Mongoose vs. King Cobra: Indian Ocean Carrier Raid Apr42

Relatively fast, playable naval ship, air squadron, and land brigade scale game using dummies for fog of war. As many as 36 8-hour turns (12 days, but warships may not stay at sea for longer than 9 days). ca. 80 miles per hex. Single sided pieces.

Will the "mongeese" - 3 ... or 4? ... Eastern Fleet carriers - get close enough to launch their night attack torpedo bomber squadrons? Or will the 4-6 King Cobra Kido Butai's fleet carriers catch and slaughter them within their aircraft's long range in daytime like they did carrier Hermes and heavy cruisers Cornwall and (Bismarck veteran) Dorsetshire?

There is a quote of Churchill saying that the threat of losing (unsinkable aircraft carrier) Ceylon - and the Japanese gaining control of the Indian Ocean - was the most dangerous moment of the war, although (with hindsight) we now know the Japanese had decided not to invade.

Against all 4 Kongo class fast battleships, the British muster only minimally sufficiently fast Warspite, but then there are the 4 old wheezing R class battleships which have limited duration at sea and being slow would be easy meat ... and victory points ... unless they can somehow get within gunfire range of a (secret 50% possible) Japanese landing force's transports or a slowed, damaged carrier.

The British player is thus always under heavy pressure, and if the Japanese get the Ceylon landing/invasion mission, they feel that too. A good 3-player game can be with one British player and a player each for the (invading or instead just raiding) Japanese Malaya Force and Kido Butai.

Replete with questionable Ceylon Defence Force loyalty. Will the Ceylon Planter's Brigade mutiny into a(n ill-advisedly) pro-Japanese Trotskist(!) brigade? (See what happened on Cocos Island about then.)

And yes, our 10th U.S. Air Force is there ... with our 2 B-17s and 1 LB-30 (B-24). And as for my Dutch East Indies and other such games, level bombers can press their luck and bomb lower, albeit at higher risk of being shot down by antiaircraft gun batteries ... not that the Zeroes won't slaughter them anyway.

Lots of freighter fish milling around the Bay of Bengal for the Japanese to bag too.

Our first game, I was the overwhelmingly strong Japanese ... and got SMEARED.

—description from the publisher