Pacific Command - Introduction

We’re prepping the flight deck to launch Pacific Command: Wargaming WWII Aircraft Carrier Battles on May 29th, the latest wargame from Gaslands designer Mike Hutchinson...

Between December 1941 and August 1945, a sea war was fought in the Pacific unlike any before. The 250-year reign of the battleship was ended by the long-range striking power of aircraft carriers. 

Pacific Command is a tabletop wargame of WWII naval combat in the Pacific which puts you in control of dozens of warships and hundreds of aircraft, fighting battles as much about bluffing and surprise as strength of arms. The game has a particular focus on fog of war and aircraft carrier logistics, and zooms out to a grand scale to let players tell stories as full of dilemmas, uncertainties and double-blind gambits at the battles of Coral Sea, Midway and Leyte Gulf. 

Playing Pacific Command 

Pacific Command offers a set of historical scenarios, allowing you to re-fight key sea battles of the WWII Pacific carrier war. If you wish to re-fight these scenarios with Fleets that closely resemble the forces that were present, I have provided orders of battle for each scenario for each side, but you are free to re-fight them with forces of your own devising. Much of the design of Pacific Command revolves around ensuring it is feasible and enjoyable to refight battles of the colossal scale of Midway and the Philippine Sea with the full historical orders of battle. This is not a game of limited skirmishes between a handful of vessels: these are full-scale battles fought with dozens of capital ships and hundreds of aircraft. 

The historical scenarios are, naturally, asymmetrical and somewhat ‘unfair’. If you wish to fight more evenly balanced sea battles to determine the better admiral, you can use the Arcade Mode rules to rapidly generate the setup and victory conditions for your game. 

I also provide a simple campaign system to allow you to link your games together, which includes a progression system that takes advantage of the ‘modifications’ system: a set of optional special rules intended to simulate the various technological, martial and intelligence asymmetries during the war. You can use the modifications outside of the campaign system of course, as you wish. 

Between the scenarios, the Arcade Mode, the modifications and the campaign system, I hope you find a toolbox that suits your imagination for gaming carrier battles in the Pacific war. If you create any other scenarios or modifications to the rules, I would love to hear about them! 

I thoroughly hope you enjoy this game and have many tense and exciting sea battles with stories full of dilemmas, wild gambits, and lucky breaks. 

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Pacific Command is out now.

Find the official Quick Reference, Task Force Sheet & Starter Fleets on our gaming resources page.

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