Ichabod, the 3 tables would fit in my basement. Have 2 now. Just would need to put up plywood walls. Ha Ha
seancb, like your post but just seems to be to much. Got to keep it KISS.
General, yes your idea is like mine. Have some kind of list of 8 things the spy can or can’t do and then have the defender roll a counter die.
1. Spy dies
2. Spy blows up ammo depot. Defenders ground troops -1 on first round of combat only in 1 territory.
3. Spy blows up Fuel depot. Defenders motorized units in 1 territory move only 1 space.
4. Spy steals tech development papers. Die break thru roll cost 8 icp’s on defenders next turn.
5. Spy blows up Fuel depot at a naval base. Ships denied the extra space movement from a naval base.
6. Spy damages a factory. Can only build 2 units at a Minor and 8 at a Major factory.
7. Spy dies.
8. Spy damages a factory. Defender pays 3 icps to bank for repairs.
Somethings like that. You could make it a 10 item Spy chart. Defender rolls a D6 die and a roll of 2 or less denies the Spy.
Keep it simple but also it can be counter every turn so it doesn’t get out of hand. Change the list around. I’m going to use this in my next 40 game that I have posted in the Others variants and games thread. I will add 2 more items to make it a 10 item Spy chart.
Attacker rolls 1 die for Spy and Defender rolls 1 die to block Spy. Simple.
I have event cards in game to so this will double spice up the game. If this is to strong (could make die counter roll 3 or less to) or I will add 2 to 4 of these items to the event cards where the defender can’t counter.
Interesting stuff here guys. Historical Board Gaming actually just released a great little “Spy” marker for their Global War game. You could easily use them for A&A:
http://www.historicalboardgaming.com/HBG-Spy-Marker-Acrylic-x5-_p_2210.html
The rules are pretty good too. With some minor modifications, you could easily make them work for A&A:
@SS:
1. Spy dies
2. Spy blows up ammo depot. Defenders ground troops -1 on first round of combat only in 1 territory.
3. Spy blows up Fuel depot. Defenders motorized units in 1 territory move only 1 space.
4. Spy steals tech development papers. Die break thru roll cost 8 icp’s on defenders next turn.
5. Spy blows up Fuel depot at a naval base. Ships denied the extra space movement from a naval base.
6. Spy damages a factory. Can only build 2 units at a Minor and 8 at a Major factory.
7. Spy dies.
8. Spy damages a factory. Defender pays 3 icps to bank for repairs.
I’m struck by the fact that the spy is acting as a spy in only one of those eight roll results (specifically, in number 4). In the other ones, he either dies or he’s acting like a saboteur rather than an intelligence agent. I’m also wondering: in number 4, is the spy only allowed to steal data on tech breakthroughs that have already been achieved by the enemy power from which he’s stealing them? After all, how could power X develop breakthough Y by stealing data from power Z if power Z doesn’t yet have breakthrough Y for itself?
You could call the list Espionage Spy of our Spy Agencies.
The Spies had many jobs along with gathering secret information.
I read that Spy operations also worked to damage morale in the enemy and to disrupt supply lines and hamper the movement of enemy troops.
All of these functions were vital services for the spies working with inside intelligence
agents of the agencies.
@SS:
Spy steals tech papers. No tech roll for next turn.
Defender gets a die roll to counter.
It’s plausible that Power X would get a free tech upgrade (or perhaps a tech roll with easier odds) for a specific tech by stealing tech papers from an enemy power that already has that tech, but I don’t think it’s plausible that an enemy power that’s in the process of developing a tech would be stopped or delayed from that tech development just because a spy steals a few papers from them. Just think of the Manhattan Project for example. If Germany, let’s say, had wanted to seriously delay the American A-bomb project, it could not have do this by breaking into a safe somewhere and grabbing a handful of papers; it would have had to steal (or destroy) massive amounts of documentation located in multiple well-guarded locations, as well as assassinate all the scientists and engineers who were deeply involved in the project, and probably also destroy the industrial facilities that were contributing to the development effort (like the gigantic Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a building which was the size of a small town).
It was meant to be some kind of delay for getting tech.
Sorry but I removed my message and wrote a new one in the above post.
@SS:
You could call the list Espionage Spy of our Spy Agencies.
The Spies had many jobs along with gathering secret information.
I read that Spy operations also worked to damage morale in the enemy and to disrupt supply lines and hamper the movement of enemy troops.
All of these functions were vital services for the spies working with inside intelligence
agents of the agencies.
I’m going to call it the Espionage Spy Chart.
I think a distinction needs to be made between the concept of “a spy” in the singular and the much broader concept of wartime intelligence activities by entire networks and agencies. In a strategic-level game like A&A, I don’t see any plausible way of introducing a house rule that models the activities of “a spy” in the singular because that’s not the level at which single spies operate. The only WWII “spy in the singular” who had a major strategic impact on the entire war was Richard Sorge, Stalin’s top spy in Japan, who alerted Stalin in the fall of 1941 that Japan was planning to attack the US and the UK rather than the USSR; this allowed Stalin to transfer his crack Siberian troops westward just in time to save Moscow from the advancing Germans. Sorge’s impact was spectacular, but it was also extremely exceptional; the vast majority of spies “in the field” simply serve to collect bits of information (often quite modest in importance), which they pass along – often by lengthy routes – to the military or civilian agencies that control their operations. Those agencies then collate and analyze the masses of raw data that arrive from their network of field agents and try to extract useful conclusions from that data. On top of that, these agencies not only take into account this “humint” (human intelligence), they also need to correlate it with “sigit” (signals intelligence), which brings us into the related worlds of radio signal interception and code-breaking. Espionnage in WWII, in other words, was an extremely complex business involving vast numbers of people working in a great variety of tasks, with some of these jobs being extremely sophisticated and specialized, while others were very routine and clerical (though they were essential too). Moreover, intelligence isn’t just a matter of learning the other side’s secrets; it’s also about counter-intelligence, which means either preventing the other side from learning your own secrets or finding a way to feed him false information that actually works to your advantage rather than the enemy’s advantage.
In other words, it would make sense to develop a house rule built around the concept of representing in a collective way these wartime intelligence activities, and of translating these activities into modest bonuses of one sort or another, but I don’t think it would fit A&A’s strategic scale to focus on something as tiny as the activities of one spy, or to allow an espionage house rule to have a strategically major impact on the course of the game.
We actually call ours and espionage chart.
If you read ours, it is very simple.
You roll 2 dice at the beginning.
if your roll results in 5-9 you have not succeeded in espionage and no further action is needed.
the odd on that are 2/3 you will miss espionage.
Its pretty simple in our version.
CWO, I here where your coming from.
I think I may just add 1 or 2 event cards to each countries deck saying something to the affect of a spy stealing tech design papers and getting a free D10 die tech roll that matches to my tech chart and/or they get to take away a tech from the enemy and keep for themselves.
Maybe a one time +1 attack or defense for all specific units of a Power winning intelligence ops, at 4 IPCs or more, such as Artillery, MI, Tank.
@SS:
they get to take away a tech from the enemy and keep for themselves.
If by this you mean “copy an enemy’s tech, so that you both get to use it rather than just him using it”, that’s fine. If you mean “deprive the enemy of a tech, so that it becomes yours rather than his,” that’s not believable. Stealing technology isn’t like stealing a car; you can’t deprive an enemy of technological knowledge and tecnological manufacturing infrastructure just by grabbing a secret plan from somewhere. When the Soviets reverse-engineered the B-29 to produce their own copy of the plane, that action didn’t suddenly cause all the B-29s in the US inventory to suddenly disappear, or cause all the US factories that built the B-29 to suddenly stop working. If you somehow stole the famous top-secret formula for Coca-Cola syrup, which is apparently kept in a safe at Coke’s corporate headquarters and which is supposedly known in its entirety to only one or two people at any one time, this would not bring the worldwide manufacturing of Coca-Cola to an immediate halt. The subcontractors who make the various components of the Coca-Cola syrup – each one of them knowing just part of the formula – would keep right on manufacturing the stuff as if nothing had happened.
@CWO Marc. In my original post I stated that there would be a whole range of espionage activities going on during the war. The concept of “The Spy” was to signify that one nation had the upper hand during that round of play. It could be that they had a major breakthrough of some kind in breaking a code or gathering intelligence or stealing technology or whatever.
I also mentioned the ninja in the game Shogun. What I really liked about that was the fun that it brought to the game between the players (not the pieces on the board). We would all have to tiptoe around the guy that had the ninja and hope that he would use it against someone else. That’s the element that I want to bring to this game-the fun and the not-so-subtle razzing between the players. I could see my friends renaming the spy “The Sh!t Disturber” or something like that. By having only one piece that represents spying instead of everyone spying every round you would create a dynamic between the players that would transcend what is happening with the pieces on the board. Obviously this rule would be much more fun if there were more than 2 people playing the game because there would only be one player that you could use “The Spy” against.
I’m starting to lean away from using dice to determine what action to use. The thing that makes Research and Development in this game a total failure is that there is only dumb luck and not sound strategy involved. Players should be rewarded for the choices that they make more and punished less for the dice that they roll IMO. I want to provide 3 or 4 clear, simple choices that the player has at their disposal for that turn. For example; France wins the roll in the first round. If given the 2 choices that I provided in my original post and maybe something to do with research and technology, the choice to move a fighter out of France before Germany invades would be hands down a better choice than taking money that they would surrender in 10 minutes or developing a weapon that they will never use. To do it this way would also keep the other players guessing as to how it will be used and would inform the choices that they will make. If you’re invading a territory of the nation who has “The Spy” you might want to bring extra units in knowing that they could move an extra unit into that territory. See what I mean, more strategy.
Both sides would have same tech.
How about some way of turning one strict neutral nation into a pro-axis or pro-aliies nation? Would it be plausible for an apparatus in WW2 to turn a nation using some sort of cloak and dagger method? I know coups have been staged since then but I’m not aware of it happening in the war.
If so how would that work if you chose that option? It should be something difficult to achieve like rolling a specific number and perhaps paying the bank the number of IPC’s that territory is worth.
Any thoughts on that choice and how to make it work?
Naw. We have a rule for strict neutrals where you must roll a die and get the territories value or less on die roll. If you don’t u have to retreat and pay the bank up to the territories value.
That seems way too easy to turn a strict neutral. Nations should be focusing more on fighting each other and not so much on strict neutrals during a world war.
What I’m thinking is that;
-You have to control an adjacent territory to attempt to turn a strict neutral
-You can only make one attempt per nation to turn it (in reality if you fail they would probably be p!ssed off at you and hang your spies)
-You have to roll a 6 to turn it. I like your idea of having to pay the number of IPC’s the territory is worth for failing, SS.
-You wouldn’t move into the territory, you would simply make it a pro-axis or pro-aliies neutral. After that anyone could move into it without violating Starfleet’s Prime Directive (or strict neutrality).
-You don’t have to be at war to do turn a strict neutral. Like all actions of “The Spy”, this would all be done covertly of course and denied vehemently.
As far as Research and Development goes, I would reason this by saying that your espionage activities have accumulated enough intel from both friends and foes and combined with your own research that you have a 50-50 chance of developing a weapon. How this would work;
-You roll 3 dice for free. A roll of 6 means you are successful. You only count one 6.
-If successful you roll the die for a weapon. You then CHOOSE which table to apply that roll to. That’s the way the rule should have been written in the first place. Why on earth would you ever spend your resources in the real world to develop a weapon that does you no good? Oops, we developed rockets, what were we thinking? It started out as a good idea to have Research and Development but then it turned into a really bad idea because the whole thing was left to chance instead of strategy.
The only way you to use a spy logically is if you do a Fog of War game which would be a nightmare to do on a board game or the spy steals tech.
I did add the spy steals tech ( defender keeps tech ) card ( 1 only ) to each of the 6 countries event cards. Each countries deck of cards has 20 to 22 cards in each deck. So the spy steals tech card may never get turned over during the game.
You could set up something that a spy could damage factories, airfields, or ports by dice roll.
