From: McCue Dr Brian G Subject: FW: Avalanche SOPAC first-look --- In NavWarGames@egroups.com, "Brian McCue" wrote: Yesterday I came home from a trip and found my long-awaited copy of Avalanche's SOPAC, the first adaptation of the GWAS idea to WW II. You get the Series Rules, a Solomons Campaign scenario book, photocopiable player log sheet, and ship sheets much like those in GWAS, and cards for keeping track of airfields and task forces (as in, say, Flat Top), a player aid card, 2.5 sheets of the beautiful Avalanche counters to which we have become accustomed, and two boards as in GWAS games: an operational-level board and a tactical board. At 11" x 17", these are smaller than their GWAS counterparts. The operational-level board is smaller for two reasons: it represents less area than GWAS boards, and it does so at a slightly larger scale. Each brickwork pseudohex is 36 miles across instead of 32. The tactical board is smaller than GWAS tactical boards because it is laid out differently. Its scale varies, depending on the type of tactical action portrayed. You're supposed to supply your own dice, which I thought rather chintzy for a game that has gone to so much trouble otherwise. The operational board portrays a region comparable to that covered by the Battleline/AH Flat Top or AH/Smithsonian Guadalcanal boards: Espiritu Santo is at the lower right, Port Moresby one square pseudohex in from the left margin, and Kavieng two hexes down from the top. A few oceanographic regions of interest, such as the Jomard Passage and the San Cristobal Trench, are labelled, as well as the points of sinking of notable ships such as Lexington, Shoho, and Neosho. I haven't had time for an in-depth study of the rules, but at a quick flip-through, the operational-level rules are much as in GWAS, with enhanced air and submarine detail. I have yet to compare the air system to that in War Plan Orange, which some people didn't like. The operational-level rules retain the feature that I found really important in GWAS, namely the "mission" concept and the restrictions it imposed. There is an optional rule that constructs something similar for air groups. I found that the "mission" idea in GWAS led to a great degree of realism, and that with the various plot-ahead rules it allowed the system to work without being double-blind (a real endorsement, coming from me). The tactical system is an enhancement of the GWAS tactical system, but I think it would still be too simplistic for most on this list. There would, of course, be no impediment to using SOPAC's operational system and then switching to Shipbase III, Command at Sea, or whatever, for the tactical battles. The Scenario Book contains some special rules that turn the Series Rules into SOPAC rules, 10 tactical scenarios (7 of them historical), and 10 operational scenarios. The latter are interesting in that while they include some of the topic's "standard scenarios" (Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal) found in Flat Top and similar games, they also include other scenarios such as Operation Shoestring (the initial American landing on Guadalcanal) and interstitial scenarios such as Gathering Force (1-9 September, 1942) and Non-Stop Express (28 October-5 November, 1942). Because of the interstitial scenarios, I think it would be easy to do (well, easy to conceive of) an overall campaign game. I like this system, and I'm glad to see it extended to the Second World War. I understand that plans exist for an "Atlantic Raider" game. I guess this means Bismarck and the like, which will be great, but I'd really like to see an operational-level U-boat game, too. Brian