Fighters of the Pacific

Fighters of the Pacific is admirably clear about what it is not. This is neither an air-war simulation nor a weighty wargame for people who expect every turn to account for fuel and attack angles. It is zero luck, large in scale and very abstract, with a clarity that makes it teachable in five minutes. Anyone who already finds the aircraft version of Undaunted too abstract will find even less realism to hold on to here. That is not a flaw; it is the design's thesis.

The interesting decision is how to turn that abstraction into position, altitude and threat before your opponent does. Air combat does not rest on a fortunate die roll rescuing—or ruining—a plan, but on placing your formations properly across the hexes. Battle Beyond Space has a comparable no-luck system for hex-based fighting; Fighters of the Pacific is the stronger design because altitude adds a meaningful extra dimension.

The flow is simple enough that reading the rules gives you a fair picture of the purchase: you manage formations, move them, and attempt to create the right conditions for an engagement. Formation handling can become a little tiring, particularly once the battle is properly large, but it never obscures the central system. Players affect one another constantly through position and threat rather than random reversals; leave an opening on the map and you have issued an invitation.

I have not yet tried every part of the package—carriers, islands and flak among them—so my view is of the core game rather than the whole arsenal. That core is already satisfying: quick to learn, strict in its decisions, and usefully richer than its nearest relative. I would not recommend it indiscriminately to anyone unmoved by the genre, but for players after clean, abstract, dice-free air battles, it is quietly excellent.