I got mine last week and I've been working my way through the rules and the smaller scenarios. I like it a lot but it's labour intensive. Lots of counter shuffling in and out of cups for the various stages/hazard levels of the game.

The game itself has a lot of similarities to the first one that covered the Dambusters raid but it isn't as tightly focused on the bombers. In the Dambusters, the tension came from making the bomb runs against the dams and hoping your crews could overcome the obstacles in their way and line up at the perfect speed and altitude to drop their upkeep bombs. In Doolittle, the bombing runs aren't nearly as interesting as pinpoint accuracy wasn't nearly are crucial. The real tension comes from the other segments. Can your nearly defenceless task force (the USS Hornet was basically helpless during the mission as its deck was covered with B-25s and so couldn't launch or recover any of its own planes) link up with Nimitz and the Enterprise TF without being discovered? Will Nimitz even make the rendezvous? Can you make it close enough to Japan to launch the bombers without being discovered and possibly pounced upon? Did that Japanese fishing vessel get a radio message off and, if so did that trigger any kind of response back in Japan? Once the bombers do launch, do they all get airborne? Will they have enough fuel to make it to Japan and then on to landing sites in China or the USSR? Will Stalin even allow them to land? Did Chaing Kai-Shek and Stillwell do their jobs and prepare landing sites with beacons and fuel? Have the Japanese found any of these sites and overrun them? All these factors depend on choices you make as you play and they do a great job of weaving a compelling narrative.

I haven't had a chance to try the big scenario where you plan and execute the entire raid from inception to debriefing but it looks amazing. There's an entire book just for the denouement that's got more pages than many rulebooks for other games.


S = k ln W