Game Title : China Incident
Publisher : Wargamer (3W)
This game is published on #37 of Wargamer magazine.
Game Designer : Laurel Cochran
Laurel is very few woman who designed regular hex-wargame like Helena Rubinstein who designed Westend’s Killer Angels.
Game Thema : China Incident from 1937 / 7 to 1941 / 12
Game Scale
1 hex = 60km
The map covers from Jehol in Manchu to Hanoi.
Unit size = army to regiment
1 turn = 2 months, 27 turns
Game Components
The game map is drawn by Kevin Zucker, but it is not impressive and hasn’t good playability.
The counters are designed by Howard Bond. But, these also are not impressive and hasn’t good playability.
Game Sequences
Japanese Turn
Movement
Combat
Supply
Replacement
Reinforcement
Chinese Turn
Movement
Combat
Supply
Replacement
Reinforcement
Housekeeping
Characteristic game mechanics
When you read the rulebook, you will be overwhelmed by the explanation of various modes of units. There are 6 modes in the game, normal, concentrated, entrenched, exposed, banzai, and blown.
These modes are represented by combination of placing mode marker and flipping the unit itself. In addition, in this game, the stregth reduction is recorded by placing the marker and rotating it. For this purpose, the mode marker is used.
Actually, if you really try how the rulebook says, that will be very difficult job during the whole game.
Also, ZOC status is affected by mode and movement allowance is affected by strength point reduction, you must continuously check the mode and strength reduction of every units during the movement. Of course, the same job is necessary for all combat.
I hope that I could like this game, since this is a rare game of this topic. But, as you can imagine from the above, I couldn’t.
I believe that first you must make ordered playaid for variety of modes. And you should use mode markers in this game only for representing mode. In my case, I borrowed strength reduction marders from “Budapest ’45 (Japanese edition)”. This make the stacks in the game higher (because now I have 2 markers for each unit), but the situation is a little bit better than the regulation of original rule.
Once you got aquainted with variety of modes, the situation become much better. This is because that every unit has only 3 possible modes.
For Japanese, normal, concentrated, and B modes. In B modes, it shows banzai status into frontal hex and blown status for other 5 surrounding hexes.
For Nationalist units, normal, concentrated, and E modes. In E modes, it shows entrenched status for 3 frontal hexes and exposed status for 3 rear hexes.
Communist units has only normal mode. So, this is very easy.
If you still read this article, now you passed the worst and hardest part of the rule.
Other rule is not so unique.
But, in this game, the movement allowance of the unit is reduced as the unit loses its strength. Also, if the unit is supplied, in every turn it can get 1 strengh point recovered from the replacement procedure. This is very high rate, as long as your whole army is not surrounded strategically.
The plains cost 2 movement point in this game. This is very heavy cost. But, there are strategic movement and variety of special movement, such as rail movement and sea movement and etc.
So that, combat and movement havevery different taste from other regular hex-wargames.
Because of the covered topic, the whole situation is very lopsided to Japanese. But, it is covered by the victory condition that he must have 3 times strength point as the Chinese units at the end of the game.
So far, I’ve never played the game to the end. So, I’m not sure the game balance.
But, the game map is very wide for the game system. I think that Japanese player must push very hard from northern end (Manchu) and also make several well-planned invasion onto coast lines. It could be an entertaining game experience.
If I can find the opponent, I’d like to try it.
