Oztea's 1942 Global Setup

@bakerbei

maybe you can get a message to him here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NHFOPGhzfI

@Black_Elk:

That’s a clean map Ryuzaki_Lawlie!

The color selection is ideal. Though the black impassibles still jump out at me

From a design standpoint the only things that catch my eye are the two round sea zones surrounding Japan and Hawaii.

It feel like you need one in the Atlantic to balance things out aesthetically. Have you considered the possibility of one surrounding the British Isles?

Or maybe Iceland? Or maybe both?

I still think Mercator is a bit tight in Europe, a little stretching there might be ideal, even if it was just along the vertical axis. I think the map would still read fine, but you’d get a few more pixel for units into those key European spots. Also if you were willing to shrink South America slightly you could almost curve off a 10th of the map height at the bottom of the screen (which is notorious for players forgetting units in the south sea hehe) without really needing to change Africa/Australia of the pacific. Basically a slight bend would go a long way, even if using Mercator for the baseline.

Oh and I think the possession colors for Dutch Borneo and British Sarawak and North Borneo should be reversed.

My only suggestions :)

Nice work man. That would be a fun map to form the basis of a 1939 game, or any year from 39 on.

I like that you have not yet imposed on the map any extraneous information such as IPC values or VC. This means the map is adaptive for many purposes. I like the general division of territories. Only that the projection is a bit large at the poles for my tastes. If we could shrink them up slightly I think the map would be ideal. Its really more about screen dimension for me when it comes to the Big World Map that Wandering Head made. These days most screens are very long relative to their height, so standard Mercator always seems blown out a bit in tripleA to me, especially at the south end, and of course Europe is always tight. I wish the center picker for tripleA was better at housing units to smaller scales. Its a little better than it used to be, especially with the guiding lines, but still Europe loves to clutter up haha.
:-D

Again though, great design direction!

I’ll probably shift the continents (turning their general direction), and stretch out northern Africa and Europe, will probably require North America to get a bit skinny, but I think the big benefit from this, is that potentially more European spaces can be added. This will allow me to add more to the Mediterranean however (and it really needs the space), perhaps round out where Rome is. Africa, I think needs a bit more work. South America possibly as well, but I sort of need an idea of which cities can be considered major not only there, but elsewhere. Vladivostok will defiantly get added in with it’s own space.

I picked black for impassables, since it tells me that there is nothing there, no play space, it’s simply temporary, and they are there for the designer’s benefit.

I’m not sure where else to put a rounded Sea Zone, I’m considering more though.

@NilOGrav:

Big thanks for Young Grasshopper,

Played this last weekend in combination with the Halifax rules (option 2, the greater Commonwealth). Fantastic. We have added a ton of luxury materials (NO-cards, scoreboards, country sheets, , IPCs, tokens, etc) to help speed things up and are looking for a year now how to create a one day game w/o losing the characteristics.

This completely answered our questions! Congratulations on a job well done.

chrz Eppo

Thanks for the comments NiIOGrav, glad to help… I honestly think these VOs are a no brainer for those that want to sum things up in a 10 hour day. I will be releasing my new game accessory card deck soon, keep an eye out for my next “essential customizations” video.

Cheers.

I have labored in the past thinking of ways to fix the Research & Development phase. My ideas have ranged from ridiculously complex and elaborate to outright stupid, however, my final draft is both simple and balanced. The following house rule has been rigorously play tested, and none of the original technologies have been modified. This rule is balanced enough to bring the R&D phase into your games more often, while simple enough to get your fellow players to approve it.

Grasshopper’s Tech Rule

When an eligible nation chooses to enter the Research phase by purchasing 1 or more research dice, they will receive 1 bonus roll for free. Therefore…

_- if you buy 1 dice for $5, you will get 2 dice for a chance to roll a 6

if you buy 2 dice for $10, you will get 3 dice for a chance to roll a 6 if you buy 3 dice for $15, you will get 4 dice for a chance to roll a 6 etc…_

If a 6 was rolled during the research phase, you must then choose a technology chart to roll on during the development phase. However, after you have chosen a technology chart, and before you make a development roll, you may choose one technology that you will be immune from. For example…

- America chooses to make their development roll using technology chart #2, and decides to be immune from Radar (technology #4). Therefore, if a 4 is rolled, the player for America must try again until they get a result other than 4.

This process is reset after each game round allowing players to choose different charts and immune technologies with each R&D phase.

And how is game balance threatened when both sides can do the same thing? It may upset game tradition, but I don’t see how it hurts game balance. The Brits put a large capacity IC in South africa. Hmmm…the Germans put a large capacity IC in North Africa. Now you’re both fighting somewhere else. Where’s the imbalance?

Its at Harris Game Design, Larry Harris’ website.
It’s also on here somewhere, but I didn’t want to repost it.

Updated rules slightly, added rules to first post