Battle for Atlantic 2.0

Thanks SS.  I re-read the report: minor clarification:  It looks like I’m recommending that Britain can’t be attacked at all R1, but actually meant that Italy specifically needs to wait until R2 to attack (preventing the total annihilation of all UK forces from the mediterranean on R1).  Also, I thought there was little the UK could do with these house rules to prevent a takeover if Italy was allowed to attack the UK in R1, but this was assuming Italy could set up their fleet and transports to attack England on R2 with Germany, but skilled Allied players could put naval ships in the path to block Italy from joining in on R2.  With that, I think it’s appropriate to play that Italy can attack the UK on R1… especially since the Italian player only earns 10 IPC’s at start and with no National Objectives, it could be a slow climb to more income if Britain has a chance to maintain it’s fleet and holdings in Africa.

Yeah we have about twenty guys in our Bay Area group.  Black Elk is also in our group just haven’t met him yet lol. Hopefully soon though.  A great group of guys who love A&A. :)

This is 1942.2, not Global 1942. The US starts at war.

Oh cool, we’re back! For a few days there I wasn’t able to get the site up.

I like the idea of a round 0 build up, but I think the implementation needs more work.

The first issue I’m anticipating is just sheer amount of time it would take to go around the table piece for piece. Beyond that you also have the issue of players matching each other (out in the open) by choosing to place all their TUV in just a few hot spots, at the expense of everywhere else. And finally, without any limits or caps for individual territories or sea zones you will likely see a ton of front line units, placed just outside the range of any opening attacks.

My suggestion would be to have more structure to the zero round, more rules defining where the units can be placed, or perhaps some kind of initiative role to determine the sequence in which they are placed.

One approach might be to just scale back the number of units or ipcs that are included in this process. So instead of taking all the starting TUV and putting that in a tray, you might just use a portion of the total, or perhaps instead allow players to add some smaller amount of TUV on top of the normal starting totals. Not only would that make things faster, it would also provide some much needed structure to the set up process.

Particularly with sea zones, instead of a race to be the first to occupy the contested ones (that border multiple originally controlled territories), you could restrict where naval units can be added to just those sea zones that already have a ship etc. Same deal with land.

You might make it a secret placement only revealed after everyone has recorded all their placements. Or you could break it down by unit type, first bases then inf then tanks then fighters then ships etc.

For ease of use, the more this zero round looked like a bid the easier it would be to implement. Although in this case it would be like a bid for all sides.

Again I like the idea a lot, I just think it needs more polish.

I like the idea to create a new unit class that behaves in a unique way, and the AAgun does seem to be pretty good to denote it (since they’re rarely purchased). But of course, creating a new unit class does create some barriers to entry and diminishes the ease of adoption.

Basically the Bazooka concept as described (whatever you end up calling the unit, for me that’s not as important) will require an update to the battleboard, and the unit cost/abilities lists of the maps/book. Its one more thing that players have to learn, in addition to the new set up, so in that respect it will be harder to gather testers than if you just stick with the regular unit roster. Sure it’s a different balance then, but at least everyone has the info memorized already.

I think the easiest approach for a mod to adopt is to keep everything else the same, and just a offer reprint of the unit set up cards for each nation.

Those are typically separate materials anyway, and even the OOB cards have misprints (for the starting IPC value of UK and Germany) and printing out a few new cards is pretty easy. Placing starting units for a new set up takes about the same amount of time as it does to set the OOB game. So that’s pretty easy too.

I like a lot of the concepts here, especially the 1 ipc factory, which I think could be a major benefit to the play patterns on the board. But the Bazooka concept might overshadow them.

Perhaps test the Bazooka concept first in the OOB game to see how if it gathers interest? But I kind of like this set up, with the placements, even if they’re just normal AAguns. You can always use a bid, or further tweaks to rebalanced the situation (sans bazooka concept, if that’s needed.) I like pretty much all the other ideas. Though I’d still pull for a Pearl Factory hehe
:-D

Again man, nice concepts

You could use the same general rules for AA50, but you would have to pick one of the AA 50 setups (1941 or 1942) then add up the total cost of starting units to get the starting cash for each country. For one thing, I think there are less starting pieces for all the nations because AA 50 has a smaller map than the 1940 games so there are less pieces. Another thing is I think the prices are a little different in AA50 than in the 1940 games, plus you won’t have Tac Bombers or Mechanized Infantry as those units didn’t come out until the 1940 games.
Also, I’m not sure how you would handle China, since in AA50 they don’t actually get IPCs but rather 1 infantry for every 2 Chinese territories still under Chinese control at the beginning of their turn.
Other than a few small changes though, I think you could still adapt this idea to AA50.

@Imperious:

+++++ Then i feel we should use the same pattern in AARHE to fit with LHTR. The language should be similiar so as not to confuse. Please modifiy this throughout the text.

Ok.

The diplomacy modifier of -3 was too much and leads to many neutrals converting too fast.

Yeah I can imagine.
Thats hitting on 4 or less, which is 66%.
Allies has 4 dices per turn.

ok lets talk about it in the setup thread

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=8697.0

so far only change is FTR (fighter) on CV (aircraft carrier) is NAV (naval fighter)