This is not a bad idea at all. Putting a simple, solitaire air combat sortie on one page is ambitious and a well-concieved notion. The reason I didn't give Pacific Clouds all stars is because it does have a couple of issues that I am absolutely certain that MicroRPG will address as soon as possible.
Some of the icons are nearly impossible for these old eyes to make out and in at least one case are actually necessary to correctly play the game. The most important examples of this are the TURN icons. Each icon has a number in the middle of a star in a circle. These are used to show the passage of time during your flight's sortie and the number in the middle represents the chance of encountering a Zero. At the beginning of each Turn you are supposed to roll a D6. If the result rolled is equal to or higher than that number, you have encountered a Zero fighter. If you roll less than the number, time has passed during the sortie and you move on to the next turn. Only a careful reading of the TURN START paragraph reveals that these numbers are there because you can't see them! I took a pencil and wrote the encounter number next to the TURN icons in order to play the game. They are, in order, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I hope this helps.
Another potential issue is in the next section, APPROACH. If you encounter a Zero at the beginning of the TURN, you now roll a D6 again to determine where the Zero is in the sky around you. For example, a 6 puts the Zero directly in front of you and a roll of 3 puts the Zero approaching you from the right rear. The APPROACH also gives you a modifier to your FIRE!!!! roll. Being in 6 adds +2 to the 2D6 TO HIT roll and being in 3 adds a -1, for example. What isn't clear is when you detect the Zero's approach, do you assume that the Zero is pointing directly at you? Also, since a fighter plane almost always is restricted to firing its guns straight ahead, does the Zero being in 3 mean that you cannot hit it and any TO HIT result of HIT is wasted? Or does the game assume that once the APPROACH is determined, that the two aircraft maneuver around each other and the TO HIT roll is simply the final result of this dogfight? There is a rule for DEAD RECKONING where you are allowed to mark of one or more of four Compass icons, each one allowing you to adjust the APPROACH by +1. If you don't like the Zero being at APPROACH 3, mark off a DEAD RECKONING icon and change it to a 4, for example. This is not completely clear in the simple rules for APPROACH and FIRE!!!!.
It may be presumptious of me, but I believe that Noah Patterson intended the simplest explanation of my two analysis above. Once this has been addressed, I will be happy to give this sweet little solo air combat all five stars. If I could, I would give an extra star for making the story of the game be about female fighter pilots in WWII, since I am a big supporter of the concepts behind Luftwaffe '46 (Antarctic Press) in which female pilots are pressed into combat flying as the war grinds past 1945. Otherwise, perhaps Noah Patterson would consider a variant involving the Soviet Union's Women's fighter regiment where the White Lily of Stalingrad flew her Yak-1 to glory versus Me-109s and Fw-190s.
Great work! It could be a smidge greater. Well worth the money I spent on it!
UPDATE: Pacfic Clouds has been revised and updated and Noah Patterson has addressed every one of my concerns. I am extremely impressed with the revised version of Pacific Clouds and look forward to more in this line!
|