Japan 46 Campaign Supply Sources

[Green]

Another idea or two on victory conditions. 

You may want to consider creating sudden death victory for the Allies if they have captured enough major key points.  Similar to how it is done with the surrender of the Netherlands in Prucha France 1940.  Japanese politics were increasingly factionalized by this time and there would likely be a "peace party" willing to reach terms once it was obviously hopeless.  The key factor here is that both Japan and the western Allies did not want the war to drag on long enough to enable a Soviet force to join the fray (and thus also gain a role in the post-war occupation).  There is evidence the Japanese elites sincerely feared a communist take-over if things got really bad.  Japanese victory should be based on holding these key points and staving off sudden death.  Various levels of Japanese victory should be tied to how long they can do this, with holding until the end of a game constituting a major Japanese victory.

The sudden death triggers should be affected by loss ratios, with the Japanese being heedless of losses while attempting to inflict enough losses on the Allies to wear down home front morale.  I am not sure if the game systems are flexible enough to do this, but the sudden death loss thresholds can be affected by the current loss ratios.  For example, the Allies have just captured key points X and Y, which add to the chance of a sudden death end to the scenario.  But sudden death is only enabled if Allied VPs from losses are not more than fifty percent of Japan's (or less, as turns go on - typically Japan loses about 3 to 4 men to every 1 of the Allies).

The problem with just using vanilla VP calculations is that, like Normandy 44', once the Allies are ashore in force it is merely a matter of time.  Which is true to life in a military sense but misses the pressing political calculations.  Sudden death victory possibility for the Allies, assuming they don't incur crippling losses along the way, could add spice to the mix.

That is a really excellent suggestion. It never would have occurred to me. 

The way Early Termination works is not flexible and so could not be used exactly as you suggest but combined with some creative use of Limited Objectives I think the idea has real potential.

And you make a good point that other campaigns, such as Normandy, could be looked at it terms of utilizing a similar approach. Of course these options did not exist when most the games were published.

Lots to think about. Thanks.