ONLY Axis BBs 2 hit @ start…

@The-Captain You’re absolutely right, but as the Russian player I’ve been glad to see those factories bombed out. Germany has moved the Southern Italy, Berlin, and Paris factories underground as they consider those the main factories they’ll be producing from. The Allies learned this the hard way too the India Industrial Complex took a lot of bombing damage. It’s kind of late but UK may finally put that factory underground.

@guillermo

Have you been able to try these house rules, Guillermo?

I made little changes and a few tests in Pacific.
In PTO, I reduced US double Subs and DDs into single one.
It gives many interesting little and epic Naval battles in the first and second rounds.

Adding one additional TP in Japan SZ makes for a more dynamic and fast explosive deployment into main land Asia.
Japan can now better rivaled with Szechwan IC in second and third rounds or get to all money islands at the cost of loosing TPs.

IDK how would do a conservative player since all I tried is as many big naval combats within reach in the first two rounds.

Here is a picture.
I will do more game tests and then write the complete set-up, of the final version to be experiment in a F-2F game.

@Argothair:

Yup, I’m a big convert to Anniversary. I own both games, and I’ve played more Spring '42 2nd Edition (1942.2) than I have Anniversary, but that will change over the next couple of years, because now I almost exclusively play Anniversary.

1942.2 is maybe one hour shorter than Anniversary on average, but the price you pay to save that hour is having to put up with ridiculous sea zone configurations (America typically needs three separate stacks of transports to be effective in Europe) and weird, crunchy flight paths that force you to send fighters from California on turn 1 through Australia and India so that they can reach West Russia in time to stop the German advance.

1942.2 does have some interestingly tight/sharp trading in eastern Europe; I like the territory divisions in Eastern Europe better in 1942.2 than in Anniversary. Instead of being rapidly forced back to Moscow, Russia has a real chance to stack in West Russia or Archangel through the middlegame, and the Germans can be defeated if they over-invest in the pricey 6 IPC tanks and then let those tanks be killed by efficient stacks of Russian infantry and fighters.

There are also interesting possibilities in 1942.2 if you adopt a “US goes first with a non-combat turn and extra purchase,” which tends to re-arrange the entire board and perhaps even allow for a small Axis bid.

That said, the well-designed eastern european front is not enough to save 1942.2 from its otherwise terrible starting setup. With no bid, the Allies will be pushed out of Egypt, China, Siberia, the central Pacific, and the north Atlantic sea zones no matter what they try to do about it. The British are wedded to their disaster of a factory in India, which deprives them of the income needed to make a real contribution in the Atlantic. Because Australia, China, Malaya, Burma, and Hawaii are all 1-IPC territories, the Allies have nowhere in the Pacific that makes sense a a place to build a factory as a forward base. Meanwhile, the Japanese have no reason at all to go south or east, and so in every game they either seize the British Indian factory and use it as a base to attack Stalingrad, or plow through China/Siberia and attack Moscow. There is no Battle of Midway or Battle of the Coral Sea or Battle of Guadalcanal; instead the Japanese get to do a bizarre repeat of the Pearl Harbor attacks, even though it’s supposed to be Spring 1942 instead of December 1941. There is no Battle of El Alamein or Battle of Kasserine Pass; instead the British get thrown out of Egypt and the American Atlantic fleet is sunk in its entirety by German subs before the Americans even get a turn, which means that when the Americans finally do make it to Morocco, they land with overwhelming force. The setup is rigid, unbalanced, ahistorical, and ultimately unrewarding.

SanFran1941_Baron_Alpha07.png

Revised Russian Rules:

Russian Revolution: When the Central Powers control 20 or more IPC’s of original Russian areas, the potential for Revolution is activated. Each turn this is accomplished, the German player rolls a die. The first time the roll needs a 6 result to succeed. Each time a new roll occurs, this drops by one.

Effect: When the Russians revolution occurs, they are out of the game. Central power units occupy what they control and Russian units outside of original Russian borders remain as they are and can be attacked, but do not perform any movement/combat. They may defend however. Also, no allied units are allowed to enter in original Russian territories once the revolution begins.

What would be neat is if you can arrange it so that all the war crimes result in IPC gains but have morality point losses.  If at some point those war crimes result in tangible bad things happening to you (e.g. Fifth column etc), then you have to balance the benefits against the potential harms and it really becomes a game of “How much can I get away with?”.

Back when all we had was Classic, I tried out a game where Germany and Russia were pals and they fought against USA, UK and Japan.  The Germany/Russia combo was pretty devastating.  They rather quickly over ran the rest of the Asian continent and most of Africa, although Russia had some problems with Japan because Japan kept using their transports to drop off troops all along the coast and Russia didn’t yet have enought to put garrisons in each coastal territory. 
As powerful as Germany got by taking most of the Middle-East and Africa, they had a hard time trying to get at England because the Brits kept buying aircraft and sinking all the German ships.  So while Germany had lots of troops and tanks, they couldn’t keep ships to take them to England.  Also, Germany had put so many men along the coasts that America had to build a really huge invasion fleet to get over there.  They also had to be careful about staging their ships because Germany had a lot of Luftwaffe too.
It took a while, but Germany and Russia eventually won.  Russia finally got some planes over to sink the Japanese ships and Germany eventually whittled down the RAF enough that they started to keep and build a decent navy.  They also used lots of subs for fodder (remember back then planes could hit subs anytime).  The big American invasion took too long building and ended up being used to liberate England instead of attacking somewhere in Europe.  Germany had enough guys and transports to re-take England and after a couple of large naval battles, managed to reach North America and had enough transports to keep shuttling men and tanks from Europe to England to Canada, with even a few Russian troops sent over by their puny navy to take defense hits by US counterattacks.  Eventually, they even overwhelmed Eastern US.  Japan couldn’t help because every time they put ships in the water, Russian planes would sink them.

ok

Absolutely! Wouldn’t that be the definition of Defensive Air Support?

GG