Over the past several years I have played a handful of Pacific theater games. Many at the operational scale were really fantastic. Some Grand Operational ones such as War in the Pacific are so fundamentally flawed as to be hopeless and as such a huge disappointment.

However at the tactical scale there is more hope… I think.

I’ve explored platoon scale combat with the venerable Tactical Combat System [TCS] by The Gamers and really enjoyed to an extent the exploration of two very different fighting methodologies – Mantanikau and Bloody Ridge were indeed bloody, banzai charge filled slug fests dealing with a couple of days contact in a battle scale situation.

I and a friend looked closely at the CSS system but were warned off due to rulebook issues, and lack of play testing.

My last foray was with Grognard Simulations math heavy, oddly scaled land scale (540-ish yards a hex)/time continuum which left me a bit cold, and did little to facilitate any doctrine differences what so ever. Units broke down to company and platoon elements so stacks quickly became large and unwieldy [+mathy {its a new word I made up} ].  If I remember correctly the CRT had some oddities too, that left me feeling that it was better to attack at lower odds than higher odds.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided after reading the series rules to try one more time with the Island War series by  Micheal Taylor, released by Legion Games.

The production effort is high quality and the rules specific to each battle are succinct, clocking in at just a few pages for each of the two battles in the box. The scale is 1/2mile (850 yards ish) & 12 hour turns, which seems like it could also be problematic, but with mostly with mostly Battalion scale and some Company scale units [ for IJA/IJN units], this might be ok.

More on this as it evolves.