@Argothair said in Why is Global better than Revised?:
Can you elaborate a little bit on how or why these rules opened up new strategies? It looks like almost every territory worth 2 IPCs or more is a Victory Territory. How does playing with this list of Victory Territories change the strategy compared to just saying “whoever has more money after 6 rounds wins?”
Basically, the idea behind the alternative WBC rules is that you’re adding more variety in win conditions beyond “Germany stacks INF in Germany/France/Italy”, “Japan builds Tanks and walks into Moscow”, and “US/UK build a death-fleet and try to land in Germany/France/Italy”.
tl;dr Strategic Variety is key. Every country (not Faction) has at least 2-3 different viable ways that they can play the game. Even Russia, to an extent.
Specifically:
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Germany goes after USSR, so if Russia simply spends the whole game swapping Ukraine back and forth, Germany is going to end up winning the VT there. This encourages the Soviets to play more aggressively in the later rounds.
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Norway and Egypt are designed as “freebies” for Germany and UK to steal from one another in the initial rounds. The difference is that later in the game (assuming a 5-6 round time limit), USA is probably going to land in Africa and take Egypt back. This encourages Germany to be aggressive in either attacking Russia to make up the difference, or building a Baltic Navy to reinforce Norway/keep UK out of it.
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The Money Islands (Borneo/East Indies/Philippines) + Australia/Hawaii are made into VTs to force Japan to actually build some sort of navy to pursue them, and to encoarge USA to play in the Pacific. In OOB rules Philippines is the only VC in the Pacific, and as it’s right next to Japan it’s laughably easy to defend. This totally discourages USA/UK from even trying to contest the Pacific, since there are more VCs to be gained by attacking Europe.
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On a similar note, Kwangtung is demoted from it’s OOB VC status, while Manchuria and FIC are promoted to VC status. These territories are situated right next to Japan’s borders with Russia and India, meaning that they become tempting options for early game aggression, or even a US Factory in China.
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The Russian VC in Archangel is completely and totally off the standardly accepted “beaten path” for Germany to take to get to Russia (that being Germany -> East Europe -> Ukraine -> West Russia/Caucasus -> Russia). This can expand the Russian front to include all of the territories between Germany and Russia, rather than just the usual 3-4.
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None of UK’s African territories are VCs. This gives the Axis the choice of either attacking Africa for IPCs to win a potential tiebreaker/fund later turns or just gunning straight for VCs.
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Sinkiang is a VC for the same reason Ukraine is. If Russia just swaps them back and forth with Germany/Japan the Axis will win the VCs in the end. Russia is forced to decide whether to aggressively pursue one or both of these VCs, or forfeit them to the Axis.
Hope this ranting and raving helps. It’s similar enough to Siredblood’s G40 rules, when you think about it. The difference here is that you’re playing to simply determine who has more VCs by end-of-game, rather than trying to prevent the Axis from meeting some arbitrary goal.