Orange Swan

Orange Swan is the historical game that covers WWII in the Pacific from 1941 to 1945.

Japan, on the eve of its entry into World War Two, is looking in two different directions. It sees opportunity and it fears defeat. It clamours for modernity and yet it will not, cannot, forsake a history of staid traditions and the rituals of self-slaughter.

Admiral Yamamoto, at the head of a powerful navy, is being driven towards a decision that is not of his making. Those who truly desire war will relinquish neither their swords nor the ethos with which they are imbued, and so even while the likes of Hideki Tojo make their case for the fulfilment of destiny, for the acquisition of empire and the control of an abundance of natural resources, Yamamoto is painfully aware that their contempt for any and all likely enemies, their belief in the cult of the warrior, their very dreams of battle and conquest, belong to an age that is already dead.

Yamamoto sees only one chance – Japan must strike quickly and with overwhelming and decisive force. If the enemy, first and foremost the United States, is given any pause, any form of reprieve, Japan will almost certainly be crushed.

Chance and mischance play out their themes at Pearl Harbor. Japan wins and loses all in the same instant. The US carriers are not there, and while Japan will conquer for a while, bringing much of the Pacific and SE Asia under its control, it cannot hold what it has gained. The oft-repeated commands to fight to the death are each an admission that they have already lost. It is only a matter of time…and of blood.

The culmination is at Hiroshima. What good swords at such a time, against such a vast and blinding and terrible fire? Those who hungered for war have no answer. They have never had an answer. Science and industry do not sit well with emperor worship or with archaic notions of sacrifice.
Could it have been different? Chance and mischance are the ultimate reality of every course that every war has ever followed. Orange Swan is your means to experience this.

ORANGE SWAN is a block wargame 

As in all other block games, both the Fog of War and Unit strength reduction/increase by rotation, drive the gameplay in ORANGE SWAN, as a player cannot know the identity or the strength of an enemy block until it is revealed in combat.