Hopefully I can remember enough to add a quick finish to this after all this time. Basically, Churchill’s morale was broken after England fell and realizing the mistake of thinking India’s IPC’s were England’s, so he went off to play cards. Roosevelt took over control of all of the remaining Commonwealth nations and military forces. Stalin still felt optimistic that he could push back the Germans.
The following summarizes R4+5 (I think it was 5 rounds at least)
Japan and the US clashed around the Caroline Islands in what was the largest naval battle of the game. Japanese battleships Yamato, Musashi, and Nagato joined the carriers Zuikaku, Shokaku, and the Kaga complete with full loads of Tony, Oscar, and Zero fighters as well as Kate and Val bombers along with 5 destroyers against a multinational fleet consisting of US and Royal Naval forces lead by the “Big E”, the USS Enterprise loaded with Wildcat fighters and Dauntless bombers (still in their 1940 pre-war livery), the carrier USS Lexington with a Wildcat fighter group and Devastator bombers all in Battle of Midway camouflage, 5 DD’s, a sub and a bunch of transports, with the BB USS West Virginia not able to join the battle in time. The overwhelming Japanese force was successful, with the bulk of their forces surviving with battleships damaged. Encountering success everywhere, they also wiped out the last remaining Chinese resistance. On the follow up turn, an Australian tank corp raced across the country to defeat the sneaky Japanese and their infantry unit’s beached was eliminated. The few surviving Mongolian troops and the Allied powers had little to celebrate.
Roosevelt took huge morale blows with Churchill’s resignation and now this catastrophic naval loss, but he was still hanging in there by a thread. The Japanese were pretty much the masters of mainland Asia.
In Europe, Iraqi soldiers were charging towards India, backed by their Italian friends. Germany kept pressing towards Russia. They bought another carrier and a Destroyer to further intimidate the Americans, who were still equally distributing their money to each front, with some money left over given to land units to maintain parity with Stalin, with the idea of spending everything to land units against Russia on the following turn. Italy steamed the Battleship Littorio, a cruiser, DDs, and subs past the “Pillars of Hercules” to further intimidate the Americans from making a move. The naval intimidation moves succeeded on Roosevelt who decided to capitulate as he didn’t want to dare move the US fleet in range of all of those Axis ships, especially given all of the airpower that could support them. Stalin tried to convince him to fight on, but after the demoralizing Pacific defeat, he didn’t have the heart to see the USS Ranger, California, and Arizona at the bottom of the sea (yes, the USS Arizona was stationed on the East Coast for this alternative history). The Allies were essentially defeated and it was game over.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eWPStTU4pgFqS3rN8NnCtVlTJzmcFZnSHA
Pacific after the Allies capitulated
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Htmx1y4AuE4X81l1iBdf0bU8wiABqjiTxQ
Europe after the Allies capitulated
I’m betting this variant is not balanced, but there were so many mistakes and the skill level was so unbalanced between the Axis and Allies, that it’s hard to say that it favors the Axis. It seemed like Sea Lion wouldn’t have worked with England collecting the proper income and making more strategic decisions such as supporting with Canadian troops and not scrambling all of their air force in the initial attacks. The drawback of simultaneous play was that the newer players couldn’t be monitored as well as when play is one country at a time. Perhaps playing one country at a time for the first round may be the way to go when there are new players, so they can be watched and have their questions answered.
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