Paper Wars 83: Rising Sun Over China - A detailed review
Introduction
, strategy game aficionados! Today, we’re diving into the world of “Paper Wars 83: Rising Sun Over China.” If you love the smell of cardboard in the morning and the thrill of outmaneuvering your opponents, this game might just be your new obsession. Grab your tactical maps and let’s embark on this journey together!
The Basics of Rising Sun Over China
“Rising Sun Over China” is a wargame that pits players against each other in a strategic battle for dominance. Set in the backdrop of historical conflicts, this game requires careful planning, tactical maneuvers, and a bit of luck to emerge victorious.
Components
The game comes with a beautifully designed board depicting various historical locations, detailed unit counters, and a plethora of cards that add depth and variability to each playthrough. The artwork is top-notch, immersing players in the historical setting and enhancing the overall experience.
Fun Fact: The game includes a special “General’s Hat” token that you can wear while strategizing. It’s not mandatory, but it sure makes you look more authoritative.
Gameplay
Turn Phases
Each turn in “Rising Sun Over China” consists of several phases:
- Planning Phase: Players secretly plan their moves and allocate resources.
- Action Phase: Execute your plans by moving units, engaging in battles, and utilizing special abilities.
- Event Phase: Draw event cards that introduce new challenges or opportunities. (Because why not add a little chaos?)
- Resolution Phase: Resolve conflicts and update the board state based on the outcomes of battles and events.
Winning and Losing
To win, players must achieve their strategic objectives before their opponents. This often involves capturing key territories, controlling resources, and outsmarting rival generals. If you fail to meet your objectives or lose all your units, it’s game over. Better luck next time, commander.
Pro Tip: Always keep an eye on your supply lines. Running out of resources in the middle of a battle is a sure way to taste defeat.
Strategic Depth and Replayability
One of the standout features of “Rising Sun Over China” is its strategic depth. Each playthrough offers a unique set of challenges and opportunities, ensuring no two games are ever the same. The combination of hidden planning, resource management, and tactical maneuvering keeps players engaged and coming back for more.
Funny Moment: During one game, our “General” player tried to bluff their way through a battle with a “Diplomatic Envoy” card. Needless to say, the laughter echoed for hours as their forces were decimated.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Engaging Gameplay: The mix of strategy and historical accuracy keeps players invested and entertained.
- High-Quality Components: The artwork and unit counters are beautifully designed and durable.
- Replayability: With various scenarios and event cards, each game offers a fresh experience.
- Humorous Moments: The unexpected twists and turns provide countless laugh-out-loud moments.
- Educational Value: Learn about historical conflicts while having fun.
Cons
- Complex Setup: The initial setup can be time-consuming and requires a good understanding of the rules.
- Steep Learning Curve: New players might find the game challenging to master initially.
- Punishing Difficulty: The game can be unforgiving, making some sessions feel overwhelming.
Historical Background: The Sino-Japanese Conflict
Rising Sun Over China simulates the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), one of the largest and most devastating conflicts in Asian history. Japan’s full-scale invasion of China began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7, 1937, although Japanese military aggression in China had been escalating since the Mukden Incident of 1931 and the subsequent occupation of Manchuria.
The war produced staggering casualties — estimates range from 15 to 22 million Chinese civilian deaths and approximately 3 to 4 million Chinese military casualties. Japan suffered roughly 1.1 to 1.9 million military casualties in the China theater. The conflict merged into the broader Pacific Theater of World War II after December 1941, fundamentally reshaping the political geography of East Asia.
For wargame designers, the Sino-Japanese War presents unique challenges. The conflict combined conventional warfare, guerrilla operations, political maneuvering between Nationalist and Communist Chinese forces, and massive logistical constraints across terrain that ranged from coastal plains to mountainous interior provinces. Rising Sun Over China addresses these challenges through its scenario design, which abstracts some elements while preserving the essential strategic decisions that both sides faced.
The Paper Wars Magazine Format
Paper Wars is a wargaming magazine published by Compass Games that has been releasing magazine-format wargames since the 1990s. Issue 83, containing Rising Sun Over China, follows the traditional wargaming magazine model: a magazine with articles, designer notes, and historical essays, accompanied by a complete game with map, counters, and rules.
The magazine format has a long history in wargaming, dating back to Strategy & Tactics magazine in 1966. This distribution model keeps production costs lower than boxed retail games, allowing publishers to cover niche historical topics that would not justify full retail production runs. The trade-off is component quality — magazine games typically use paper maps and die-cut cardboard counters rather than mounted boards and wooden or plastic components.
For Rising Sun Over China specifically, the paper map measures approximately 22 x 34 inches and covers eastern China from Manchuria to Guangdong province. The counter sheet provides approximately 200 unit counters at battalion and regiment level, color-coded by nationality and unit type. The map uses a hex grid with each hex representing approximately 50 miles, allowing the game to cover the entire theater of operations on a single map sheet.
Detailed Mechanics Analysis
The Simultaneous Planning System
The Planning Phase is the mechanical heart of Rising Sun Over China. Both players write orders for their units simultaneously, committing to movement directions, combat priorities, and reserve allocations before seeing what the opponent has planned. This system eliminates the advantage that comes from reacting to an opponent’s moves in traditional I-go-you-go wargames, replacing it with a fog-of-war simulation that rewards intelligence gathering and strategic anticipation.
Written orders create a commitment cost that makes every decision consequential. A player who commits their mobile reserve to the northern front cannot redirect those forces south when the opponent’s orders reveal a surprise offensive along the coast. This constraint forces players to balance concentration of force with defensive coverage across the entire front, mirroring the actual dilemma faced by Chinese commanders who never knew where the next Japanese offensive would strike.
The order-writing process typically takes 10-15 minutes per turn, during which both players study the board position, consider their opponent’s options, and formulate plans. This planning time is when the game’s strategic depth reveals itself — experienced players develop the ability to predict opponent behavior based on board position, previous patterns, and logical deduction about available forces.
Combat Resolution
The combat resolution system uses a differential Combat Results Table (CRT), where the ratio of attacking strength to defending strength determines the column on the table. A die roll produces a result ranging from Attacker Eliminated through various exchange and retreat outcomes to Defender Eliminated. Terrain modifiers shift the die roll, making attacks across rivers, into mountains, or against fortified positions significantly riskier.
The CRT in Rising Sun Over China is notably attritional — clean victories without attacker losses are rare, and most combats produce some cost on both sides. This design choice reflects the historical reality of the Sino-Japanese War, where Japan’s technological and organizational advantages could overcome Chinese defensive positions but at a persistent cost in manpower and materiel that strained Japan’s logistics over the war’s eight-year duration.
Supply rules add another dimension to combat planning. Units that advance beyond their supply lines fight at reduced strength and cannot receive replacements. Japan’s historical challenge — projecting power into China’s vast interior while maintaining supply lines through hostile territory — is mechanically represented through these supply constraints. Chinese forces, fighting on interior lines and drawing on a much larger manpower base, face different supply pressures but compensate with strategic depth.
Scenario Variety
Rising Sun Over China includes multiple scenarios covering different phases of the war. The introductory scenario focuses on the 1937 Shanghai-Nanjing campaign, a compact engagement that teaches the core mechanics in approximately 90 minutes. The intermediate scenario covers the 1938 Wuhan campaign, expanding the map area and introducing additional Chinese forces. The full campaign scenario spans the entire war from 1937 to 1945, requiring multiple sessions of 3-4 hours each to complete.
The campaign game introduces additional rules for Japanese naval operations, Chinese guerrilla warfare, foreign aid to China (including the Flying Tigers and Lend-Lease supplies), and political events that can shift the balance of forces. These rules add historical texture but also increase complexity, making the campaign game best suited for experienced wargamers who have already mastered the introductory scenarios.
Comparison with Other Pacific/Asian Theater Wargames
Rising Sun Over China vs. Fire in the Sky
Fire in the Sky (2020, designed by Tetsuya Nakamura) covers the broader Pacific War with a card-driven engine. While Rising Sun Over China focuses exclusively on the land war in China with hex-and-counter mechanics, Fire in the Sky abstracts ground operations into area control and emphasizes naval and air warfare. Players interested in the specific dynamics of the China theater will find Rising Sun Over China more granular and satisfying, while those wanting a broader strategic overview of the entire Pacific War will prefer Fire in the Sky’s scope.
Rising Sun Over China vs. A Few Acres of Snow
A Few Acres of Snow (2011, designed by Martin Wallace) applies deck-building mechanics to a historical conflict (the Anglo-French wars in North America). While thematically unrelated, the comparison is useful for understanding different approaches to historical wargame design. Rising Sun Over China uses traditional hex-and-counter mechanics that prioritize spatial positioning and force ratios. A Few Acres of Snow uses card-driven logistics that prioritize supply chain management and resource allocation. Both achieve historical flavor through different mechanical languages.
Rising Sun Over China vs. Undaunted: Normandy
Undaunted: Normandy (2019) brings wargaming concepts to a more accessible audience through deck-building and modular scenarios. Its production values (mounted map tiles, high-quality cards) are significantly higher than the magazine-format Rising Sun Over China, but it covers a much smaller operational scale — individual squads rather than armies. For players looking to enter historical wargaming, Undaunted offers a gentler on-ramp, while Rising Sun Over China delivers the operational-level depth that dedicated wargamers seek.
Practical Considerations for Prospective Players
Table Space and Storage
The paper map requires a dedicated gaming surface of at least 3 x 4 feet, and the game should not be played on surfaces where the map cannot remain set up between sessions for the campaign game. Plexiglass sheets placed over the paper map prevent counter displacement and protect the map from wear. Counter trays are essential for organizing the 200+ unit counters by nationality and type — without organization, setup time extends significantly.
Finding an Opponent
Two-player wargames with 3+ hour session lengths present a practical challenge: finding a regular opponent who shares both interest in the topic and schedule availability. The Paper Wars community maintains online forums where players coordinate VASSAL (a digital tabletop platform) sessions, allowing Rising Sun Over China to be played remotely with synchronized simultaneous planning phases. VASSAL modules for most Paper Wars titles are available for free download, providing a solution for players who cannot find local opponents.
Investment Value
Magazine wargames typically cost between $30 and $50, significantly less than boxed retail wargames from publishers like GMT Games ($60-$90). For this price, Rising Sun Over China provides a complete gaming experience with multiple scenarios spanning 2-20+ hours of play. The magazine articles and designer notes add educational value beyond the game itself, making the purchase worthwhile even for readers who play infrequently.
Final Thoughts
“Rising Sun Over China” is a fantastic addition to any strategy game collection. Its blend of historical accuracy, strategic depth, and engaging gameplay make it a must-have for enthusiasts. While the game is not without its flaws, those willing to embrace the challenge will find it an incredibly rewarding experience.
Criticism Alert: The complex setup and steep learning curve might deter some players, but for those who love a good strategic challenge, “Rising Sun Over China” is an absolute blast.
Player Count and Session Duration
Rising Sun Over China supports 2 players, with each session lasting 2-4 hours depending on the scenario selected. The shorter introductory scenarios can be completed in about 90 minutes, making them ideal for learning the system before committing to the full campaign scenarios. The hidden planning phase is what distinguishes this from simpler hex-and-counter wargames — simultaneous order writing creates genuine uncertainty about enemy intentions, rewarding intelligence gathering and bluffing over pure calculation. The combat resolution table uses a differential system comparing attack strength to defense, producing results that feel historically plausible rather than purely abstract. The magazine-format publication includes designer notes explaining the historical research behind unit values and scenario setups, adding educational depth for players interested in the actual campaigns being simulated.
It’s time to put your strategic skills to the test and dominate the battlefield!
Other Board Games to Check Out
If you love “Rising Sun Over China,” be sure to check out our comparisons between Adventure Tactics and CoraQuest or why adults should also board game.
Ready to conquer new territories? Grab your copy today!
