THE MONSTER WITH HALF A BRAIN

THE EAGLE AND THE SUN, by TERRY 'BELA' SHRUM and MIKE 'BORIS' CRANE

from FRESNO GAMING ASSOCIATION

Seven 22" x 33' maps, 1000's of counters, various charts and a rules book or two. Published by FGA, c/o C&M Hobbies, 8775 SW Maverick #903, Beaverton, OR 97005. $85.00, but don't bother.

Review by BRUCE G. SCHWEITZER

Reputation is something that almost everybody struggles to attain … and then fights to maintain. Unless, of course, you've got the wrong sort of reputation … then you look for ways to change it. And then there's Fresno Gaming Association, which appeared (see this issue's editorial) to go to great lengths to reach the Zenith of Design Nadirs (which is, an oxymoron, but so were FGA's two designers), and even greater lengths to maintain that unenviable position.

Well, their long-awaited - if only by the people who pre-paid - Pacific WWII game, Eagle and the Sun, will not disappoint those who have come to know FGA … and quake with fear that they will ever live to publish again. EATS is truly a monster game - monstrous in size, monstrous in cost and monstrous in the unmitigated gall with which it seeks, yet again, to bamboozle a public teetering on the brink of formal outrage. Like some old Boris Karloff movie from the '40's, this is the Monster with Half a Brain.

FGA has pretty much survived on their reputation for top-level graphics, and, at least in that respect, EATS will not disappoint. Quite simply, the game's components look great. It also looks an awful lot like SPI's War in the Pacific - (Ed. I wonder why?) - except that EATS' maps are prettier. Any resemblance to creativity ends there, however.

The mechanics appear to be quite obvious. They use alternative daily movement for task forces and missions for air forces. (Planes are kept tract of individually.) Each day the phasing player undertakes air search, then moves his task forces, after which he moves his planes, resolving ship-to-ship combat before air strikes. Combat results are in % damage. However, nothing is what it should be here.

The game comes with two types of supply rules - Basic and Supply Points. With basic supply, units and facilities trace supply back to Supply Sources, and the line of supply (such as a merchant ship pipeline) can be attacked and damaged, resulting in die roll modifications. For example, if the pipeline to Truk is 50% damaged, there is a +5 die roll on any amphibious attack upon it. The "advanced" system uses supply points to do everything: fuel ships, move land units, run air mission, or simply exist. Supply points can be moved via merchant pipe line (a merchant ship in strategic mode every 16 hexes.) Sounds interesting, huh? Unfortunately, the supply rules do not work.

A quick run-through of the Guadalcanal mini-campaign will suffice to explain. The Allies start with two task forces, one with 3 CVs and the other with three amph. If you use the basic supply rules, there is No Way to supply the Japanese on Guadalcanal once they lose the airfield. You need a line of supply for that, and since there is no naval facility (port) to use, you can't trace supply. So the Japanese lose the campaign the first week, and the Muse of History goes belly up in the Solomon Sea.

So let's use the "point" supply system. We put a merchant ship in strategic mode and move supplies to ports. OK, that works fine.Oops, how can the points be unloaded in tactical mode (like when the Allies land on Guadalcanal)? The rules do not tell us, and so the game stops dead in the water. The rules tell us to "… use some common sense with the supply rules or use a modification of the optional supply points system" After spending $85.00, I expect more than an exhortation from the designer to do what he should have done in the first place.

Our best bet here is to run through a sample game as an illustration, using Guadalcanal to highlight the low-lites. (Some of this may seem obscure, but stay with it for a few paragraphs, as all will be revealed.) The Allies move up their amphibious task force and land at Guadalcanal, positioning the CVs one hex to the south. Now it's the Japs' turn. They have 10 search planes at Guadalcanal and need a roll of 8 or less (10-sided die) to find each Allied TF. Here, the Japs find both TF (there are some rules for different levels of search accuracy). The Japs have 50 Betty bombers in Rabaul, and they can reach Guadalcanal carrying torpedoes. To fly any further they must carry less effective bombs. There are also 50 Zeros that can reach Guadalcanal at extended range from Rabaul. The Japs decide to strike the Allied amphibious TF. Meanwhile, the Allied CVs have assigned 33 F4F to CAP over that TF, plus 66 over the CV. The first battle is about to begin.

The Zeros are flying loose escort and they win the bounce. 50 Zeros attack 33 F4Fs. The strength of a Zero at extended range is 5, the same as normal range. (What?). 50 Zeros x 5 = 250. The strength of F4F is the same, except they are 4, extended: 33 F4F x 5 = 165. The difference between the Zeros and F4F is thus 85. The air to air combat chart used a % of this number to determine losses, from 50% to .5% as possible results. There are die roll modifiers,such as " -1" for "…no self-sealing gas tank and inferior armor for U.S. aircraft-all types, early war." Hmmm, is this early war or not? The rules use the term "early war" and do not define it. I decide to use the modification.

The best the Japs can do is roll a 1, modified to a 0, which would result in a "30%" result. This means take 30% of 80,and that is how many F4F would be shot down. The worse roll is a 10, modified to a nine, resulting in 5%. The Japs roll a 6, modified to 5, resulting in a "9%" result: 9% of 80 means 9 F4F shot down, leaving 24. (Ed. Our author is obviously no mathematician, but let's let him run with this for a while.) These 24 shoot

back. 24 x 5 = 120, attacking 250. The difference is -130. Since the number is negative, the modifier is +1 for every -20, so it is +7 to the roll. Adding in some other, usually unexplained, modifiers, we get 4 Zeros shot down.

Now the F4F go after the 50 Bettys. Fast-forwarding through the machinations, we see that 11 Bettys shot down, of which the remaining 39 Bettys shoot back and then attack the Task Force. 19 Bettys get zapped by AA, leaving 20 to attack the ships. The anti ship strength of a Betty is .7, they're flying in with 14 strength points. We do a little calculation here, throw in a modifier there, stir with some eyes of newt, and what do we see? There is no way the Japs can sink the ship!

While all this may sound somewhat reasonable, I do not like the air to air combat system because the results are overly sensitive to the number of defending aircraft. For example, if there were 22 Betty bombers defending, you would take the F4F's 120, subtract 110 for the 22 Betty bombers, leaving a difference of 10. The most the 24 F4Fs could shoot down would be 4 betty bombers. And I do not like the air to surface combat system because there is almost no randomness and possible results are all pretty much the same. As we see from the above example, the ship attacked can never be sunk.

The game now grinds to a halt as we head into-surface-to-surface, as FGA provides a tactical display but no rules on how to use it. The same result table as Air to Surface is used, with modifiers whose application is a doctoral thesis in obscurity. The result

is that ships of equal class will always inflict 10% - 20% damage on each other, a minimal result spread that produces major yawns.

Further play produced further futility. The combat systems do not seem to work, as there is no reasonable spread of likely results. There is no chance to strike a task force moving within your air range, so there are no "opportunity" strikes. Also, there are such unlikely idiocies as having a CV with 50% damage being repaired in five weeks … and at low cost. A large airfield can be built in a week. This is obviously a quantum leap in the construction industry of which most of us are unaware.

I started the Guadalcanal scenario three times, with each game grinding to a halt when the game became unplayable because the rules were unfathomable. I quickly became angered that I had paid so much for so little. FGA comments - far too many times for such statements to be anything but grossly apparent attempts to deflect criticism - that the player should make up the rules as he goes along. My friend and I have spent about ten hours coming up with rules to make the game playable; it appears to be a losing battle.

I own SPI's War in the Pacific . It is fairly easy to see that FGA simply lifted 75% of WitP and carried it over to EATS. Unfortunately, they dropped most of their purloined package in the transition. Quite bluntly, I feel cheated at paying $85.00 for a game with unwritten rules. This is a game on a massive scale, and if you buy it, you're been taken on about the same scale. You may be buying a game covering the world's largest ocean, but what you're getting is only pond scum.

CAPSULE COMMENTS:

Physical Quality: The usual FGA strong point. One of the best maps I have seen. The counters are also beautiful, but the print on them is small and hard to read.

Playability: Unplayable. Owning War in the Pacific may help; despite FGA's child-like attempts to copy it, it didn't seem to help them, though.. Solitaire is not a play consideration here; it's what Shrum and Crane should get.

Re-playability: You won't get far enough into the first go-around to worry about it.

Historicity: The rules go out of their way to call EATS a "game". Sure … and a white elephant is a house pet. Any history that happened to wander in here was (a) purely accidental, and/or (b) purely borrowed.

Playing Time: Although this is, ultimately, a long game, the daily (!!) turns do go reasonably fast. Two hours to complete a week of game time is reasonable. At about 175 turns for a full theater game, that amounts to about a year of Sundays. That's what we mean by monster game.

Comparisons: Visually, very similar (ahem) to SPI's classic, War in the Pacific. Same map, same planes. Anything else in this area is light years better. Ultimately, Victory's Pacific War is still your best bet here.

Overall: Beautiful components searching - in vain - for rules which, here, are some of the worst never written. Don't buy this game if you expect to play it. (Ed. Actually, it's sold out, which only reinforces P.T.Barnum's position as a marketing sage in my eyes).

The Editor Throws a Final Shovel of Dirt into FGA's Grave: Playing an FGA product was like necrophilia. You did all the work… and if you enjoyed any of it, you probably needed a great deal of help.