7Dec41: Pearl Harbor!

Thumbnail
Thumbnail

Description

Both a strategic and tactical game, requiring the Japanese player to attack, but allowing him to make up to 2 false alarm games, to try to drive up the US player's "precaution" victory point concessions. He will also need to choose armor-piercing bombs or torpedoes for his Kate squadrons and to decide the waves' targets: battleships (and/or Enterprise, if present), airfields and US squadrons, harbor facilities, or tank farm oil tanks.

2 4-phase (night, morning, noon, afternoon) 24-hour turns with 9 (ergo 40 minute?) hex-by-hex air-(strike-)impulses within each, so the US player has to hex-by-hex sweat out the incoming attacking Japanese air-strike waves, if they remain undetected.
USS Ward vs. Japanese mini-subs, if the Japanese player chooses to use them, risking an early US alert detection.
Risk of USAAC "Don't worry about it." and USN "Confirmation, Kaminsky. I want CONFIRMATION." detection dismissals by incompetent command.
Japanese ships - or bluffing dummies - may enter in the Northern, Northwestern, or Western sectors.

The US player can if he wishes invest in:

Joint Army (Air Corps) and Navy command center, 12 *matching* victory points (equal to 2 *destroyed* not just bottomed battleships). (Historically, both commands got detection warnings but separately dismissed them: divided command. If divided US command, 2 US players?)
PBY (1 mvp each) and/or USAAC (2 mvps ea) long-range search patrols
Up to 3 subs (2 mvps each) to patrol.
"Readying" or *launching* interceptor etc. squadrons before a *confirmed* detection. Hmm .... maybe not?

Carrier Enterprise may un-luck out and be in harbor, or may possibly - 1/8 chance - arrive that morning, as historically. Same arrival possibility for Lexington and *her* squadrons, so the Japanese *could* be facing 2 US carrier groups.

105mis/169kms per operational hex. Ungridded map of harbor for air (and mini-sub?) attacks.
2 player game, although it has much solitaire potential as-is.

—description from the designer