Stripped Down for Parts: Pacific Day, Part 1 - Last Battle: Ie Shima, 1945

 

Last Friday was Pacific Day in the Fast Game household. I had three Pacific Campaign-related games all arrived in two separate deliveries. The morning delivery was comprised of two Mike Rinella games, Last Battle: Ie Shima, 1945 (Take Aim Designs/Revolution Games, 2015) and Return to the Rock: Corregidor, 1945 (Take Aim Designs/Revolution Games, 2020), and that afternoon, a second edition copy of Mark Herman’s magnum opus, Pacific War: the Struggle Against Japan, 1941-1945 (GMT Games, 2022) arrived, weighty and imposing. Since these, while second-hand, are all kinds of new to me, I’m going to unpack them here one by one. First up, we’ll look at Last Battle.

The two Mike Rinella games mark a couple of firsts for me; I’m embarrassed to say these are my first Revolution titles. Revolution make some sensational-looking and highly regarded games that just don’t seem to get distributed in Australia. They’re also my first Mike Rinella games. Mr Rinella has a reputation for producing a series of smaller footprint, relatively fast-playing areas movement games that offer a good narrative flow, which definitely fall in the wheelhouse of this blog.

Last Battle presents Operation Indispensable, the battle between the American 77^th Infantry Division and forces of the imperial Japanese Army defending Ie Shima. This operation was itself intended to secure the island ahead of US troops landing on nearby Okinawa.

In case I hadn’t spelt it out, this and Return to the Rock bagged games, as opposed to boxed games. The game comes in a bag (I bought these two second-hand and came in a clear plastic press-clip envelope). The cover sheet is equivalent to a box cover, conveying a sense of the scope and seriousness of the game to the prospective buyer and noting the designer and publisher details, but in these cases, but not much else. They don’t include a back cover, where all the play details, like number of players and play length would usually be found.

I’ve come around to the non-boxed games relatively recently. I have a couple of games that came to me box-less, mostly magazine games, but I’ve only recently started to delve into what bagged games have to offer (besides cheaper shipping). Now I’ve repurposed all those empty Commands and Colors boxes to hold my boxless games.

The reverse side of the cover sheet, full of gaming goodness.

Not to waste in opportunity, the reverse of the cover panel has a breakdown of the game components, including a guide to reading the unit counters, and some details on particular counters peculiar to the game; Last Battle can be played in a “basic” or “advanced” mode, with the advanced rules introducing new elements like sea and air-born bombardment for the Americans and kamikaze attacks for the Japanese side. This is clever, I think. It removes the need to print the rules booklet in colour to incorporate these details (thus keeping the production costs down). Some games might use the space to create a Player’s Aid Card, but as we’ll see, Last Battle doesn’t need that.

The map is 17" by 22", on a nice matte finish paper-stock. 

The map is really evocative, using ordinance maps from the period as a background with an overlay of the area boundaries and details relevant to play. The play area around 60% of the total map area, the rest of the space given over to holding boxes for to-be-deployed units, tracks for recording Impulses expended and Victory Points gained and two helpful Sequence of Play tables, each facing a player's side of the map. I really love this design; with a quick-playing game, I’m always grateful when you don’t have to go off-board to a PAC or (gasp) the rules booklet for a reminder of the next step in a round.

It should come as no surprise that the map art is the work of Charlie Kibler.

The game comes with a sheet of 5/8” counters, 88 in all, on a good weight of brown-core cardstock. The units are easily identifiable, using NATO symbology and nice, big numbers for the movement and combat factors. The counter rows feel like they might benefit from a little attention with a craft knife taking them off the frame, but I wouldn’t otherwise anticipate any issues with these.

Last Battle counter sheet, Ernie Pyle in the bottom row, middle.

The rules come to just 12 pages, with a detailed table of contents on the front cover and a glossary/index on the last page.* Of the remaining ten pages, just over eight cover the rules necessary to enjoy the game, with the remainder given over to the Advanced Game (about a page), a couple of optional rules, the game credits and some suggested reading, which is always welcome.

I’m only a little way into the rules so far, but I feel comfortable saying they appear clear and straight forward. I won’t go into the details here (as I’ll probably screw something up and have to print a retraction), but it seems to me any difficulty in the game will come from the tough choices both players will have to make during play and not from any rules-vagaries or misunderstandings. Two thumbs up.

Finishing off the package is a brochure from the Ernie Pyle World War II Museum. Ernest Pyle was a naval reservist and Managing Editor of the Washington Daily News, who became a correspondent when the war broke out, reporting on the Battle of Britain from London, then after Pearl Harbor, reporting from North Africa, Italy and the Normandy landings. Pyle was also a driving force in getting a bill through Congress to award extra wages for soldiers at the front (combat pay). In 1945, Pyle began reporting from the Pacific theatre, never far from the heat of battle. On the 18^th of April, 1945 Pyle reporting from the front on Ie Shima when he was shot by a Japanese soldier and died from his injuries. A small museum dedicated to America’s experience of the Second World War in his home town in Indiana now bears Ernie Pyle’s name. Pyle is also commemorated in Last Battle, with a special counter (optional rule) bearing his name.

Once I'm across the rules, I'm going to try Last Battle out, most likely as double-handing it. A few people on BGG have stated it plays well solo. The next instalment of the Pacific Day unboxings will be Return to the Rock: Corregidor, 1945, then Pacific War. Stay tuned.

* Actually, Section 24.0 Index and Glossary starts in the last couple of column inches of page 11, just to be clear.