Description

Destruction of Force Z is a tactical level, solitaire simulation of the short air/naval campaign off the coast of Malaya in late 1941 which saw the destruction of two Royal Navy capital ships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse by Japanese bombers. The player takes the British side, and the game system plays the Japanese side.

The object of the game is for the British to disrupt Japanese invasions taking place, while not losing his ships. You as the player are presented with a difficult situation. Pearl Harbor has just been attacked; the entire Malayan peninsula is under threat of invasion. There are not many offensive options open to you and your ships, but doing something to take the war to the enemy is preferable to meekly doing nothing at all. Perhaps you can disrupt invasion sites? Intercept enemy warships? Whatever you decide, it will be an uphill battle for the British. In the actual campaign, Force Z sailed out of Singapore into the South China Sea in the early evening of December 8. Admiral Phillips, onboard the Prince of Wales, ordered strict radio silence. If the two British capital ships were able to reach the Gulf of Siam undetected, they might be able to wreak havoc among enemy warships, transports, and invasion sites. If they were found, they risked the wrath of land-based Japanese bombers located in Indo-China. But danger from this eventuality was judged to be minimal, even though the RAF had warned the Admiral that they could not guarantee protection of the ships from the air.

The stage is set, the campaign is about to begin. Can you pull off a British victory, and avoid the destruction of Force Z?

• an illustrated 12-page digest-sized rule booklet that includes all rules and tables necessary for play,
• a small map and
• set of 59 counters (which must be printed and separated before play, depending on version),
• Reference Card, and
• optional ship counters for a game variant, originally published in Panzerschreck #16 (2014).

—description from the publisher for 2018 edition