Hi All,
First time posting here in a while. I just wanted to share with you guys some thoughts I had for various rule changes I’m trying with A&A G40. I’ll be creating a couple of threads here shortly.
My first idea is the use of a new unit, the “Prewar” or “Conscript” infantry. These represent raw, untested troops that are in general weaker than normal infantry.
The basic idea for prewar infantry is to use them in place of infantry in the setups of countries who aren’t at war (namely, the U.S. and Soviet Union). I use 1914 pieces to represent them in my game, and the US doughboy pieces with their flat helmets really give a great feel to the standing armies on the map, not to mention the Russian rifle infantry with their peaked caps and blanket rolls.
I’m also playing around with the idea of allowing Russia to buy these units at a cost of 1 or 2 later in the game (perhaps when they have 2 original TT’s occupied).
In my D12 game, I bump the attack and defense values down by 1 (to Atk 1, Def 3), but you could easily just bump the Defense value down to 1 in a D6 game.
Thoughts?
I’m not sure about the concept of having “Prewar” or “Conscript” infantry equal raw, untested troops that are in general weaker than normal infantry. Arguably, it’s actually the wartime draftees who should (at least initially) be less good than the guys who were already when the war breaks out, on the grounds that the existing guys are experienced whereas the new guys – via the application of a quantity-versus-quality trade-off – are recruited from civvy street in large numbers and rushed (by pre-war standards) into service (and thus get called things like “ninety-days wonders” by the “trade school boys” regulars).
Maybe the solution is to distinguish between “Prewar” and “Conscript” because those two concepts actually refer to different things. The opposing-concept pairs should be “pre-war” versus “wartime” on the one hand, and “conscript” versus “volunteer” on the other. The concepts of “conscript” versus “volunteer” exist both in peacetime and in wartime, though of course wartime pressures in WWII tended to make the countries which normally (in peacetime) relied on volunteer service introduce conscription as an emergency (wartime) measure. As a very rough rule of thumb, countries (like Britain) which traditionally have volunteer armies do so because they’d rather have a small but high quality and highly motivated force, whereas the Cold War-era Warsaw Pact apparently took the opposite view that it was better to have a massively large force, even if it consisted of poorly trained and unmotivated conscripts.
Good post. I guess I was more referring to the fact that the training and equipment of “prewar” units would be generally inferior to those of a nation that had experience fighting modern, WWII armies.
For instance, the U.S. army wasn’t fully equipped with M1 Garand rifles until the end of '41, and the famous M1 helmet didn’t even start being issued until then. Tactics were based on flawed doctrine as well.
In the Soviet case, the Red Army was soundly defeated in the first few weeks of the war, due to poor organization, incomplete mobilization, and mediocre officers.
The idea of “conscript” more came to me as a way to represent the mass of poorly trained, poorly equipped draftees Stalin threw into battle as the war became more desperate.
I know that, in reality, these concepts are completely different, but statwise, the two groups should be similar.
ossel, in 1 of my games I do have Light infrantry. There is a cap on how many per country and the A and D is lower than Reg. infrantry.
I will have to look at rule again if your interested in values. I’m guessing there like ( D12 ) A 1, D 2, M 1, C 2.
