War in the Pacific (game)

[1] Every warship from aircraft carriers and battleships down to destroyers that sailed on the Pacific Ocean during World War II is represented by a counter.

As critic John Kula noted, "Victory stands, and falls, on the ability of the players to generate, move and use their supply points.

As Nicky Palmer noted, "The playing aids provided need to be supplemented by copious scratch paper, best assembled in loose-leaf notebooks to keep some control of the situation.

In the mid-1970s, SPI published several "monster" wargames (games with more than 1000 counters) that proved very popular, including War in Europe (1976), Terrible Swift Sword (1976), and Wacht am Rhein (1977).

You are no longer omniscient; on the contrary, you are worryingly short of reliable information, and accurate reconnaissance becomes as important a preoccupation as tactical placement.

He did note that "The realism of the simulation is somewhat suspect in detail, but the remarkable search power attributed to aircraft is balanced by the ghastly uncertainty of the reports they bring home."

"[5] In a retrospective review in Issue 4 of Simulacrum, John Kula noted, "As a simulation, WitP is quite accurate, so much so that the Japanese player's best hope is not in winning, which is well nigh impossible for him/her, but in prolonging the war and staving off defeat."

Kula noted that despite the game's size and complexity, "It's not unplayable, as the rules have a reputation for being clear and unambiguous, the sequence of events is simple and unit density is kept low (except in China) through the use of naval task forces and air bases."

Kula did admit that "One of the most common complaints, however, had to do with time and space distortions, resulting in too generous movement abilities and anomalous rules to correct the effects, as well as difficulties with limiting intelligence, and with meshing the naval, air and land systems.