Product Review: CY6!’s Campaign Book “Road to Rabaul”

As those who have read this blog know, I enjoy the air combat game “Check Your 6!” and the Guadalcanal Campaign Book.  So it was with great eagerness I started to go through what I thought would be the follow-up: Road to Rabaul.

This review assumes you already know about the “Check your 6!” game and principles, so I will concentrate on my overall impressions of the book.

 

One of the unique features of the 1^st book (Guadalcanal) was that it included a Narrative campaign.  There were decisions that were part of a story that would affect how the missions and the end result worked out.  Road to Rabaul is not written this way; it is simply a series of missions that when connected together form a “Grand Campaign”.  This campaign is split into 4 “Mini-Campaigns” of 5 to 7 missions each.  Each mission uses Victory Points to determine the winner of the mission.  Players get “Campaign Points” for each Mini-Campaign by winning more missions than their opponents and the person with the most Campaign Points wins the over-all Grand Campaign.  So those that wanted another narrative campaign may be disappointed; the structure is a more traditional “He who wins most, wins!” As such, it's not really the next chapter of the campaign, but an entirely new campaign, in structure and time frame.

Another difference in the books is the historical participation within.  While the Guadalcanal Campaign was predominately US Navy and Marines against Japanese Navy (with 4 American Army P400 thrown in once in a while for variety), Road to Rabal splits each campaign into a different chapter of the defense of Australia and the beginning of the Island-Hopping campaign.  The First mini-campaign is the US Army Air Force rushing to the defense of Darwin against the Japanese Navy as the Australians try to bring their own fighter groups online.  The Second mini-campaign is the Royal Australian Air Force defending Port Moresby, again, against the Japanese Navy.  Third Campaign is the US Army Air Force again – this time starting their offensive: Operation Cartwheel, fighting mostly against the Japanese Army!  Finally, the last campaign is the US Navy and Marines in their standoff against the Japanese Navy forces operating from Rabaul.

The book includes a brief historical overview of the time period, trying to compare the strategic plans of both the Japanese and Allied forces at the time.  This is followed by a brief description of the forces and tactics used in the campaign.  Then there are the general and specific campaign rules for the book.  Finally, the missions – all 26 of them!

 

So, what I liked about the book:

As a list of missions and a brief history – it seems quite complete.  There is a natural progression in the history of the campaign and while many of the missions appear repetitive (Fighters vs Bombers or Fighters vs Fighters), there is enough variety in the missions special rules and objectives that you aren’t constantly playing the same mission over and over.

Another thing I liked, was this is one of those Campaigns where the P40 Warhawk was a major combatant.  I know the P40 was obsolete and never the best at anything at the beginning of the war (other than controlled and uncontrolled “falling from the sky”), but the Tiger-Shark mouth of the Flying Tigers and the fact that the P40 fought throughout the war in multiple Air Forces in multiple theaters in multiple mission types, well, it makes me happy to see this proud warrior get some respect!  She’s always been one of my favorites! 

Finally, I was able to use most my aircraft from the Guadalcanal Campaign again – saving me a few bucks here and there.  I had the Zeros and Betties already.

 

What I didn’t like:

So, one of the things I liked about the Guadalcanal was that (in spite of the large numbers) there were not a lot of different “types” of aircraft.  You needed just Wildcats and Aircobras for the Americans, then Zeros, Betties and Sallies for the Japanese.  Sadly, this is not the same in the New Book.  It’s probably the only thing I DON’T like about the new book.  Too many different Fighter types for both sides in large quantities.

Road to Rabaul uses P40 Warhawks, P38 Lightnings, F4U Corsairs, SBD-3 Dauntless (8 of EACH!), as well as B25C/D Mitchells and B24D Liberators (6 each!).  The Japanese are worse!  A6M2 Zeros (9), A6M3 Hamps (8), Ki-43 Oscars (12!), Ki-61 Tonies (9), A6M5 Zeros (9), D3A1 Vals (9) and G4M1 Betties (9)!  That’s a total of 109 planes if my math is right!

My advice if you want to buy models yet save money: Buy regular A6M2 or A6M5 Zeroes for all the Japanese fighters.  There’s only a single mission that uses 2 types of Japanese fighters in a single mission.  In fact, only 1 mission uses 12 fighters.  The rest use 9 Japanese fighters or less. 

Better still – just make/get/buy some counters for some of the less used aircraft.  For example, the Dauntless is used in only 2 missions in the entire book’s 26 missions: I wouldn’t waste the money buying 8 for two missions unless I had a use for them somewhere else.  Similar to the Dauntless, the Mitchells and Liberators are only used in 4 missions or less.  Same with the Japanese Army Fighters – they’re all used for less than 4 missions of the 26: use counters instead!  I would buy 9 Zeros (or less), make counters for the rest and use those for all the Japanese fighters.  If you want to save a lot of money, I made counters for the P40s, and the Vals for the first mission and intend to use them for the rest of the campaign.  Search Google for some over-head pictures and copy / paste into any word processor program.  Then print out as many counters as you require.  You could make counters for all the aircraft this way and not need to buy a single model.

 

Overall, I like the book as a collection of missions and may end up running the Mini Campaigns as individual, unrelated campaigns over time.  It is also a good collection of individual missions that you can pick and choose from as needed. 

Watch out for the 1st Mission Report!  Good Flying!