COBI Battle of Midway - Board Game Set 22105

COBI's Battle of Midway is a two-player board game with 60 blocks that build twelve aircraft on stands as the playing pieces. The box contains a nine-part board, 43 cards, tokens and markers, and a sticker sheet for personalising the aircraft. Instructions are included in Polish, English, German and Czech. Developed with the board-game studio Bored Games.

One player commands the American carrier air fleet, the other the Japanese. Game length depends on the mode chosen, and the rules are simple enough to learn in a few minutes.

The battle was won before it started

Midway is usually told as luck — dive bombers arriving over the Japanese carriers at the one moment their decks were full of fuel and ordnance. The luck was real. The reason the Americans were there at all was not.

Navy codebreakers in Hawaii had partly broken the Japanese naval code and kept seeing an objective referred to as AF. They suspected Midway but could not prove it. So they had Midway send an uncoded radio message saying its water distillation plant had broken down. Two days later Japanese traffic reported that AF was short of fresh water.

That single confirmation let Admiral Nimitz position three carriers in ambush against a force that believed it had surprise. Japan lost four fleet carriers in a day and never regained the initiative in the Pacific.

Specifications

Pieces: 60 blocks building 12 aircraft · Players: 2
Also included: 9-part board, 43 cards, tokens, markers, sticker sheet