Our group has had this discussion many times. It seems unrealistic that a country would develop something that is not useful. In one of our games Russia bought a non-disposable tech dice and actually rolled a 6 then rolled on the chart and got “War Bonds” which was cool for them but if you look at the list there are very few that Russia can benefit from. Mostly depends if they are on the offensive. If they are on the defensive then only “War Bonds” and “Increased Factory Production” seem to be worthwhile. “Radar” would also be good but its on a separate chart with tech that would not benefit them. Most would say that Russia should not even consider rolling on tech and I tend to agree unless they are on the offensive and have a massive economy.
Tech Tokens
-
what exactly was the AA50 rule?
5 ipc’s
and reroll every turn start?
do you lose your roll if you get tech?The AA50 rule was you could buy a token(s) (5 IPC) and got to roll every turn until you got a tech and then lost the token(s). You could buy as many tokens that you wanted, but all would be surrendered when you got a tech. I would usally buy 2 or 3 tokens and get a tech either the turn I bought or the next, but once I got my tech I lost all 2 or 3 tokens. I could then buy more the next round and so on.
-
To me tech tokens mostly just helped flatten the luck out. When we used to play as kids, one friend would just buy 1 die/turn as the US or Germany and damned if he didnt end up with an awful lot of tech. Another friend spend 10-15 here and there are rarely got anything. We eventually just ended up removing tech altogether since it was such a game changer on a VERY few number of dice.
I just wonder if they experimented with the tokens and decided they didnt fit (as per gamerman’s post above) or if they just decided they were going to back to the ‘all or nothing’ rule for some other reason (including not wanting to provide the components).
-
Yep, you lost all when you got a tech. We made a houserule that if you accidentily rolled two 6’s you was allowed two rolls and could pick the tech you liked.