Minimalist Rebalancing for the 1942.2 Map

Argothair

Background

So, for those of you just tuning in, there’s a reasonably broad consensus about A&A 1942: 2nd Edition that it’s a fabulous game but that (a) it’s slightly unbalanced in favor of the Axis, and (b) it fails to break out of the increasingly tired rut where Russia immediately evacuates all of its Asian troops, China is a speed bump at best, and the optimal strategy is for the Axis to race for Moscow while the Allies race for Berlin.

We’ve talked about many potential solutions for these issues, most of which have involved adding additional units and/or changing the price of units. We’ve steered clear of changing the map, though, mostly because map changes disrupt game balance in ways that are hard to predict, and tend to damage the graphics – you don’t want to go around leaving permanent marks on your snazzy $60 game boards with a $2 sharpie.

A Modest Proposal

Keeping those risks in mind, I have a proposal for a very small set of changes to the 1942.2 map that could yield big payoffs in terms of creating additional game balance and strategic variety without ruining the aesthetic appeal of the game. It’s just a proposal, though, so I strongly recommend using a pencil…

Draw a vertical line from the northeast corner of Afghanistan to the center of the southern border of Sianking, dividing Szechuan into two territories: Qinghai (west) and Henan (east). Qinghai is worth 1 IPC and contains a new Victory City named Chongqing. Qinghai starts the game with 1 American infantry. Qinghai borders Kazakh, Sinkiang, and Henan. Henan is worth 2 IPC and starts the game with 2 American infantry, 1 American anti-aircraft gun, 1 American fighter, and 1 factory. Henan borders Sinkiang, Henan, Anhwei, Kwangtung, and Yunnan.
Draw a vertical line from the northwest corner of the Caspian Sea to the center of the southern border of West Russia, dividing the Caucasus into two territories: Armenia (west) and Volgograd (east). Armenia is worth 4 IPCs and starts the game with 3 infantry and 1 artillery. Armenia borders Ukraine, West Russia, Volgograd, Persia, and the Black Sea. Volgograd is worth 2 IPCs and starts the game with 1 tank, 1 anti-aircraft gun, and 1 factory. Volgograd contains a new Victory City named Stalingrad, and borders Armenia, West Russia, Russia, and Kazakh.
Draw a diagonal line that runs across the narrowest portion of Vologda, starting from the southeastern border of Archangel and finishing at the northwestern border of Novosibirsk. The line will split Vologda into two territories: Omsk (west) and Chelayabinsk (east). Omsk is worth 1 IPC and starts the game with 1 infantry. Omsk borders Russia, Archangel, Chelayabinsk, and Novosibirsk. Chelayabinsk is worth 2 IPCs and starts the game with 1 factory. Chelayabinsk borders Omsk, Archangel, Evenki, and Novosibirsk.
Draw a vertical line splitting Libya into two territories: Tunisia (west) and Cyrenaica (east). Tunisia is worth 2 IPCs and borders Algeria, Cyrenaica, and the Italian sea zone. Tunisia contains a new victory city named Tunis. Tunisia starts with 2 German infantry at setup. Cyrenaica is worth 1 IPC and borders Tunisia, Egypt, and the Italian sea zone. Cyrenaica starts with 1 German tank at setup.
Eastern Australia is now worth 2 IPCs instead of 1 IPC, and contains a victory city (Sydney).

New Starting IPCs:
USSR: 24 -> 27 IPCs (+3)
Germany: 40 -> 42 IPCs (+2)
Britain: 31 -> 32 IPCs (+1)
Japan: 30 -> 30 IPCs (no change)
USA: 42 -> 44 IPCs (+2)

New Victory City List:
Allies (10): Washington, London, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Calcutta, Chongqing, Honolulu, Sydney, San Francisco
Axis (7): Paris, Berlin, Rome, Tunis, Shanghai, Tokyo, Manila

There are 17 total victory cities. If either the Allies or the Axis control 11 or more Victory Cities at the end of the USA’s turn, then that team immediately wins.

New Russian Starting Factory List:
Karelia (2 units/turn), Volgograd (2 units/turn), Russia (8 units/turn), Chelayabinsk (2 units/turn).

Strategy Discussion

The point of these changes is to encourage the Russians to vigorously defend their Asian territories, to encourage Germany to vigorously defend north Africa, to allow the Americans to pump major resources into China if they so choose, to force the Allies to defend at least part of the Pacific, and to give both sides even chances at victory even without a bid.

The Russians now have a starting factory in the Ural mountains (Chelayabinsk). Holding that factory and the immediately adjacent territories is worth 6 IPCs, meaning that you can drop two infantry a turn into the Ural factory and have them pay for themselves. Russia may not have a good reason to defend Buryatia, Yakutsk, and the Soviet Far East, but now at least there is a Russian rallying point somewhere along the 3,000 miles between Vladivostok and Moscow. If the Japanese conquer Chelayabinsk, it will seriously improve the Japanese income and logistical situation, but it is not necessarily an immediate game over for Moscow, which is still two spaces away.

The Russians now have some room to trade in the south – Germany wants to capture Armenia because of the valuable oil worth 4 IPCs, and can do so relatively easily by swinging the Italian navy over to the northeast, but because Armenia does not come with a free factory, and because the USSR can still produce units in Volgograd, it is not necessarily worthwhile for the Axis to pull extreme stunts like flying the Japanese air force over to defend a captured Armenia.

The Americans now have a starting factory in China (Qinghai) that is guaranteed a chance to produce 2 units before the Japanese can even attack it. Because the Americans start with an extra infantry and extra AAA gun in the region, if the Americans use both builds and also consolidate all forces in Qinghai, they have some hope of holding it against the Japanese on turn 2 even if Japan sends all available forces and the Russians/British do not help reinforce it. With a coordinated Allied effort, China can now hold against a mid-strength Japanese attack until turn 5 or 6 without the need to strip Russia or India bare.

In north Africa, the Germans no longer have an attractive option to blow open Egypt on turn 1, because the ex-Libyan infantry is now out of position in Tunis. On the other hand, the Americans no longer have the option of defending all of Africa by ferrying troops to Morocco – once the Germans do crack Egypt on turn 2 or turn 3, the Allies will have to reinforce sub-Saharan Africa via West Africa and/or India, because Morocco is just too damn far away. On the third hand, if the Americans do choose to land in Morocco, the Germans will be less likely to just abandon north Africa in response, because now they have a 2 IPC territory with a victory city in it to defend. If the Germans let the Americans walk into Tunis, the Americans can build a factory there, and use it to seize Paris and Rome, setting up a European Allied victory even if the Allies never capture Berlin.

Meanwhile, most of the old strategies can still be used if desired – the sea zones are all the same, the navies and air forces are all the same, the capitals are all in the same places, the starting forces distribution is virtually unchanged, and most of the map is encouragingly free of pencil marks.

Let me know what you think!

PS Many thanks to Black_Elk for his thread on moving Russia’s factories to the east, which is what got me thinking about these map changes in the first place, and to everyone for your feedback on earlier articles I’ve posted, which have helped me push the ideas in this piece forward to (what I hope) is their logical conclusion.

Black_Elk

A baseline you might have fun with :-D

I did a mock up for 1942.2 a while back, that shows the basic territories, but with a somewhat more accurate to scale world projection. The OOB gameboard squishes and stretches in a few rather peculiar ways. This one is based on my general world projection for TripleA, the one used for AA50 and a few others, but adapted for the 1942.2 scale.

Thought you might like to play around with it, when coming up with new territory spreads.

This is bare bones, just a baseline with a quick color fill in paint. Not fit for printing really, the border lines are just a 1 pixel black line. But it might be handy for a first draft, just to tease out possible connections and values.

edit: botched the USA possession of Greenland haha. Here is a better color mock up…
It’s pretty easy to tweak, if you just want to paint bucket things around. Or the regular baseline that is used for v5 in tripleA can be fun too, though I was never terribly with the Revised projection in TripleA. Feels a bit wonky haha. So I made this one. I know I have a copy somewhere with the sea zones mapped out hmmm. But anyway, here is a blank uncolored v5 basetile map, in case you want to play around with the one that everyone recognizes in tripleA.

Frederick II

Great ideas, but I don’t like the whoever controls 11 or more VCs win because it’s almost easy for the allies to hold or take back their VCs I quickly go for Tunis and win so I would boost it up to 12 or 13 to seem fair. (not saying will always happen) :roll:

Also I think you will probably need to get a 2nd map so if you want one to be regular and the other to be your testing one mainly because I only have one map and if I want to play on the regular map I now some different things on my map.

CWO Marc

Pencils are less destructive than sharpies, but I’d still be uncomfortable about marking up my game map. The “draw a line from here to here” method described here is relatively low-impact…but it actually doesn’t cover all the map modifications mentioned because they also require new territory names and new victory cities. Making those changes with a thin pencil would make them hard to see (and would look odd in contrast with the much bolder existing names on the map), whereas making them with a marker would seriously mess up the map.

I suppose that one way around the problem would be to scan the territories in question, modify them in Paint or Photoshop or whatever, print them out in colour (correctly sized), cut them out and lightly mount them on the map using a few tiny pieces of double-faced tape around their edges. It would look better, and it would be reversible. Alternately, the overlays could be attached to a sheet of clear plastic, which would simply be placed on to of the map. Fundamentally, though, it might be better to rebalance the game my using methods other than map modifications. For instance, the addition of victory cities could be handled by using little VC markers of some sort which could be set down on the map rather than drawn on it.

General Veers

Marc has the right idea, I was thinking of mylar -though it is not fully transparent- or ideally a clear laminated sheet with the borders printed on them. And 3M does have a decent selection of double sided tape, including the removable kind.

Argothair

Good suggestions, everyone. I like the idea of putting something down on top of the board, instead of writing on the board. I don’t think that something has to be an enormous mylar transparency that covers the entire map – it could be as simple as using stickers, like the kind you’d use for return address labels. Also note that you don’t have to rename all of the territories if you don’t want to – I changed “Caucasus” into “Armenia” and “Volgograd” so that we’d have an easier time discussing the setup, but you could just as easily leave the 4 IPC circle and the Caucasus name in place, and then you’d only need a sticker for the 2 IPC circle and the Volgograd name.

I’ve occasionally used translucent, brightly colored glass beads for victory cities, with good results. You use, e.g., red beads for the Axis and blue beads for the Allies, and change the color of the bead when the city is captured. That way you can tell at a glance (a) where the VCs are, (b) who is winning, and © where a game-winning attack might be coming from.

Frederick, I’m not super-concerned about the Allies taking Tunis early, because the earliest the Americans can possibly attack it is turn 3, and even then the only ground forces available would probably be 2 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk. The Germans really ought to be able to hold Tunis until at least turn 4 even if Africa is going poorly for them. Note that because Germany goes after Russia, if Germany and Russia are trading Leningrad, then Leningrad will count as an Axis victory city. If, by turn 4, the Germans aren’t even in position to trade Leningrad or Stalingrad, and the Japanese haven’t captured Calcutta, Chongqing, Sydney, or Honolulu, and the war in Africa is going poorly for Germany, then I personally have no problem calling the game in favor of the Allies.

That said, if an early fall of Tunis worries you, you could drop Washington off the list of victory cities (if the Axis hold Washington at the end of the American turn, then the Axis are surely going to win anyway, regardless of the VC count), so that the Allies have to hold their initial VCs and conquer 2 Axis victory cities to win. I like this idea. Another option is to raise the VCs needed to win from 11 to 12, but that means the Axis can conquer Leningrad, Stalingrad, Moscow, and Calcutta while holding their original territories, and still not win, which seems harsh, and seems likely to unnecessarily prolong a game after the winner is (or should be) fairly clear. I can imagine, e.g., that in the time it takes the Axis to batter down Chongqing, the Americans could land troops in Paris or Manila or Shanghai. That doesn’t mean the Allies are going to be able to stage a real comeback; that just means it will take time for the Axis, who now own essentially all of Eurasia, to re-position their troops to boot out the invaders.

CWO Marc

HBG has VC markers in green and red…

http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/HBG-3D-Victory-City-Acrylic-_p_952.html

…and one could also use other marker types. For instance, the old Avalon Hill game History of the World includes some neat little grey plastic victory arches:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/145537/history-world

I can’t recall what function they serve in that game, but they’d make nice VC markers if you happen to own a copy.

The problem with using stickers of the address-label type is that they’d damage the map if you ever tried to peel them off. This would in effect mean making non-reversible changes to the map, which was the fundamental problem with the “Risk Legacy” game that, if I recall correctly, required map stickers to be applied and game cards to be ripped up.

The 1942 map isn’t very large, so in principle it could be covered with something as simple as a strip of Saran Wrap, or by a few sheets of clear acetate – the kind used for overhead projector transparencies, if they still make them – at a minimal cost.

Frederick II

Argothair, I’m not “worried” about Tunis falling I just it to be boost up to 12 and not 11 VCs.

Black_Elk

Use Plexiglass…

I’d say the idea of a physical overlay would be the simplest.

You can get plexiglass cut pretty thin to put on top of your board. This helps to secure the map in place and provide a rigid and level playing surface.

You can draw the borders, names and IPC values on the plexiglass with a sharpie marker. And if you need to remove or rework it later, all you need is rubbing alchohol and a paper towel, which will take the ink off the plexiglass as if it was never there.
;)

Needs a name :-D

In my mind a minimalist change would be something like a new set up chart for starting units.
Anything that calls for a map territory change immediately becomes maximalist for most players. Not that it can’t be done, just requires some dedication.

I went through the experience of doing this with the Revised game map, when we made the pact of steel scenerio. This included some reworked sea zones a third space in China and some other border adjustments. It had a decent run in tripleA, but as far as I know nobody ever made a physical board to match it.

Black_Elk

ps.

If you use plexiglass, instead of stickers or a pencil, you are actually protecting your board instead of damaging it.

Keep it mint, and just write on the plastic.

You can even have the plexiglass cut at like 1/8th inch, and then put one on the top and one on the bottom, for a perfect preservation sandwich! This is how I store my AA50 board which is the most valuable to me and also the one I have HRed the most of any game hahah. Its the workhorse, so the plexi-makes for a safe way to store.

The main cosmetic tweak I made to my physical AA50 board (on top of the Plexi) was to include more VCs. Those are super easy, just a Red sharpie pen dot. But there’s no reason you couldn’t add in new territory or sea zone borders using the same method.

It may be advisable to retrace all your borders from the OOB map, along with any other critical info you want to highlight, and put that stuff on top of the Plexi for ease of reading and overall clarity.

To erase Sharpie Ink from Plexiglass you just use Rubbing Alchohol, so its super easy and very unlikely to rub off with your hand while playing, and cannot damage your actual map (since plastic is separating them.) Worst case scenerio, you get all “Sloppy Stalin one night”, spill a handle of Vodka all over your map! At least your actual board isn’t ��ed up haha, and then you can redraw the info again.

IPC values can easily be tweaked this way too, drawn right on the plexi with Black Sharpie, which I have done in the past, and then erased out later with rubbing alchohol later, as I always have second thoughts and third thoughts and fourth thoughts about everything.
:-D

Also, adding in a new Territory Name or Sea Zone designation is pretty easy, you just write it in by hand, or erase and correct with an alcohol soaked cotton swab or tissue, as I invariably misspell something by accident hehe.

There are also decals and paint that can easily be removed from plastic, but which would totally ruin cardboard. So I always suggest plexi to my pals!

Also I like to print a simple baseline map with colors that I dig, enlarge it to whatever size and then trace over the 1 pixel black line, with a Sharpie pen. Since I don’t really dig jagged edges, and this is a fun way to add a hand made touch to your borders. TripleA requires the 1 pixel border line to process the map, or anyway it started out that way, so it is my default. But yeah, I’m all for adding and tweaking stuff for personal mods. Just do it in a Plexi sandwich, with yout map in the middle, so you can revise it on the fly!
;)

Oh yeah, I also noticed that Evenki needed a re-draft in that color map I offered up earlier. I just posted a fix above, so that Evenki borders western China. This is rather a geographic oddity, but it’s a feature of the OOB map, so I guess you’d need it haha. The OOB map design took a lot of liberties with the projection, and squeezed in the middle pretty major (the whole Siberia/India/China section of the OOB 1942.2 map is highlight distorted to create an enlarged Europe) so it has a pretty high blob-effect. Here that effect is less pronounced, but still around due to the need for OOB connections. If you like messing around in paint, you could probably tweak it more to suit your taste, since you had plans to carve up the area anyway.

Argothair

Thanks for the graphics, Black_Elk! Let me know if you have any thoughts, aesthetic or strategic, about this draft of a new map. I’m shooting for something in between 1942.2 and 1940 – I don’t want dozens of fidgity territories in the middle of nowhere that just require extra counting, but I do want to give people options to set up different kinds of front lines (and prioritize theaters) in new and interesting ways.

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Minimalist Rebalancing for the 1942.2 Map

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