[Consim-l] Aircraft Carrier Games?

[John Best]

I'm a little late with my response to this, but I would like to go back to 
this great thread for a minute:

> On Wed, 21 Jun 2006, Mike  NotSpecified wrote:
>> Does there exist, or would somebody like to create, a listing of carrier 
>> games
>> with some comments on how they play, how realistic they are, level of 
>> detail,
>> etc.?
>>
And Markus S. responded with a terrific listing (which I snipped here in the 
interest of space):

> I tend to group carrier games by their turn length which is often though
> not always a good indicator of complexity.  Some of the more detailed
> games have a sliding time scale, i.e., they provide a battleboard on which
> individual air strikes or surface battles can be gamed out.
>
> One hour or less:
>
> Early Pacific Battles: A 1970s DTP game, extremely rare and collectable,
> that I've only seen once. Went down in a sliding time scale all the way to
> tactical airstrike resolution.  More a game kit than a game. Sort of a
> draft version of Carrier Battles (although there was no connection between
> the two).
>
I've never been fortunate enough to see this game, but I do remember the 
review of it that Richard Berg offered in Moves #20 (April-May 1975):

"Early Pacific Battles is not a game for everyone; I'm not even sure whether 
it is a game for *anyone*".   He goes on to say that carrier games are not 
really his thing, and this one is "beyond his scope".  He then illustrates 
why:
"For example, the ship compartment diagrams resemble an exercise in 
Babylonic cuneiform, firing a torpedo was like applying for a loan, and it 
took over a week to figure out the "Guadalcanal Night Combat Map"....And the 
amount of paper that was spread around my livingroom floor for the "Action 
Off Malaya" was becoming a national scandal until my cat ate the entire 
forward compartments of the The Prince of Wales."

Pretty funny huh?  Berg was witty in those days.  He went on to say that he 
was afraid that his review would be taken as negative, but really the point 
that he wanted to get across was that the game was so undeveloped there 
would be a mountain of playability problems for everyone except those who 
truly had an interest in, and knowledge of, this subject and time period. 
There were a couple of other points that I thought were interesting, not so 
much about the game as a game, but about the game as a historical object in 
its own right.  As Markus points out, it was a DTP effort, long before that 
term had been coined.  The game apparently came with "a large number of 
Risk-like wooden counters" onto which you were expected to transfer the 
numerical information printed in the tables and sheets.  Berg does not say 
how this was to be done, but he does comment that the process was 
"guaranteed to try both your patience and your belief."  It sounds like a 
early version of a block-game, which I think is still one of the best 
mechanisms for fog of war, especially in naval games, where the number of 
units requiring there own block might be relatively small.  The number of 
wooden counters and the sheer volume of paper may have accounted for the 
price tag--$30--, which Berg calls "exorbitant".  You have to remember that 
the game was evidently published in 1975.  The GDW game, Torgau, which was 
published in the same year, and was reviewed glowingly in the same Berg 
column, listed for $8.40.  Finally, the personal angle of these kinds of 
stories is always interesting to me.  The designer was named Bruce Moore, 
and, in true DTP syle, the game was available only from him, at an address 
in Sandy, Utah.  I wonder if anyone knows what happened to him?  Did he 
create this one labor of love, and then vanish from the wargaming scene?  I 
admit my curiousity is piqued.  Thanks again Markus for the great listing of 
the games, and thanks for reading.
John Best
currently playing: Armee du Nord