Lightning: Midway

Two-player Card Game of the Midway Campaign
Designed by Dan Verssen
Published by Decision games (2004)

Lightning: Midway is one of a series of card games designed by Dan Verssen and published by Decision Games. I, personally, have Lightning: D-Day and Lightning: North Africa in my collection. The series of games feature individual decks for each player and all have a intense flavour as they are played. Each game is quite different, apart from the fact that they are all card games.

Although the box says the game plays in 30 minutes I would put it at closer to 45. The game plays fast and is full of tension.


Components

1 sheet of rules – the rules are extremely short, perhaps the shortest rules I have ever read. They probably are complete but don’t give the reader the feeling of confidence. Getting the FAQ off ‘the Geek’ makes it easier to learn, play and understand the game.

110 cards – two decks of cards – one deck of 55 cards for the U.S. player and another, different, deck of 55 cards for the Japanese player.

There are four types of cards: Country Cards, Objective Cards, Force Cards and Action Cards.


Country Cards: one card for each player which tells you your starting forces and outlines the sequence of play.

Objective Cards: each player has four objective cards. The Japanese player has four Aircraft Carrier cards while the U.S. player has three Aircraft Carrier cards and a Midway Island card. The aim of the game is to destroy all four of your opponent’s objective cards before suffering the loss of your own objective cards. Each objective has different characteristics (e.g. if the Kaga is the selected objective then each Zero gets ‘+1’ added to the defence).

Force Cards: the force cards represent air formations. Each card is ‘dependent’ upon one of the objectives. By that I mean that some Japanese force cards are based on the Kaga and if the Kaga is destroyed then the dependent force cards are removed from the game. Likewise, some of the U.S. force cards may be dependent upon Midway Island. Once the Island is captured the U.S. player loses the use of the aircraft that would have been based there.

Action Cards: these are cards which are played during the resolution of combat. They represent such things as Tactics, Leaders, Events and Special cards.


Playing the Game

The game is played in alternating turns. Each turn each player decides to either Assault, Resupply or Prepare.

Assault: you select an enemy objective and allocate one or more force cards to the attack. The defender also may allocate one or more force cards to the defence. Either player who has a force in the assault may play action cards. The force cards have a certain numerical strength – this strength may be modified by the situation (e.g. Japanese fighters defending a carrier get an extra ‘+3’, U.S. fighters based on Midway get an extra ‘+2’ when defending Midway, etc.). The object of an assault is to end up with a numerical advantage and, in the process, destroy the enemy objective.


Both players can modify the result by adding leaders, tactics and events. Each assault may only have a single leader card, tactic card and event card. If the Japanese player puts out an event card the U.S. player may pass, put out their own event card (which will cause the Japanese event to be discarded) or put out an tactic card or a leader card.

This continues until both players pass.

At the end of the battle, all force cards are returned to the players’ hands.

Resupply: In your turn you may put upto three force cards onto the table to become part of your Uncommitted Forces.

Prepare: draw new cards to fill your hand to nine cards.


Impressions

I think that Midway is probably the most evenly balanced on the Lightning series of card games.

There is a lot of double-guessing in this game. Naturally you want to put a lot of planes into any attack to give it the best chance of success. The down-side is that planes used in the attack will be unavailable for defence if the other player responds with their own immediate attack.

When playing your Action cards, sometimes you choose not to play the best cards first, expecting that the other player will be able to nullify them.


You may decide to put in an attack to draw cards out of your opponents hand or to get them to commit much of their uncommitted forces.

While the game is not primarily a simulation I feel that there is some simulation value in the game.

I find that at this point in time I am looking for ‘lunchtime’ games. Something that doesn’t take long to set-up or pack away and something that can be played in less than an hour. Midway is a fine ‘lunchtime’ game.


“Dead Men Tell No Tales!”