Empire at Sunrise: The Great War in Asia, 1914

As the guns of August were heard firing across Europe, the German Kaiserliche Marine began commerce raiding in the Pacific, targeting British shipping and colonial holdings to reduce their economic ability to fight on the continent. The Empire of Japan, eager to emerge as a global power and seeing an opportunity to expand at the expense of Germany's Asian and Pacific colonies, entered the Great War alongside their British allies. John Gorkowski's Empire at Sunrise: The Great War in Asia, 1914 depicts the struggle for control of Pacific sea lanes during the opening months of World War I. Its focus is largely on naval operations - on the cat-and-mouse dance of destroyers and battleships. The game presents its action at three different telescoping scales using nested playing surfaces, representing the area around Tsingtao at six miles per hex, the fight over the Asian Pacific at 240 miles per hex, and the entire Pacific Ocean at 1440 miles per zone. From the Battle of Coronel off the coast of Chile to the Siege of Tsingtao in China, this game elegantly captures the sweep of a forgotten chapter in the history of World War I. —description from the publisher