. Its topic is the campaign in the Pacific in World War 2 and it gives anything but abstract balanced play. The Japanese and Allied sides feel and play very differently. The level of simulation is moderate. If historical accuracy is obliged to meet a clever but inaccurate mechanism then the mechanism wins out. In some respects it is a military "German" game, but only in some because the game is a lot longer than that genre without being too long for wargamers. Pretty to look at and posing lots of interesting resource allocation problems Pacific Victory is an interesting game to play a dozen times, after that one may crave something a little more realistic, but any game with that much play value for me is a rare creature anyway.
Let's start with the physicals. Pacific Victory is a very attractive game indeed. The map is well executed in bright colours showing the area from Aleutians to Australia and from Bombay to Panama. The clear style is important because the supply networks through the various islands are vital to success. This requires not only being able to see if an area is a major or minor base, but also to whom it belongs. The latter is important because counters are grossly under provided so that occupying lots of bases can be difficult, and they revert to their original owner when unoccupied. Most of the island bases are red (British) or blue (American), some folks find the red rather unsettling and seem to think it is really Japanese. I found it all nice and clear. We are of course covering vast distances here and the predominant blue of the ocean with the mass of Asia work well. Physically Pacific Victory has the edge over Victory in the Pacific.
Blocks
The counters are the usual blocks (blue and orange being the colours like some mad South African flag). Each has a rather jolly picture of infantry, ships or planes. These are much prettier than the old NATO symbols, but they also look odd when you get to strength two and a fleet of upside down warships. As I mentioned the scale of the game is designed to prevent massed safe occupation of the map. Limited numbers of blocks mean you must concentrate on a limited number of approaches (there are seven Japanese air counters for the whole Pacific and the number of marine counters is very restricted). Aircraft units come in two varieties for the Japanese (land and naval) but only land for the Allies. There area much wider range of naval units from aircraft-carriers to cruisers. Land forces are either infantry (including some Japanese Garrisons) or marines.
Each counter is usually rated for four factors: movement (one or two hexes doubled for strategic movement), Air combat, Naval combat, and Ground combat. The factor is the number you must score equal or less than to hit your target. This allows a reasonable degree of unit differentiation. Japanese Naval Aircraft have factors of A2-N3-M1-G1 (Air-Naval-Move-Ground) whereas their land-based colleagues have A2-N2-M1-G2 thus demonstrating the biases of their builders. Kongo class battleships are A1-N2-M2-G2 but the later Yamato class A2-N4-M2-G3 that may over-egg it but has some elements of truth to it. US infantry are A1-M1-G2 but Marines A1-M2-G3. The USN carriers from Pearl Harbour days A2-N3-M2-G1 are replaced by swanky A3-N3-M2-G2 platforms that can bash almost anything. The limited number of counters does not prevent a range of units within these limits (though it can mean few counters of each type). The Allies find time to differentiate between US infantry, US marines, Indian and Australian infantry units. At this level (of course) tanks artillery etc are all too highly detailed to be represented. Aircraft are 50-100 per step on the blocks, carriers 1 fleet or 2 to 3 light carriers per step, battleships one per step with 8 subs per step, and infantry being a division a step. There is also a supreme headquarters block (isn't there always?) which controls strategic activity.
Before we dwell on the detail of this system it is worth making a point on the rules and playtesting. Frankly these were pretty badly done. The rules had lots of holes in them and the effect of applying them as written was to make one wonder how they could have been tested. I suspect a small number of testers worked on them using the rules, as they understood them, not as they were written. Fortunately Columbia produced version 1.1 quite quickly and you must have this version. It is a tribute to the game underneath this snot that so many persevered early on.
Play in Pacific Victory is asymmetric. The First Player tends to have a lot of disadvantages (though some of the new rules change this with single sentences - a rather concerning brevity, I hope they have thought them through). Play therefore opens (except on the first turn) with an Initiative test, ties going to the USA (naturally the Allies are called the USA) to show ULTRA at work. The winner then selects whomsoever goes first. Winning the initiative more than your opponent will not guarantee victory but it will give you a big advantage. The turn consists of First Player Strategic and then Operational moves, the Second Player then tries to evade any pinning units, makes his Strategic and then Operational moves, both sides engage in Combat and the play completes with the Logistics Phase.
The First Player is thus obliged to make all his moves before his opponent. This puts a premium on trying to open up a number of avenues of attack so that the First Player cannot guard them all. Of course the map and previous turns may not permit this, both tending to channel or telegraph future action. Where the First Player has the strategic offensive he can of course simply launch his attacks. These will possibly pin units of the defender before they can redeploy. However the second player may then be able to send small forces to cut off supply or to ensure there is inadequate base capacity to handle the returning forces after combat. However one slices it being First Player is to sample a true lack of initiative and major inefficiency. There is one exception to this. The First Player may put out screens (possibly but not always) small units of cruisers or subs.
Since naval units can exist at sea these may already have been left out from the previous turn. Where these occupy open sea they can be moved through if you leave an equal number of blocks behind. Other screens (in coastal waters) stop all land and naval movement (not aircraft though). This basic rule is pretty foolish (8 old subs stop a fleet of 50 vessels!) but is ameliorated by the low number of counters preventing players ringing many bases with speed-bumps. The First Player may sail through open-sea screens but the second player cannot. This is a new change and gives the First Player the opportunity to screen his bases effectively. I have not played using this version and am very suspicious of it. Given the lack of thought in the previous rules I hope this has been tested and is not an after-thought. Of course the screen will in combat feel the full wrath of its opponents, but a submarine screen will only face air and carrier combat before it can withdraw one hex leaving a fuming armada behind it.
Despite the size of the area mapped the stacking rules are quite severe (and probably historically wrong). Air units can stack two to a Major Base (Truk for example) and one for a minor base. The fact that the two units may each have one step, but the single unit has four is (of course) disregarded because of the need to have stacking rules that the other player (who can only see anonymous blocks) can check. Naval units can stack up to six allowing an illegal stack of 7 battleships and a legal one of 24! Once again the lack of large numbers of blocks overcomes this odd feature since six blocks of battleships can be all one has (if the Japs have that many in the first place). Finally Army units stack as aircraft.
Just to confuse matters combat stacking is different two Air, two Army and six Naval are allowed in a combat hex. As you can see there is another advantage to the attacking Second Player here. On a minor base (say Tarawa) the First Player can stack only one air and land unit, but can be faced by double that. Since victory often comes down to bayonets on the beach this is an important asymmetry. The rule as written though has a fatal flaw, it says that you only penalise such errors if they are discovered. Since you only discover overstacking by combat by the time the minor base becomes a combat hex the stacking limit has increased! The consensus seems to be to punish the now-discovered error. I can see why players do this I just wonder at why the designer wrote the rule entirely differently?
Land units also suffer from hexside limits for movement (though I find these are often forgotten). Only two counters may cross a clear hexside (which is rather stern) and one cross Jungle or Desert hexsides. This can mean that advancing into Burma requires both land and amphibious support if real ground strength is to be applied. Considering the state of Burma's transport network that seems more than reasonable. I'm not so sure in Siam but on the whole it works well and teaches you to stick to naval transport.
One of the areas causing the most annoyance and confusion is hex control. Because counters are short in number most bases will be unoccupied. This means that enemy units can move in and occupy them, but not if they are aircraft, and then there's the concepts of retreat from battle (which may also cause an entry into a base) or redeployment for the winners. I think the rules work, but be prepared to read them and do what they say. Of course the real problem here is that players can cheat or make mistakes which will never be found until combat exposes the block. All one can do is issue due warnings at each stage, this will deter cheats and help those who are mistaken to correct their moves.
Control
Control is in turn vital because of supply. Enemy bases whether occupied or not cut supply and movement. As supply lines are not long you will often encounter the need to cut a corridor into these enemy bases (always remembering that with low counter densities this may be highly vulnerable to an attack coming at right angles to your LOC). Supply sources are Major Bases that are, themselves, in supply. One can operate within two hexes of such a base but supply cannot be traced through enemy hexes (so one must watch out for the screen slipping behind your forces) or impassable hex-sides. Having stretched your two hexes from unit to Major Base one can then count up to three hexes to another Major Base and thence onward to a Home Base. The layout of the geography is rather restrictive, and I do not believe all players are grasping these rules (assuming I have). For example the USN Major Base at Hawaii can supply units at Midway but not at Wake (which is three hexes away). Tarawa must draw its supply from Samoa - Tahiti-Panama and cannot use Pearl Harbour due to distance. Batavia the Major Base in Java only links to the Japanese network via Saigon, and then only if Borneo is not occupied by Allied units (who will in turn need Manila or Singapore for supply). To add to the fun submarines can draw supply through enemy controlled hexes which makes them very useful for strangling supply by getting behind a cruiser screen.
The effect of lack of supply is to reduce each block by one step, and this can cause elimination. There is one vital exemption; infantry and marine units never lose that last step. These you have to winkle with the bayonet.
The bloody effect of supply attrition, the short supply lines (short in map terms - they are, of course, very long in miles), and the lack of ZOCs can all result in very silly things happening. For example, a large fleet moves from Samoa to take Tarawa. This will allow the Allies to project air power over the Japanese Major Base in the Marshalls. Air power is a very cheap way to degrade very expensive naval assets, and then permit landings. The invading fleet moves first supported by air units operating from Phoenix and the Ellice Islands. If the Japanese choose to they can send single cruisers to occupy all three Allied bases. Even if Tarawa falls units cannot use it as base because (say) 20 cruisers are between it and Samoa. There will be overstacking losses and attrition losses. Instead the Fleet needs to push out its own screens to make the journey around the flanks too long. This can require screens with a length of 3000 miles. There are certain lessons from this I suppose, and attacking when First Player is a bad idea. But defending is not much better since unless one rushes up to ones attackers (pinning them at the risk of a beating) or maintains flank screens (difficult with limited markers) the one can be surrounded and cut off rather easily. Of course most gamers are too busy in early games learning the system, but once one has passed that learning phase the results can be deeply odd. However, perhaps it is the view of the designer that the strategic defence does not exist (certainly for the non-initiative side)- certainly that can be the effect.
Movement is very limited (one or two hexes) but when moving between friendly bases this can be doubled (quadrupled for air units). This can be a benefit for the First Player who can move units into friendly bases that are then attacked by the Second Player. Strategic Movement is much more dramatic in size but cannot be combined with other movement and requires expensive HQ points. It is the only way to move infantry across water for invasions or occupations (and then only two hexes). Marine units have their own amphibious capability but are very limited in numbers so that Strategic Points are most important. There are a number of other Strategic missions (carrier raids etc) but I have never seen them used.
Combat
Combat is the usual ingenious hierarchical Columbia style. The defender (first there or owner of the base) fires first and losses are immediately inflicted. Each side does each category of fire before moving on to the next. The eight-level system goes as follows: Naval Air, Army Air, Carriers, Submarines, Battleships, Cruisers, Marines, and finally Infantry. At each level you can fight or run. The order means that land-based aircraft can hit carriers before they can respond, similarly the Marines get the chance of zapping the defending infantry first. When hits are scored they are applied against target type (Air, Naval, Land) with the owner choosing the block providing that the bigger blocks are hit first. This can result in interesting effects. Firstly, we all love cruisers - they cost two production points a step, and can absorb losses that might otherwise take out a 5PP carrier step. Second one must be cautious about building blocks out of line with the rest of the fleet. A four step cruiser block and four one-step battleships will see four hits absorbed before a BB is lost (five hits and a PP cost of 13). But a four step battleship block and four one-step cruisers will see BB losses until the block is down to one (five hits and a PP cost of 19). This results in historical levels of cruisers and submarines rather than massed fleets of battleships and carriers. [Of course the aim of high-step cruisers and submarines will conflict with their use as thin screens and thus counterattack some of the odder features of the rules]. There are three rounds of combat only in each battle.
Army units count as Naval until the opposing naval units are sunk or run away. Though air and naval units can bombard Army units they can never take out the last step of an army block. To do this one must land Army units. The fire priority for Marines is a vital importance here, as is the limitation to one or two steps of the Japanese "marine" forces. Army units in certain terrain (including Major Bases) can take double hits and can be very difficult to winkle. One really must prepare invasions with care.
Retreats occur throughout the combat sequence as players detect the better part of valour. After victory the winners may do a two-hex regroup that can be very important in setting up the next turn. In certain cases uncaptured bases can be blockaded by Naval units.
The major invasions can be a great event in the game. Defending air power seeking to destroy enemy aircraft which may be concentrating on trying to sink defending naval units. Every round during which the defenders retain a naval presence denies one round of land combat. It is seldom a sure thing if the enemy occupies a base with lots of infantry, one may need to surround it and use attrition (assuming one can deploy a base network to do so) before risking a landing. A botched invasion not only loses time but valuable assets that must be rebuilt and shipped in. Always the defender will seek to use airpower as a cheap opportunity to hit early (at 2PP land air is no more expensive than cruisers and much more useful). Where strong Army forces are prepared one needs to ensure the supporting naval blocks are similarly at full strength or the ship-bound infantry will be taking naval losses. I am not so sure the combat system is always right, but it is seldom tedious and is never unduly long.
Pacific's Weather System
In order to further jigger your plans the Pacific's weather system includes Typhoons, Monsoons and bad weather around the Aleutians. These are handled quickly and painlessly but are vital in your planning. The Monsoon (for example) can close down the Burma front meaning some thought given to where fresh units are built can pay dividends.
Bases provide production points for building. The values are not always economic so that one can have the ridiculous result that the Sumatran oil reserves are equal in value to Rabaul and the New Hebrides. This is of course twaddle, but the total effect is interesting. The Japanese have hardly any resources usually having to concentrate on infantry and air units. The Allies have much more in the way of resources but must build in the rear and move forwards or face doubled costs. Early on the allies must build infantry and planes (together with cruisers and subs) to hold the perimeter, only later building carriers and battleships. Properly run the Allies can easily get to the Home Islands, though they will need to time their major trials of strength well.
There are three scenarios Starting in December 1941, June 1942 and June 1943, they all end in 1945. This provides a good range of play times and you will find them all presenting good problems for play.
Pacific War is a great game to learn though I do wonder if its artificial construct does not eventually jar. It is exciting in combat, demands good planning and tends towards action not inertia. With the Version 1.1 rules one has a strong game, though the quality of rulings from Columbia indicate they are adrift on some of the wilder tactics. As the article in PA101 showed the historical content is not particularly strong but some of the macro lessons do come through. Dissatisfied though I am with the game I would still recommend its purchase. The only groups to whom I would not recommend Pacific War are the strict historians and those with high blood pressure. Pacific War is an unforgiving game where ones errors are punished rapidly and publicly not all of you might want that.
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© Copyright 2001 by Charles and Teresa Vasey.
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