AGAINST THE ODDS #36 - Defeat into Victory

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This issue's unique offering begins with the end of the monsoon season in 1944, where the strategic situation in Burma had changed. While Japanese fortunes had declined precipitously elsewhere, the build-up in Allied forces along the Burma/India border did not go unnoticed.

Determined to pre-empt any Allied attack, the Japanese launched an offensive of their own in May, the largest they ever launched outside of China, against the Allied positions in and around Imphal and Kohima. The battles that raged among the jungles and mountainous hillsides of the Indian and Burma frontier, and the subsequent Allied victory that followed in July, marked a fundamental and permanent shift in the war.

The Allied offensive in March 1945 was one marked by extensive planning and preparation, as well as bold and daring maneuvers that not only took the Commonwealth and Indian forces across the Irrawaddy River to Rangoon, but crushed the defending Imperial Japanese Burma Area Army.

Defeat into Victory, by designer Paul Rohrbaugh, covers this neglected aspect of WWII history, using a very interactive and easy to play (chit-pull activation system) design. The game map stretches from Dimapur in the north to Rangoon in the south. Rules cover supply (a crucial aspect in terrain that was among the most inhospitable of the war), various types of combat (fire, maneuver and assault), as well as morale and leadership. Rules also include random events (that simulate the effects of battles and decisions by higher-ups elsewhere), weather, Japanese suicide tank attacks (human combat destruction squads) and changing war goals.