My review copy of Axis & Allies Europe 1940 has arrived

Magro,

You are correct about that Persian air distance, my mistake. I had been looking at the Caucasus routing not realizing that the Caspian Sea-Kazakhstan route cut off a space. That saves half a turn’s worth of UK income.

That last game I had hopped an Africa fighter over and shuffled a mech in, but didn’t do a fighter build in the Persia IC because of the miscount. I had tried “overworking” the German air and main thrust by pincering two infantry forces through Bessarabia and Baltic States, and a Brit landing in Norway under cover of the surviving half of the Home Fleet (SZ 106 transport had survived G1 but went to Britain because I wanted to force Germany to buy defensive forces.) However, I found I still had enough German air plus late arriving mech/tanks along with a portion of the spearhead infantry to handle these, take Western Ukraine, retake Norway, while still continuing the spearhead to Belarus next to the main Soviet stack with mech/tanks, etc. in Bryansk. And the Scandinavian infantry took Leningrad/Novgorod.

R3 counterattack odds were very poor for Russia and were going to leave a tank stack that would still have enough mech/tanks reaching it the next turn to be unstoppable. So the retreat to Moscow was made on R3.

On G4 I strat bombed Moscow’s IC with three bombers. I decided not to scramble the two Russian fighters for this as I needed their defense as badly as the IPC’s. I figured the ~50% chance of losing one of two fighters outweighed the lower chance of clipping a bomber at ~33%. The IC’s AAA missed and the bombers inflicted enough damage that I had to spend several infantry’s worth to repair for a final infantry build there on R4, which was mostly a waste as calcs showed it would not hold even with some UK help. But I stayed and was bludgeoned. German tanks reached the Caucasus on G6 and would have been unstoppable. US landing and Brit round 5 stacks/w UK fighters reinforcing in Normandy were crushed on the counterattack that turn. It would have been much better to do a fighting withdrawal toward Persia, maintaining a threat to keep German support forces in theater, rather than be unceremoniously swept away.

The original AA Europe is fatally flawed.  Germany can win every time by just buying tanks and smashing Russia.  This is a well known problem with that game.  This AA Europe 1940 is much better.

@EnoughSaid:

@Field:

Now with an Industrial zone of 10 the USA would put 5 fighters and 5 tanks in each buy thus obliterating Germany.

Whenever you capture a Major Industrial Complex, it turns into a Minor Complex. Additionally, only the original power can restore it back to a Major Industrial Complex.

Just so you know, that shouldn’t have been possible - unless you were playing with house rules that say otherwise.

Our house rules state if you lose a Major Industrial Complex you pay the consequences.

If you haven’t found it yet, go to HistoricalBoardGaming.com (sponsor of AAA.org!).

They have copies.

The most important detail is to buy 2 transports on round 1 for Germany, so far this works great and I want to try to find a blocking move with UK. If anybody has one I would like to hear it.

@Dylan:

Do you mean beginner’s game or “beginner’s game” ?

I meant what I wrote, the game is meant for newcomers to the Axis & Allies universe, or for vets like us that want a short, quick game.

No.

Like other posters have said, they do give some flavor, but most of them just make the game try to follow the track of the actual war. Say for instance, the ‘Russian Winter’ NA for the Soviet Union. Needless to say when playing Germany, it left me in the cold.

Marines are also not a national advantage, several countries had marine/amphibious assault units. Or partisans, several countries resistanced and conducted sabotage operations, not just people in Soviet territories.

So yeah, adds flavor, but opens up a can of worms too.  :lol:

I know, but now it is impossible for the axis to win without taking Cairo (unless they invade UK, US). Also, the middle easts income is now a factor and UK would be limping without Middle East/Africa income. Italy would also be earning 40+.