Axis & Allies Pacific - The Doom Race

For my birthday I got together with two of my buddies for a day of board games and unhealthy food. We settled on our one big game being a slugfest game of Axis & Allies Pacific, or as I like to think of it, The Doom Race.

The game starts with Japan having a massive war materiel advantage on the board but very limited resources to replace them. The Allies, in this case USA/China and British Commonwealth represented by Australia and India, must work to stem the tide until their economic advantage allows them to push the Imperial Army back. Japan gets victory points every turn based on how much territory they control; once they reach a magic number of VPs they win the game. That's why I jokingly call it The Doom Race: its a race to Japan's doom for the allies and the VP winning line for Japan.

Japan's First Turn in progress.

In played as the US/China in this game. As per usual tradition, the Japanese player Andrew used his carrier fleet to decimate the Americans at Pearl Harbour, but leaving them exposed to my land based fighter/bomber  counterattack the same turn which wiped them out in return. Then I began my build up of naval forces to contest and control the Pacific.

Build Up Underway

Meanwhile, the British player, Brian, has his hands full trying to defend both India and Australia from assault. Andrew saw an opportunity to launch an unexpected land assault against Australia to divert resources from Asia and it looked a little dicey for a turn there as I was too far away to try to retake the Australian capital should it fall.

Assault on Canberra!

But the dice gods were with us and Brian's forces held the line and next turn I was there to clean up.

US Task Fleets Approach.

Meanwhile, Andrew used his large fighter armada to drive to the border of India while supported by his remaining Imperial Fleet and things were looking worrisome once again...

India is threatened...

But reinforcements were arriving daily and the Chinese army slowly pushed towards the coast to drain Japan's resources and cut off supply lines as the American fleets moved into operational range.

... but reinforcements have arrived!

With the Philippines recaptured and the capitals safe the question was now if Japan was going to reach the magic victory point finishing line before they were smacked down. Some quick math and discussion showed the Japan would need something like 4-6 more turns to reach it and would probably be driven below the threshold needed to get any points before then.

All in all it was a good game, lots of fun with friends. Its very hard to win with Japan against experienced allies players and I'm done this game enough to know not to panic at the initial destruction visited upon the allies by the Imperial forces in turns one and two. Australia was a close one though, we were one bad round of combat away from a loss there.

Task Fleet OMFG