Battle Report
Well, it was a big thing, no doubt about it. That Flat Top game is the bees knees. Mike has his own BatRep here. A fairly complex game that we messed up in some ways, but all-in-all we carried out the spirit of the game.
We took about 2 hours to set-up the game, because we each had about a hundred counters to manage, split into various task forces and airbases. I myself, playing the Japanese had 9 task forces.
The game started rather quickly, we carried out the first 6 night turns in about 30 minutes, because all we did was move the task forces around secretly. You see, there are two board maps that take about about 5 square feet, and then you have sheets that you plot your task force movement on, because the movement of task forces are hidden until discovered by an air unit.
Once planes were in the air, we had to track every air groups movement, test to see if it could carry out a search, then keep back checking to see if they saw anything. You also had to track were the air group launched from, how long it could stay in the air, who was at high and low altitude and several other things. Like Mike says, you really need a staff to play this game.
I now understand why the modern generation likes their RTS (Real Time Strategy) games, you don't have to worry about the details, just focus on throwing forces at the enemy. This was as close to real combat as you could, hours of boredom with minutes of stark terror interspersed among them.
I had spotted his main carrier force first, but I had spent my aircraft on a couple of minor task forces. I sunk a Light Cruiser and damaged a Battleship, but again my forces were busy reclaiming aircraft and it would have taken several hours to recycle them to a ready status. Could he find me and strike before then? We'll never know, because after 7 hours and only 10 turns played (again, 6 of them were really fast night turns) we had to cut it off for the night.
By the end, both of our brains hurt, but for a good cause. We were working at a WWII strategic level, with their level of technology. This is a game that both of us want to try again, and we will. There is also a game engine that we can use to play by email (PBEM) that will take care of the small details for us. That should go better, since we will be able to leave rules and details to the computer.
All in all, a magnificent experience and one that will be repeated again.