Grotius
Posts: 5798
Joined: 10/18/2002 From: The Imperial Palace. Status: offline
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I find the first six months of the war VERY interesting, at least as interesting as late 1942, when the tide is already turning. And more interesting than 1944 or 1945. More generally, I like the idea of playing a war with an ebb and flow: each side gets to play some offense and defense. Don't knock the first six months til you try it! The campaign in the Phillipines is one that I'd never encountered in a wargame before, and I find challenges for both sides there; even if the ultimate outcome isn't in doubt, the cost and time required for Japanese conquest certainly is. The longer Japan takes, the worse its position elsewhere. Same with the DEI: taking the DEI efficiently, as Japan, against a good human PBEM player seems like a pretty good challenge to me. Yes, Japan will ordinarily prevail -- but *how* will it do so, and how fast? At what cost? You need the DEI, and rather quickly, to reverse the rather alarming decline in Japanese oil reserves, a decline that starts on turn 1. I suspect another reason so many of us like the full-war scenario is that we're UV vets, and we've already played May 1942 thru 1943 to death.
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