Not your typical wargame. Japan starts a military powerhouse and must maintain its hold on southeast Asia for as long as possible to win. The allies must makes inroads to stop the Japanese from gaining too many points for victory.

A much shorter game in length of time than the rest of the A & A series. A great naval and Air war game. Real pieces instead of markers makes this a high quality game.

This game will amaze you. It's much more pleasing to the eye with detailed units, and a gameboard that has rounded territories along the edges to represent the vastness of the Pacific Theatre.

What is best is the game concept. Japan is horribly outmatched economically, but the Allies are not battle ready. Japan must strike hard and fast before the American juggernaut can get rolling. This isn't a game of attrition like the original Axis & Allies. It's a game of economic strategy and a fight against the clock. Can Japan take an Allied capital quickly? Or can America bring her forces to bear and pummel the Japanese before they island-hop to victory?

I originally thought the Japanese could never win. Then my friend took Australia and won. Next game I took India and won (in 3 turns). Finally Japan nearly captured Australia again before the Allies could finally manage a win. This game is truly a 'whole new puzzle to solve'!

Axis & Allies Pacific is the third in the [page scan/se=0431/sf=category/fi=stockall.asc/ml=20]Axis and Allies series of games. I have played this game three times against different opponents. In my opinion, this game is in the best in the Axis and Allies series. Play is extremely well-balanced and there are several options for the strategy used by each of the three players (Japan, UK, and US/China). In addition, both of the Allied players have important roles to play in achieving an Allied victory. One of the more innovative features, the victory point track, allows for Japan to employ a variety of viable strategies. Furthermore, the Japanese player does not need to decide which strategy he will use until the second turn. This allows for some flexibility and uncertainty in both players' strategies.

The most pleasing aspect of this game for me was the finely balanced nature of the gameplay. In Axis and Allies: Europe, a German 'Missle strategy', in which a massive army of tanks, artillery, and armor is built up in Poland and sent into East Poland on turn 4 or 5, is impossible for an Allied player to parry if the German player uses his initial naval forces wisely. This means that Germany always wins. In this game, either power has a chance for victory and every seemingly small decision, especially the placement of naval vessels, has a tremendous impact. I should note that for those who have difficulty making decisions this may make gameplay long and mentally intense, somewhat resembling a chess match. In one game I played, it took over one hour for the Japanese player to finish his first move.

The introduction of naval and air bases, CAP, and Kamakazes does add flavor and variability to the game.

The game pieces are of excellent quality, although the use of brown Russian infantry from the original A&A to represent Chinese infantry was somewhat disappointing. The addition of the naval fleet markers is helpful to gameplay.

The game could have been improved through the use of larger islands and/or island blow-up boxes. In certain cases the small size of the islands makes it difficult to tell whether planes are flying CAP in the sea zones or on the islands themselves. A minor point is that the Japanese pieces set comes with too few transports.

Overall, this is an excellent game. Axis and allies fans will absolutely love it.