Midway is a wargame published by Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill

Avalon Hill was a game company that specialized in wargames and strategic board games. Its logo contained its initials "AH", and it was often referred to by this abbreviation. It also published the occasional miniature wargaming rules, role-playing game, and had a popular line of sports simulations...

 as part of the Smithsonian American History Series. The game simulates the World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 Battle of Midway

Battle of Midway

The Battle of Midway is widely regarded as the most important naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 4 and 7 June 1942, approximately one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea and six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy decisively defeated...

 and is primarily designed for two players.

The onus of gameplay rests on the Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese player who must attempt to bring forces to bear upon Midway Island

Midway Atoll

Midway Atoll is a atoll in the North Pacific Ocean, near the northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago, about one-third of the way between Honolulu, Hawaii, and Tokyo, Japan. Unique among the Hawaiian islands, Midway observes UTC-11 , eleven hours behind Coordinated Universal Time and one hour...

. The United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 player, though possessing a smaller force, has no such geographical constraints placed on his naval forces.

Search Boards

The bulk of the game is played out on duplicate boards, one per player, with full knowledge of friendly forces but limited knowledge of the opponent's. Knowledge of opposing forces is gained by air and sea reconnaissance

Reconnaissance

Reconnaissance is the military term for exploring beyond the area occupied by friendly forces to gain information about enemy forces or features of the environment....

. Unlike the 1964 version

Midway (1964 game)

Midway is a wargame by Avalon Hill which simulates the Battle of Midway, during World War II. The game is designed for 2 or more players and details the battle primarily at the squadron level....

, the search boards use hexagonal spaces to remove questions of corner adjacency.

Battle Boards

Air-surface and surface-surface battles are held on boards representing a small patch of open ocean. Unit deployments are made at the start of each battle.

Counters

Double-sided cardboard counters with dimensions between 1/2" and 3/4" represent combat aircraft squadrons

Squadron (aviation)

A squadron in air force, army aviation or naval aviation is mainly a unit comprising a number of military aircraft, usually of the same type, typically with 12 to 24 aircraft, sometimes divided into three or four flights, depending on aircraft type and air force...

, aerial reconnaissance squadrons, capital ship

Capital ship

The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they generally possess the heaviest firepower and armor and are traditionally much larger than other naval vessels...

s, and surface escort squadrons. Additional counters are used for record keeping, particularly damage and suspected enemy locations.

Aircraft Availability

At most, aircraft are available every other turn. After completing a mission, they must spend one turn refuelling and rearming before they can be used again. However, aircraft being fuelled on an aircraft carrier

Aircraft carrier

An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...

 pose an extreme fire hazard if the carrier is attacked, a vulnerability reflected by the rules.

Search

While not required, aerial reconnaissance is usually necessary for victory. Dedicated reconnaissance squadrons (and combat squadrons, if necessary) fly circuitous routes across the search board. The controlling player may ask his opponent if ships are present in any space flown over. However, asking about every space flown over tends to reveal to the opponent where the plane originated from. Once ships are encountered, the controlling player may elect to spend extra fuel to refine the search results. Depending on success, the opponent may report simply that "ships are present", that "[up to double the actual number of ships] are present", or potentially an exact number of ships by class are present.

Battle

Readied combat air units may be dispatched against any target in range, even if no information beyond "ships are present" is known. At the start of a battle, the opponent's true force is revealed; however, the attacker may not elect to bring reinforcements or flee with his current force. Game mechanics encourage historic tactics such as fighter cover and multiple-direction assaults. Units may sustain six levels of damage before destruction; however, damage can occur at rates beyond one level of damage per attack.

Multiplayer

While designed primarily for two players, Midway is an excellent candidate for an umpired multiplayer game. For example, a four-player game might divide the United States forces into the historical Task Forces 16 and 17 while the Japanese forces could separate between the carrier group and the surface invasion force. In these games, the individual search boards are complete only for the forces under an individual player's control. Communication between allied players is limited (and subject to interception) and possibilities for confusion of friendly and opposing forces exist. The umpire serves to mediate all exchange of information and conduct all dice rolls in such games.