Game Title : Storm over Pearl Harbor
Publisher : Game Journal
Game Designer : Tetsuya Nakamura
Game Thema : the whole Pacific War from the Pearl Harbor to the end
Game Scale
Period : from winter 1941, to Spring 1945
Map : from West Coast to India
Cards : variation of card-driven, 16 cards for each player
Game Components
1 game map
32 cards
1 countersheet
1 rulebook
Game Sequences
The game uses an advanced card-driven engine.
Every turn, each player selects his hand from his cards with the limited number for that turn. In each turn, each player plays alternatively one card. By playing a card, you can do one of movement, combat, or card’s event.
Once both players played all their hands, the turn end and new turn will start.
Characteristic game mechanics
The game engine is basically the same as “ Im Westen nichits neues ” and “ Hideyoshi’s battles at the summit ”. So, this is the third game of this engine. But, this time, it covers the entire Pacific War.
Since the theme is very different from the former games, the game feels very differently. During the early half, Japanese player will have bigger hands than his opponents and invades deep into South or West or East depending on Japanese player’s strategy.
On the other hand, American player must defend very carefully in the first half. But, he must also find out when he should start the counter offence. Due to the time limit, he must start his offence early enough to fulfill the final victory condition.
One of the most important design is that the victory points comes basically only via the occupation of land areas. Though this is air and sea battle game, the final proposed is occupying the land by army. This is somewhat tricky for players.
Based on this concept, the Japanese player must decide his axis of main attack from South, East or West. In other words, from Australia, West Coast, or India.
It first looks that Japanese force is incredibly strong. But, this cannot continue long enough for him to win the game easily. He must carefully design his attack step by step and must utilize all resources in his hand.
During first 2 turns, the American player is really vulnerable. So, he must carefully select his hand to manage his opponent’s strong initial attack.
Final words
I strongly believe that this is one of the most expected titles in Japanese Wargames this year.
But, unfortunately in the first magazine version, there are too many critical questions. And so far, there is not enough Q&A.
If you’d like to play this game smoothly, you should wait for a while until the enough amount of Q&A will cover the rule holes.
