USN Report: Mike did a spectacular job of taking the USN to the mat -- forcing key battles, running up the POC, and earning attrition against the USN CV while keeping his own CV afloat throughout the first five turns.  I've included pictures of turns two through five after this report.  On Turn Five, his move looked to establish the full Applebaum (with no exceptions) and lock the USN out of the game.  I countered by using all of my LBA in the South Pacific.  However, a pure night ensured to plug that potential hole in the IJN line.

That left just the Hawaiian Islands combat with potential to salvage the USN position.  With 3 USN CV plus the Victorious, it was going to be a rough fight against two IJN LBA and the I-Boat.  Furthermore, Mike had positioned three BB to prevent a US flag no matter what.

During the first round, Enterprise was sunk by the LBA while Wasp was sunk by the I-Boat.  In return, my carrier put three damage on each LBA.  In the second round, the LBA sank Saratoga.  In return, one LBA was shot down.  That left Victorious against one wounded LBA.  The odds were so high against Vicky's success that I decided just to get the game over with.  So I declared that my Marine would land (just to keep the IJN from shooting at it) -- after all, no harm in making an invasion against the flag when the whole game is on the line.  And then I went ahead with Vicky's attack.  As it turned out, Vicky downed the LBA.  In return, the IJN shot at and disabled the Marine (despite having stated his attack would be on Vicky earlier).  Because the sequence of play was not followed exactly, the ruling was the the Marine was an eligible target.  At that point, I elected to formalize my surrender -- which I'd anticipated before rolling Vicky's dice anyway.  I hadn't realized that I'd guaranteed my loss by the way I did things rather than allowing the dice to render the final verdict as I'd planned.  The lesson from this game is to be very careful when following the sequence of play.  The USN simply can't afford to give the IJN any more advantages.  I, therefore, take back much of the advice in my quick play article.

Turn 2

Turn 3

Turn 4

Turn 5