Carrier Battle Philippine Sea

As an American commander, you maneuver your forces and conduct aerial searches in a breathless race to find Japanese carriers before they locate and attack yours. Simple game mechanics control Japanese movement and determine the timing and strength of their attacks. You won't know a Japanese air strike is coming until it is detected by radar and you send your fighters to intercept it.

The game has nine scenarios in total. Four learning scenarios introduce you to the rules through programmed instruction using fragments of the actual battle. The other five are full games, fully replayable. They include one-day scenarios for each day of the action, a two-day scenario for the entire battle, a hypothetical scenario assuming different American plans, and a hypothetical scenario in which the Battle of Midway never took place and the Japanese come in with the full strike force of Pearl Harbor.

Carrier Battle: Philippine Sea includes a hex map of the ocean area where the battle took place, at a scale of 33 nautical miles per hex.
The map also includes task group and air mission displays for the American player. A full game turn represents 80 minutes of real time, divided into four action phases of 20 minutes each. There are 528 pre-cut counters representing individual capital ships, groupings of smaller ships, air units of approximately 8-12 aircraft each, and informational markers. Other game aids include Japanese force ("Butai") displays, a booklet of charts and graphs, a game turn flow chart, and a Japanese air raid decision chart.

•     1 game board
•     2 counter boards (528 counters of size 9/16″)
•     1 game rule
•     1 booklet of tables and references
•     Multiple game aid cards
•     10-sided die