Played this for the first time with Mike after both of us received the game a few weeks ago. I took the Japanese while he took the Americans.

In the early game, I gained the initiative by combining my 3 air groups into 1 air group and then moved it towards the American fighters on the right flank to try to quickly overwhelm the 7 fighters there using my 15 fighters.

The plan was successful and I managed to destroyed 7 American fighters but lost 5 fighters in return. However this fighting had left my fighters extremely disorganised and I had lost the initiative to the Americans who had 1 group of 7 fighters converging on my 10 scattered fighters.

I used a S curve maneuver to get back into a forward formation but was in a disadvantaged lower altitude as a result. The Maerixan fighters confined to bear down on my 9 fighters who had run out of space to avoid them.

I moved my fighters back into high altitude and facing the right north direction but however was dangerous close snd in range of the American fighters.

The American fighters then pounced on my fighters after making me go first and shot down a few of them. I tried to retaliate and shot down 2 American fighters while forcing 3 to dodge sending the Americans out of formation. The remaining American fighters however promptly moved into range and shot down 2 more of my fighters leaving me with only 3 Japanese fighters left while fighting 5 American fighters that had superior armour. My main advantage however was I had better flexibility in movement thanks to my “agility’ trait.

It then dawned on me (rather last minute) that the Japanese were way superior in close range fighting conditions. With initiative held, I forced the American fighters to go first and due to their lesser manuverabilty, they couldn’t get any Japanese fighters into their sights due to being so close to them. I then used the Zero’s superior manuverabilty to target the American fighters and shooting them down one by one while maintains closeness to them and ensuring they couldn’t do the same.

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the remaining 3 American fighters promptly split up in different directions and to get away wagering that the Japanese simply couldn’t get to all 3 fighters in 3 different directions. The Japanese managed to shoot down 2 more American fighters due to their superior close range fighting and keeping initiative but 1 of the American fighters managed to achieve some distance between the last 2 Japanese fighters to get away.

In the end, both sides shot down 13 planes which means that the game was a draw. It was actually a small relief for me as I thought I was doomed when I was down to just 3 fighters versus 5 of his “better armoured” fighters and to pull of a draw as a surprise while giving me the insights and experience on how the Japanese’s Zero planes’ “agility” worked tactically for this game. We both enjoyed the game and discussed fielding it again sometime in a future session.