Wargame SITREP 24-48 ~ Rad wargaming from Japan with NORAD in Banzai Vol. 22 (Bonsai Games, 2024)

Banzai Magazine is a wargame publication from Japan produced by Bonsai Games. The latest edition, Vol. 22, features three wargames (well, actually two plus a stand-alone playable expansion). If you never before picked up Banzai you are in for a real treat as the magazine is a wargamers paradise…even if you don’t speak Japanese!

While aimed at the Japanese market, Banzai draws much of its material from the United States. Many of the articles are drawn from wargame-related blogs or publisher web sites. In the name of full disclosure, I am occasionally asked if Banzai can use a blog post of mine which I always agree to. In return I get a complimentary copy of the volume my article appears in. In Vol. 22 the article I contributed is “Revolutionary Risk with The Fast Carriers: Air-Sea Operations, 1941-77” which first appeared on the Armchair Dragoons in April 2024.

In addition to coverage of commercial hobby wargaming, Banzai also usually features a section on Professional Wargaming. One of the feature articles in Vol. 22 is Phil Sabin’s Counter-Air: A Simple Two Player Wargame which is also available from the Fight Club International web site.

The feature wargame in Banzai Vol. 22 is NORAD 3: Strategic Nuclear War between the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962. As the Production Note in the rules relate:

The original NORAD was published by Simulations Design Corporation in 1973 and republished by the Mischler Company in 1977. There were plans to reprint it in 2010 by Victory Point Games, but this never came to fruition. In 2020, High Flying Dice Games published SAC, a game themed on strategic bombing by the U.S. Air Force based on the concept of NORAD. This is NORAD 3, which adds the Soviet Homeland Air Defense Force (PVO Starny) variant to NORAD based on the Mischler Company version (“2” ins the unpublished VPG version).

NORAD 3, 1.0 Introduction, Production Note (English rules version)

Everything needed to play NORAD 3 / PVO Starny is included in the magazine. I am especially happy to see an English-language version of the rule book is included. Previously, I relied on fellow gamers to provide an English-language translation but for NORAD 3 Bonsai Games is taking care of us darn non-Japanese speakers of English.

Banzai Magazine Vol. 22 also includes another wargame, 24th Tank Corps: Raid on Tatsinskaya, December 1942. The game appears to be an original design by Yashushi Nakagoro (中黒 靖) who is also the publisher of Banzai Magazine. The Japanese-language rules for 24th Tank Corps are stapled in the middle of the Japanese version of the rules for NORAD 3 but, like all the rules for wargames in Banzai Magazine, is also available at the Bonsai Games website.

[For the 24th Tank Corps I experimented with using a free pdf translation program to translate the Japanese-language pdf file into English. The particular free translator I used produced a very rough translation that I can play with though not without some difficulty. It was free so I did not set my expectations too high but I will definitely be looking out for better options in the future.]

I am fortunate that Yas reached out to me before and asked to put my articles in Banzai Magazine for without their initiative I would have likely never found the product. Even after I started contributing articles, I avoided subscribing to the magazine because I felt the language barrier was too high. The reality is that there are fair-to-good free translation tools available that I can use to enjoy the magazine—and included wargames—more fully. It is well past time I subscribe and make a monetary contribution to this incredibly valuable wargaming hobby resource. If you have the resources—and patience—to work though wargames in another language I strongly recommend you consider subscribing too.

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Feature image courtesy RMN

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