AA diceless varient, well playtested

I’m with CWO Marc here – I think at the point where you are trying to run a balanced March 1943 scenario, you’re not talking about a few minor revisions to history for game balance; you’re talking about totally re-writing history. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do, but you’ll have to be bolder about your edits.

It’s a little hard for me to read your scenario setup from a wall of text; a graphic or illustration of some kind would be helpful. I apologize for any mistakes I may have made in interpreting your scenario. That said, the problem with your scenario, as I see it, is that there is no credible Axis path to victory. The Axis have to simply wait around and hope the Allies make a mistake. Maybe the Germans can press on to Moscow and get lucky there, but they have no time to build up additional reserves, no way to wear down the Russian economy, and no ability to threaten London, so there aren’t really any strategic choices to be made – just march every man east to Moscow, and hope you get lucky. Similarly, Japan is earning much less than the USA, is not in position to do devastating damage to the US Navy, and is not in position to capture enough of China, Siberia, or ANZAC in time to achieve parity against the US. They can fight over the Dutch East Indies but not hold them, which means that’s a losing strategy for Japan, because it will cost them more in lost transports and destroyers than they earn by holding the islands. Maybe Japan can get lucky against India, but, again, Japan has no real options in this scenario – they have to just send every man west and hope they roll well.

So, if you want a balanced March 1943 scenario, consider some or all of the following changes:

Germany controls and can hold Leningrad

German battles in Stalingrad were inconclusive; Germany still has significant forces in Rostov and Caucasus

Britain lost the Second Battle of El Alamein, resulting in Italian control of Alexandria and Cairo; British forces are defending in Sudan and Trans-Jordan

Italian navy was warned of the Taranto raid, and so more Italian navy survives, maintaining local naval superiority for now in the central Med

America was slow to recover from Kasserine Pass, and holds Morocco but not Algeria

Japan won a bloody victory at the battle of Midway, and so Japan currently has four carriers to America’s two, as well as control of Midway, Wake, and the Aleutian islands

Japan won the battle of Guadalcanal, and so Japan currently has control of the Solomon Islands and both territories in New Guinea

The goal of these changes would be to give the Axis additional (any?) strategic options so that the Axis have multiple credible long-term paths to victory and feel like they are somewhat in control of their destiny, instead of just serving as a punching bag for the incoming Allied invasions. I like the idea of a balanced 1943 scenario very much, but you’re not going to get there by starting with historical 1943 borders and tweaking the unit counts a bit. Contrary to popular belief, the war was lost for the Axis by March 1943; after the Axis failed to knock any of their opponents out of the war and the Allies secured naval lines of supply to France, Africa, and Indonesia, an Axis defeat was just a matter of time. This dynamic, unfortunately, will be well-captured by OOB A&A rules, and will result in your Axis side getting defeated 19 out of 20 games unless you make drastic edits.

AA rolls against Strategic Bombing raids:

Since AA never brought down all planes in a bombing raid, but could seriously impact the accuracy, AA defensive roll from air bases, naval bases, and industrial complexes is changed as follows: 1 = -3 on damage from air raid, with another roll to get a 1 for kill; 2 = -2 on damage roll, plus kill die; 3 = -1 on damage, plus kill die, 4 = +0 on damage; 5 = +1 on damage; 6 = +2 on damage.

The comparison math on this would be… if you had 12 bombers attacking, using 12 avg dice rolls,
under normal rules, 2 bombers would be lost, with 55 damage points against targets.  Under these rules, there would 1 bomber lost, but just 36 damage points against targets.

Yeah, I’m not crazy about low luck myself. Sure, it can be a time saver with a lot less dice rolling. In some battles with certain numbers and types of units involved, you wouldn’t have to roll at all, just remove automatic hits. Eg: You attack 3 infantry with 6 tanks. The 6 tanks automatically get 3 hits which wipes the infantry out and the 3 infantry automatically get 1 hit so you remove 1 tank. You don’t even need a battle strip for that.
I still like the chance and surprise you can get from rolling dice for each unit. I will never forget the one game in which I was Germany and had 5 infantry involved in a certain attack. These were regular infantry, not artillery-supported, so they attacked @ 1. I rolled my 5 dice and what do you know? FIVE German crosses pretty as you please. Doubt that will ever happen again, but it was sure cool at the time.

Possible to add a 6th option ?

hear me out…

AA guns can never attack.

On defense AA participates in every round of combat (as any normal unit currently does). Rolling one dice per AA gun hitting on 1 (2 if radar is researched) however (and obviously) AA guns can only hit aircraft and defender will choose the casualty’s. Attacking aircraft hit by AA guns are moved to the casualty zone just as if they were hit by any other unit. OR Attacking aircraft hit by AA guns are immediately removed from battle and do not return fire. OR Attacking aircraft hit by AA guns are immediately removed from battle ON THE FIRST ROUND ONLY. Subsequent rounds attacking aircraft hit by AA will be moved to casualty zone and return fire.

I really have never understood A&A anti aircraft rules… in a real battle the aa guns are not going to just stop shooting after a couple minutes lol that makes no sense. Like the AA gun operator gets bored because the crappy gun can never score a hit anyhow and he falls asleep… :P

if not i vote for option #4

@dijitz

Well, I may be mistaken, but it seems mathematically that when there’s already a nearly triple-percentage advantage in Allied economic power, extending that further only serves to deepen the advantage.

To illustrate, lets say in a battle you have 3 tanks and I have 1, a 3:1 ratio. I like your chances even better at 6:2 and 9:3, etc.

I like IL’s rules and I am going to use them with slight modifications.
Germany and Italy will use the oil fields of Romania. I also think that if they can trace a supply path to Venzuela, they would have oil.
Japan needs oil somewhere, give them oil from Russia and the us until certain times of the war , then when they are at war, they must have oil secured or serve penalties.
Penalities would be either moving only half their pieces they require fuel or make them all move a limited range.

If you plug them into a combat simulation ( online) the odds give you these results.

Hey,

Normally my friends and I don’t play M84, but I can think of two things you could try. Turn the required IPC value up, I’m not exactly sure what would be fair but placing it somewhere in the 90s might do it. The other thing is to require them to acquire and hold the M84 (or higher) value thru two turns. Or, another way is to say if they reach M84 during a round, then you play through the next. So if they get to M84 on Japan’s move in round 11, they have to hold it thru round 12 to get the win, etc. At least this prevents them from blitzing thru empty territory of little value and winning before a counter-attack can be sent.