Empire of The Rising Sun (RSN–1995) is a board wargame published originally by Avalon Hill, designed by Bruce Harper with much input by Dave Casper into the naval warfare rules.
The map (designed by Charlie Kibler) is made up of two 31" × 22" sheets with 1" hexes and depicts the whole of the Pacific Ocean including parts of Australia, India, China, Russia and Japan.
The game includes rules for a successful Japanese player to force the surrender of India or Australia by transferring units into the relevant off-map box and conducting attrition combat.
In normal weather Allied units (apart from Chindits or stealthy Australians) must stop in rough or jungle terrain, but Japanese can move freely through.
Japanese naval air squadrons start the game as "elite", using distinctive black-on-yellow counters and with a +1 Die Roll Modifier for combat.
When the Americans draw close enough to the Home Islands, Japan may resort to building nine kamikaze air squadrons per turn.
Kamikazes, for which the elite black-on-yellow counters are once again used, perform poorly in combat (-2 Die Roll Modifier) but their suicide attacks hit Allied ships at double strength.
Although some element of the fog of war is (obviously) lost naval battles are perfectly playable solitaire by making rational deployment choices for each side.
High levels of surprise can be catastrophic, with CAP or defence rolls delayed until after the air attack or disallowed altogether, or all damage being lethal—this is what makes a disaster like the Battle of Midway possible.
The US player receives six single-factor US Marine Divisions, added gradually to the US forcepool throughout the game, which give a countervailing DM benefit in seaborne invasions, but which must be used to take any losses resulting from such combat.
Each turn the US player receives between 0 and 4 "Magic" points, representing breaking of Japanese codes, and which may be used to affect naval and submarine effectiveness, or which can be used to Strategically Redeploy a 9-factor fleet.
Nationalist China (white counters), the weakest of the great powers, has a theoretical base of 40 BRPs—20 in practice (allowing a minuscule 10 BRP per turn spending limit) as four out of her five Key Economic Areas (Shanghai, Peking, Canton, Nanking, but not Chiang Kai-Shek's capital at Chungking) are already occupied by Japan prior to the start of the US-Japanese War.
This makes China dependent on US BRP grants to rebuild her forces, which given the Japanese occupation of the land supply route through Vietnam and Burma, means that small numbers of BRPs must be flown "over the Hump" (over the Himalayas from Ledo to Kunming—the Allied player normally needs to base some US air factors in India to achieve this—two air factors are needed to carry each BRP).
Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers (orange counters) give China her own tiny (two factor) air force.
During 1942 the forces will be roughly equal, with six or so aircraft carriers on each side—this was the period which in reality saw tense fighting for Midway, the Coral Sea and Guadalcanal.
American SR and initial deployment capacity are linked to the size of her base, while her forcepool increases in tranches, so by 1944-5 the USA will have achieved overwhelming strength in submarines, surface fleet and air factors.
Japanese surrender is governed by a table, similar to the British and Soviet surrender tables in Advanced Third Reich, in which Japan is assessed each turn for loss of oil, destruction of her armed forces (a rules anomaly allows the Japanese air force to escape destruction by sheltering in the Strategic Warfare Box), loss of objectives and atomic attacks.
Japan is unlikely to "win" in real terms so game victory is determined by how quickly the Allies achieve Japanese surrender (whether or not requiring atomic attacks or invasion of the home islands) compared to the actual historical timeline.
Another feature of these rules is the replacement of variants (of which a basic Pacific set is included for old-fashioned players) with rudimentary rules allowing players to "research" changes in, say, bomber, jet fighter, rocket, submarine or torpedo technology, and thus shape the development of her armed forces over the course of the game.