Ken Tee - May 3, 2005 12:45 pm (#10979 Total: 11014) Oh, yes, and one more thing, dear Lord, about our enemies, ignore their heathen prayers and help us blow those little bastards straight to Hell. Amen. EotS AAR from the recent Hanford "mini-con" Let me say…it was a BLAST! My second game (first as the Japanese) was as thrilling and climactic as one can hope for in getting a great experience from a game. It was my opponent, John Spalding’s first game and we had quite a hell of a good time. It started with your basic opening moves with the Pearl Harbor and the 26 Logistical Valued offensive cards. I proceeded to take the Philippines and Malaya which was not easy at all. Meanwhile, Guam, Rabaul and Hong Kong had fallen with Wake, Burma and the Dutch East Indies waiting in the wings. The Allies were by no means idle with a reinforcement of the Solomons and Guadalcanal for starters. The rest of the game proceeded according to plan, the Philippines and Malaya fell but took an extra turn in doing so. I was getting behind in my resources so Burma was ignored for the time being (with the exception of Rangoon) and my focus was directed in the capture of the DEI. Wake was captured as well but half my fleet was decimated in a misdirected raid on the main USN base at Noumea. With that debacle, Rabaul was recaptured and so was Guam. Saipan and the rest of the Marianas was captured as well. With all the resources in my hand, I went ahead and deployed “Army Group Burma” consisting of four armies with fighters and bombers to boot. At the same time I kept some garrisons in key places which were all covered by air. I had left the Celebes alone as I was keenly aware of the “Progress of War” rule and did not want to stretch the forces I had at hand. The endgame began with turn 6 as the Japanese Homeland was invaded from forces based in the Marianas. Almost simultaneously, the main offensives in Burma/India began to heat up. I was able to forestall the collapse of Japan by some lucky intercept die rolls as well as one intel level card which I had played last. Though I couldn’t prevent the fall of some Japanese cities as well as the annihilation of the Japanese military, I did prevent 5 hexes from being taken. At the end of the game turn – Davao was retaken, Burma and Tokyo had fallen, Japan was down to the Ominato and Hokkaido hexes with no hope of reinforcement and the Peace/Negotiations track was at –1. All throughout the game, the submarines never took a card from me as I was lucky enough to draw the Japanese Escort card. The Allies took Ominato as their first move and when it became my turn; I used the last card I drew from the deck: The Tokyo Rose card. Its effect was to drop the Peace/Negotiations track by a box and in this case to ‘O’. Victory. (The irony is that had the sub roll succeeded earlier, I would have probably lost the game though I did have some other good cards (the 21 naval movement allowance being one of them) and to “pull it off” but I was ready to hand John my samurai sword as Japan looked like a lost cause and India/China were far from collapse. Like I said, it was a thrilling game; analogous to the scene in Rocky II and like the title character, I got up first after we had knocked each other off our feet.