Recent Youtube Global 1939 Game Summary

@Whitshadw:

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Piss Off  El Cheapo !!!

We are a group of 6 usually, with sometimes more or less of us. We regularly meet every 2 weeks ish. We have a table to leave the game setup between days. Or setup by the host before the game. Due to this if someone cant make it the others cover so life and the game both continue without excessive conflict. We use the HBG 1936-45 map currently, but we started with A&A global 1940. First run was rediculously slow so we did a few things to adjust it to our preferred level of fun/flow

1)Similarly to munck we also use screw bins all stored the same. No messing around in the bin looking for a sub etc. Speeds up the flow. Decide purchases while others are playing, though sometimes plans are changed by others, so this isn’t a hard rule.

2)We kept the turn order the same. US controls french and china. But once US are done China and Germany play with an overlap they dont really interact. We also allow the next player to start his turn while the current player is collecting income etc.so long as they have placed units and will not interact with the map anymore. This realy speeds up the flow.  The next player is declaring purchases and rolling tech, while the previous player rolls income increases and collects income.

3)So some printed rules are not incorporated by us. If someone wants to try one we give it a shot, it gets voted in or voted out.

Initially we decided to ignore major rules changes from A&A versions. And just used the varrient map and setup. We skipped Combat air patrol and kept the destroyer for sub detection as an example. Too much explaining and  retraining, though we may add it later. The same is done to anything that takes time to absorb internally. Especially if it was played different in a previous version.

Most importantly we play for FUN. Anything that slows it down needlessly or causes confusion is removed, and tried in small batches. This way we can test if anything destroys ballance or is unnecessarily complex. We vote it out and try something else, or we like it and keep it.

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I know, just I am looking for something more direct and refined.

If you have a copy each of Europe '40 and Pacific '40, as well as a copy of 1914, you should have enough pieces to be able to pull it off.  Personally, I use the British from 1914 for Chinese Nationalist pieces, and the Turks as Chinese Communists.  You can use the 1914 Germans as Axis minors, and the French as Vichy.

Hi, Ben,

Yeah, Wikipedia plays a big part in my research.  But I stumble across other websites as I’m hunting for things also.  Sometimes I find declassified official documents from the time.  I also use other games in my collection, like War in Flames and Battlewagon, where the designers did the research, and came to their own conclusions about how to fudge things.  I used to be in Military Intelligence when I was active duty army.  I spent six years at NSA (“In God we trust.  All others we monitor”)  :wink:  So I developed the habit of confirming intelligence from multiple sources whenever possible.  I’m still in the National Guard, actually.  But I switched my MOS to MP so I didn’t have to drive so far for drills.

Midnight,

Good job on the research.  Every time I start to do it for land forces, I get distracted by all the different sources, and how they use different methods for listing things.  Yeah, with the way A&A works, where the infantry of one country is equal to the infantry of every other country (unless you are using the elite units in Global ’39), then you have to reflect differences in troop and equipment quality by using different ratios to represent one unit.

One idea I’ve toyed with is using the same ratio for everyone’s infantry, (like 1 for every three divisions) but then reflecting the differences in firepower by assigning different ratios for artillery.  For instance, at the start maybe Germany gets an artillery unit for every 2 infantry, and France gets one for every 5 infantry, or something along those lines.  The problem there, of course, is that the French (and Russians) really really liked artillery, and it made up a bigger percentage of their overall forces.  So it would not be entirely satisfying from a historical perspective.  For the same reasons, I am reluctant to just start them off with a bunch of SS units.  Although I suppose I could just not call them SS units.  But I’d know.  I’D KNOW, and it would bug me  :-D

Read the rules. Generally happy with what I see. Greatly simplified in the right places (e.g. no more US dud torpedoes) while some optional complexity is added in others (terrain rules).

One thing I really do miss, however, is the inability to retreat for the defender?? Was that decision made simply for reasons of added playing time?

Big holiday sale going on at HBG throughout the weekend and into Monday.

http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/Sale-Sale-Sale-_c_151.html