@Der:
In the current global setup, as the British player you can do nothing at all with your scattered and vulnerable navy but watch as the Germans decimate practically everything afloat,
Another example is the Italian DD and transport setup next to Malta. What smart player would do that with British airpower nearby? They are automatically destroyed every opening turn with no chance to do anything.
I will echo and amplify some of the points brought up earlier: it is necessary for the balance of the game. No, the British did not get their entire Navy sunk in 1940, but if the Axis are to have a chance in hell of winning this boardgame, they must have the opportunity to strike quickly, heavily and on multiple fronts. Spendo02 said earlier that if the UK Navy is not destroyed on turn 1, Germany is pretty much screwed. If it is not destroyed (or mostly) on turn 1, UK consolidates its navy and reinforces it, so much that it becomes utterly suicidal for Germany to attempt an attack. Not that Germany could not win the battle, but they would lose so much irreplacable equipment in the process that it is a strategic loss. But if Germany did not attack and destroy it, the UK would conduct invasions every turn on Western or Northern Europe distracting Germany from putting pressure on Russia and therefore effectively ending the game. Even if the Royal Navy is mostly destroyed on turn 1 they have the resources, territories and allies which allow them to rebuild and be a threatening force to the Germans. Even with this situation in G40 1st, how many times did the Axis win…? Not very many.
Also, is this issue not the case in almost every Axis and Allies game, to a similar degree? I have not played G40 2nd Ed., but G40 1st Ed. is situationally almost identical I believe. The UK Navy gets trashed, fends off attack, rebuilds and invades… happens almost every game. Similarly for A&A Revised, and Anniversary Ed.
On the UK’s side of the coin, it is a similar situation. The UK has important decisions to make, there are pros and cons to attacking and not attacking. The best course of action may be for the UK to attack the fighter and transport as you say. Most times it will work, sometimes it will fail. The dispairity between a fighter and a destroyer is pretty small. Plus, fi this is the only such situation for the Italien Navy in G40 2nd, then it is actually an improvement over the previous situation in G40 1st, where they could launch a full scale Taranto raid and possibly wipe out 80-100% of Italy’s navy on turn 1.
@Der:
My point is, the game should not be set up so that vital and expensive units will get trashed the first turn without you having any say in it. The player himself should make the vital decisions for victory or defeat in each battle - not the setup cards. I mean, why even have those units out there in the first place if that’s the way it is going to be? Why not just start the game out with the British having no navy around England, for example? That’s the way it usually looks by round 2 anyway.� �
Because it is necessary to give Germany the choice of attacking them or not. There are pros and cons to both; ultimately the decision is in the hands of the German player. However, in the interests of survival and a chance at winning it is almost necessitated that Germany attacks the UK and eliminates its threat for a while. This is effectively what Germany did in 1940, without sinking all of the Royal Navy. It was called the Blitz for a reason; the British were on their heels and reeling for a time against German attack. The possibility for a German invasion of Britian was contingent on air superiority, not whether or not the Royal Navy still existed; because it did still exist but that did not matter. Britain was saved by her air force. In this game, history tends to be modeled well in the beginning of the game. Britian is relatively weak and threatened by invasion. Most of the time, she fights off invasion, only to be reinforced by the United States. By which time Germany’s attention and main objective has become the USSR anyway. For being a vastly simplified version fo WWII, it tends to follow historical events in a recognizable fashion; showing how inevitable and necessary certain actions were.
And if no “vital” units (whatever those are defined as) are in harms way on turn 1, there will be little risk and little reward and every game will become even more the same.
The setup will always be, or need to be, something like it is: Axis big push at the beginning and Allies comeback to dominance (providing the Allied players are not incompetent). The real differences from game to game will be dictated by (1) chance (rolling) and (2) choices by the individual players. With people playing these games like supercomputers crunching numbers, a “best course of action” will inevitably be worked out. Experienced players will go with this 99% of the time as it will prove to yield the best possible results. That is why the choices of players comes second to chance or rolling. If (again, with experienced players) all the decisions become more or less predictable, the only thing that will cause different decisions to be made will be the outcome of battles based on rolling. Rolls can result in unpredictable events which may necessitate a strategy different from what you normally see. However, if you were to play with relatively inexperienced players (or ones who are new to a version fo the game), then most games will be unique and a bit more interesting.
