I am intrigued about the idea to have a Commander unit, a tiny plastic Rommel on the map, chancing the outcome of a battle. I know it has been tried in A&A lookalike games like http://ww2wargame.com/ and http://thewargame.com/ and many more.
Many of the Commander house rules are far to complex, and don’t fit the KISS level that Axis & Allies represent in game terms. The best suggestion I have seen so far, is a Commander that re roll misses. Germany attack Moscow with a huge stack of 30 infantry, 10 artillery, 8 tanks and 2 bombers, all under command of a plastic Rommel. He roll 20 hits and 30 misses, so the Rommel figure must re roll the 30 misses, and get 5 more hits. Of course Rommel must re roll in every round of combat. The benefit of this simple system is a faster combat resolving. Of course we must assume that the defenders of Moscow are lead by Zhukov, so this battle is fair. Both sides get re rolls, as long they got a Commander.
I am not sure if a Commander unit can be purchased for a certain cost, and what should that cost be ?, or is something you get for free if you win a battle, in which case the map will soon be covered with leaders, or should each nation get a set number of leaders, like the WiF hex and counter game.
I think a good idea will be if Germany start with like 4 Generals, and Sovjet start with 1 leader. After all, the military education of officers in Germany was the cutting edge in the world. They had more skilled leaders than the rest of the world combined. And in Sovjet had Stalin purged and killed more than half of the officers in the Red Army just before WWII started, and only Zhukov survived of the skilled leaders, because he worked in the Sovjet Far East at the time of the purges, far away from Moscow and Stalin. There are no doubt that Russia did some poor dice rolling in the attack on Eastern Poland, Finland and the Baltic states, and more poor dice rolling when they got attacked by Germany. Actually, in the Red Army of 1939, the General was not in charge, but had to listen to the political commie commissar and the union leader of the privates, and that explains a lot of the poor effort and no re rolling of dice early in the war in the Europe theater. Meanwhile, general Zhukov did beat the Japanese in the battle of Khalkin gol in Manchuria 1939, so obviously there was a lot of re rolling there
For balancing, I suggest the combined total of leader disbursement must be equal among the Axis and Allies players.
Germany start with 4 leaders, Japan 1, Sovjet with 1, UK 2 and USA 2, since this will model the real world most historically correct.
Maybe they can play the game with that, because if they get more generals every turn, the game will no longer be A&A but the Commanders game
Oh, and attached are pics of the leaders from the Struggle, the Wargame, and a plastic Rommel that I want HBG to make me
