As some are already aware, I purchased War in the Pacific: Admirals Edition (WitP:AE) when it was on sale for 50% off the usual price of $79.99 USD at Matrix Games. Just recently I worked up the nerve to crack open the manual. Asid warned me--several times--not to purchase the game as he feared I would never be seen nor heard from again. I have no regret for purchasing the game--yet.
"Study sim" is an understatement when describing this game.
One customer wrote "
WitP-AE is THE magnum opus of all wargames, a true masterpiece of research and detail. The game is not for the faint of heart, however. It is easy to become intimidated by the depth and scope of the game which covers the entire Pacific war from the West Coast USA, westward to the tip of the horn of Africa."
Another customer, however, was not nearly as enamored with WitP:AE and wrote "
It took less than 30 minutes for me to determine that this game is so bogged down in minutiae that it is unplayable for all realistic purposes...To top it all off, with one-day turns, it will take almost as long to play the full war scenario as the real Pacific War took to fight. I spent 50 bucks on this game and uninstalled the game the same afternoon. Avoid this like the plague."
So, choose your poison. Clearly this game is not for everyone--or the faint at heart. You must be the type of person who loves the details and as the one reviewer wrote "the minutiae". The process of issuing orders during just the first turn of the full campaign will take the better part of the day to complete--for just that
one turn...and if you don't appreciate or understand the importance of
logistics, you are doomed to failure and frustration.
Logistics: War in the Pacific purports to model logistics to the n
th degree. As I mentioned, if you fail to grasp its importance your experience will suffer. Let me quote some experts on the matter to drive my point home:
"Clearly, logistics is the hard part of fighting a war."
- Lt. Gen. E. T. Cook, USMC, November 1990
"Gentlemen, the officer who doesn't know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless."
- Gen. George S. Patton, USA
"Bitter experience in war has taught the maxim that the art of war is the art of the logistically feasible."
- ADM Hyman Rickover, USN
"Forget logistics, you lose."
- Lt. Gen. Fredrick Franks, USA, 7th Corps Commander, Desert Storm
"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."
- Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980
"I am tempted to make a slightly exaggerated statement: that logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes."
- ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN
And so I have launched my endeavor to play the full campaign as the Allies. I thought I knew a thing or two about logistics. My confidence shrank when I considered the expanse of water known as the Pacific Ocean. As I considered the map and the immense distances involved I realized I would need to bolster, reinforce, re-supply, add-to, increase, expand my knowledge of logistics as it pertains to the Pacific Theater of Operations (PTO).
Perhaps this is what I like about WitP:AE already; that it has forced me out of my comfort zone and challenged me to learn more about the PTO. Consider this; Matrix Games forum has a multitude of topics on the various products they sell. None comes close to the number of posts that WitP:AE contains. WitP;AE has five sub-forums that altogether have 640,079 posts in 25,192 topics as of the date/time of this post. By contrast, Gary Grigsby's War in the East has 161,832 postings. I've spent countless hours this past month soaking in the knowledge contained in some of these postings, as well as reading the manual, addendum, and reference material.
I've also been reading at
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/index.html where I came upon "The Amphibians Came to Conquer - The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner", an 1191 page tome about amphibious operations in the Pacific region during WWII. Of course the US Marines love this book and made it into a Fleet Marine Force Reference Publication (FMFRP), specifically FMFRP 12-109-1 which is freely available at
http://goo.gl/DVn50WSo, in conclusion: It's been nice knowing you all and I'll post the results of my first full campaign sometime during the year 2018...
But seriously, this might take a while... I'll try to keep you informed about my efforts with regards to War in the Pacific: Admirals Edition. Until next time, fair winds and following seas Shipmates!